"Diversity is being invited to the party; Inclusion is being asked to dance; Equity is being a part of the party planning committee" - Vernā Myers
What is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?
Diversity about empowering people by respecting and appreciating what makes them, their perspectives and background different. This might include age, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, education, and national origin.
Equity is fairness, sameness, and valuing diversity and inclusion. This mostly means your cooperation making an impact on the world throughout their initiatives to truly make diversity and inclusion the new normal.
Inclusion is the effort and practices in which different groups or individuals having different backgrounds are socially accepted and welcomed. These differences could be self-evident, such as national age, race and ethnicity or they could be more inherent, such as educational background, training, even personality, such as introverts and extroverts. Source
Why Diversity is important
The reason why diversity is important is that it brings in new ideas and experiences, and people can learn from each other. Bringing in different ideas and perspectives leads to better problem-solving and helps to streamline ideas in. Working in diverse teams opens dialogue and promotes creativity, therefore helping a variety of businesses and products.
Biases to be aware of in order to increase diversity
- Affinity Bias-Preferring those who share the same qualities, activities, backgrounds, etc.
- Conformity Bias-Changing or suppressing your views to reflect those of the majority
- Confirmation Bias-Selectively searching for pieces of information to back an initial claim or opinion
- Contrast Bias-Comparing irrelevant pieces of criteria, e.g. resume experience for two candidates
- Halo Effect Bias-Focusing on one particularly great feature or encounter regarding a candidate
- Horns Effect Bias-Fixating on a negative aspect of a candidate (opposite of Halo Effect)
Proper training for companies and diversity and inclusion has become a new table stake in order to further their growth with new perspectives and we here at LANDED encourage you to be cognizant of potential biases that may harm the ability to innovate our world further with different perspectives. In the workspace you can become part of the change by constantly encouraging, uplifting, and including others and their viewpoints. This can greatly help with work culture as everyone feels comfortable and compelled to contribute.
