Diverse teams—which include women, seniors, handicapped people and foreign-born workers—are scientifically more productive.
The more teams are diversified, the better they perform! In essence, these are the findings of the study conducted in France by consulting firm Goodwill Management. The study, a first of its kind, analyzed the profitability of diversity from a purely economic point of view. For 18 months, four large French firms—AXA, L’ORÉAL, ORANGE and VINCI opened their doors to researchers to measure the performance of their teams. The results: diversity, if well managed, boosts organizational performance by 5 to 15%.
The study analyzed business data along many key diversity dimensions—women, visible minorities, handicapped people and seniors, deliberately isolating each category of workers to confront preconceived ideas with reality, with the result that many assumptions did not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Contrary to what is often thought, seniors are more productive and not necessarily more expensive than their younger counterparts, and handicapped workers are more motivated than non-handicapped colleagues. The same kind of results were found for women and foreign-born workers.
The downside is that to harvest the undeniable riches of diversity, companies must be serious enough about it to adopt a voluntary policy in this regard.