多元化为何对公司有利？

“透视领导力”是一个在线社区，最睿智、最有影响力的商界人物会在此回答一些有关职业生涯和领导力的问题。今天的问题是:“你如何在促进职场平等方面发挥作用?”回答者是SAP首席多元化和包容性推广官安卡·维滕伯格。

当谈到企业多元化时，我们不仅会面临隐藏的外部障碍，而且面临着来自于我们自身的障碍。我最近乘飞机出席了在旧金山召开的一场会议，一上飞机就有一名女飞行员向我问候。我记得我自己当时想的是，“哇，女飞行员,这下糟了！

在长达12小时的飞行中，我们一度遇到了气流，我记得自己当时在想，“我希望她能够掌控这架飞机。”当我们安全地降落在旧金山时，我意识到，如果驾驶舱里坐着的是一名男飞行员，我便不会产生这种想法。

尽管我对多元化和包容性的积极影响有着自己的认识、教育和理解，但我仍无意识地对这个女飞行员产生了偏见。这让我想到我如何能够帮助我的公司建立一个兼具多元化和包容性的员工队伍。

虽然在过去三年中，普通工作人员的多元化大幅增加，但根据SAP和牛津经济研究院的进行“2020年领导者”研究，中层管理层的变化一直较慢，而高级管理层和企业董事会的变化更加微不足道。

今天，多元化和包容性承诺不仅仅是为了方便，它同时也是一种商业需要。那么，我们每个人在促进职场平等方面能发挥什么样的作用呢？

为多元化提供商业案例

得到最高管理层的支持当然是组织变革的关键组成部分。要想实现这一目标，重要的是要展示多元化和包容性如何能够节省资金并提高营业收入，同时还要强调这些举措的长期价值。麦肯锡的最近一项研究表明，“在种族和民族多元化四分位数最高的公司，其财务回报可能比其各自国家行业中位数高出35％。”此外，德勤人才发展调查在2015年进行的一项研究表明，多元化公司中每个员工的三年期现金流比非多元化公司高出2.3倍。

面对无意识的偏见

每个人都会产生无意识的偏见。在今天的职场中，每个人都应该停下脚步来解决这个问题。这些偏见来自于我们的个人经验和我们看待世界的方式。了解无意识偏见的现实情况是工作中的一个重要组成部分，以减少在职场中产生无意识的偏见。提供多元化和包容性培训，使用技术来识别和消除工作中有偏见的言语，确保被忽视的同事有发言权，并为组织的各级人员开拓机会，这些都有助于建立一个更具包容性的、且无偏见的工作环境。

团结起来

若想切实发生改变，需要在你的组织中灌输团队合作精神。您可以安排团体午餐或召开电话会议，以讨论常见的专业经验，分享最佳做法，并建立关系。这都有助于创造更强的社区意识。

例如，SAP每月举办“女性职业发展”网络广播，受众已超过11,000人，遍及40多个国家。这个计划和类似的举措已经让员工感受到与面临类似挑战和障碍的世界各地的同事建立了更为紧密的联系，并创造了一个空间，让他们来分享和聆听鼓舞人心的故事。这种社区意识创造了更好的同伴关系，建立了文化理解，并打开了真诚的对话渠道。

努力发展业务而不带任何偏见，对于促进职场平等至关重要——更具包容性的员工队伍更具创新性，能更好地了解客户，并能超越竞争对手。通向更具多元化的道路可从任何级别的任何人开始，并最终将形成一个更具包容性的环境，员工更加快乐，工作效率也更高。而你个人的回报在于，它将帮你改善你的职业文化。 （财富中文网）

作者：Anka Wittenberg

译者：司慧杰/汪皓

The Leadership Insiders network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in business contribute answers to timely questions about careers and leadership. Today’s answer to the question, “How can you play a role in advancing workplace equality?” is written by Anka Wittenberg, chief diversity and inclusion officer at SAP.

When it comes to corporate diversity, we face hidden obstacles not only externally, but also inside ourselves. I was recently boarding a plane to speak at a conference in San Francisco and was immediately greeted by a female pilot. I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, this is great—a female pilot!”

At one point during the 12-hour flight, we experienced turbulence, and I remember vividly thinking to myself, “I hope she has it under control.” Once we safely landed in San Francisco, I realized that if a man had been in the cockpit, that thought would not have crossed my mind.

Despite my own knowledge, education, and understanding of the positive impact of diversity and inclusion, I still held an unconscious bias toward this female pilot. This led me to think about how I could help build a diverse and inclusive workforce at my company.

While diversity has increased substantially within the general workforce over the past three years, change has been slower to come to mid-level management, and is even less evident among senior executives and corporate boards, according to the Leaders 2020 study conducted by SAP and Oxford Economics.

Today, a commitment to diversity and inclusion is much more than a convenience—it is a business imperative. So what role can each of us play in advancing workplace equality?

Make the business case for diversity

Receiving buy-in from the C-suite is certainly a key component for organizational change. To get that buy-in, it’s important to show how diversity and inclusion save money and boost revenue, while also highlighting the long-term value of these initiatives. As a recent McKinsey study shows, “Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.” Additionally, a 2015 study from Bersin by Deloitte showed that diverse companies had 2.3 times higher cash flow per employee over a three-year period than non-diverse companies did.

Confront unconscious bias

Everyone has unconscious bias. In today’s workplace, it is time for everyone to stop tiptoeing around the issue. These biases are based on our personal experiences and how we see the world. Understanding the reality of unconscious bias is an important component of working to reduce it in the workplace. Providing diversity and inclusion training, using technology to identify and eliminate biased language in job listings, ensuring that underrepresented colleagues have a voice, and opening up opportunities at all levels of your organization are all ways to build a more inclusive, bias-free work environment.

Band together

To create real change, instill a sense of teamwork at your organization. You can arrange group lunches or host conference calls to discuss common professional experiences, share best practices, and build relationships. These will help create a stronger sense of community.

For example, SAP hosts a monthly “Women’s Professional Growth” webcast series, which has reached over 11,000 people in more than 40 countries. This program and similar initiatives have helped employees feel more connected to colleagues around the globe who are often facing similar challenges and obstacles, and creates a space to share and listen to inspirational stories. This sense of community creates better peer relationships, builds cultural understanding, and opens up honest dialogue.

Working to move your business beyond bias is critical to advancing workplace equality—and a more inclusive workforce is more innovative, better understands its customers, and outperforms the competition. The road to greater diversity can start with anyone at any level, and will ultimately lead to a more inclusive environment with happier and more productive employees. And it’s personally rewarding to know that you’ve transformed your professional culture for the better.