For most companies, the idea of diversity stops at race and gender.
In her SXSW talk, WayUp CEO Liz Wessel proposed the idea of two-dimensional diversity. This is diversity that values the differences of educational background, age, geography, class and thought.
Why this is important is because companies that have two-dimensional workforce diversity are 3.5x more likely to have employees that state, “I contribute my full innovative potential to my work every day.” Companies without it, therefore, are missing out on great ideas, have less engaged employees and risk falling behind competitors.
Wessel also pointed to stats that directly link the bottom line to increased diversity:
- For every 1 percent increase in gender diversity, a company sees a 3 percent increase in sales revenue.
- For every 1 percent increase in ethnic diversity, a company sees a 9 percent increase in sales revenue.
Finally, she played a clip from a diversity officer at EY in which he stated, “You have the highest performing teams when you have the most diverse teams.”
This is exactly what we’ve found at Catalyte. The primary and secondary diversity of our teams means we can see innovation where others can’t, identify problems others miss and deliver better product faster.
