The Importance of Workforce Diversity

Workforce diversity can boost marketing creativity

Many businesses are working hard to ensure their marketing and video advertisements include a broader range of race and ethnicity to better reflect the diversity in their market. But is that same diversity reflected in their workplace?

According to a 2020 POCAM study on Canadian BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of colour) advertising and marketing, 52% of BIPOC in creative industries were not born in Canada, while Canada at large includes 22%-plus (based on StatsCan).

Why does this matter? To improve your marketing videos and ads, and become a top creative workplace, your business needs to become more diverse and inclusive. When you do this and diversity and inclusiveness is reflected in your workforce, new perspectives are brought to the forefront.

Needless to say, there are numerous benefits to ensuring the overall makeup of your team reflects that same diversity and more, including a broad range of experiences, ethnic backgrounds, age groups, and balancing the gender equation.

This will not only please your customers, as new perspectives can resonate with people of similar age groups, gender, and cultural backgrounds — it can lead to more creative marketing output, which in turn can result in a better return on investment.

However, not including that range of diversity in your workplace can have a negative effect on your marketing, in that there may be a lack of creativity and your net may not be as wide in capturing the full range of your target audience. This means you may be losing out on the potential to garner more customers and boost profits.

The Need for Strategic Adjustments

Adjusting your hiring strategy and making sure a diverse group of employees are included in group meetings and projects around marketing (and more), and ensuring their voices are heard will provide you with various perspectives, both on the business and the client-side, that can benefit your advertisements and how they connect with your customers.

It is also important to ensure your employees have a safe space to discuss how they see the company when it comes to diversity and inclusiveness, and to broaden your choice of applicants to reflect this when selecting an employee or several employees for a leadership position.

“Leadership is represented differently in different cultures. Things like adherence to hierarchy are also represented differently. I feel like I have to act ‘western’ oftentimes to be noticed as their type of leader,” said an anonymous source included in the 2020 POCAM study.

Offering mentorship can also go a long way, as the study notes that there is a lack of guidance in creative industries for BIPOC: “Seventy-eight per cent have no mentor/sponsor at their place of work, leading to alienation and forced assimilation in order to succeed. This speaks to the inherent systemic bias.”

Hiring more diverse groups of people, when considering ethnic backgrounds, age groups and gender, can have a positive impact on your employees, your marketing videos and advertisements, and the customers you are catering to — as well as your entire business. The result is a more diverse and inclusive company, customers that are pleased with your efforts (and potentially more brand loyal), and better ROI for your business.

Universus is a diverse group of people dedicated to quality marketing services is the greater Toronto area. To get in contact with our team, please contact us here or call us at 833-399-0147