Vive la Difference

It's human to want to be around people similar to yourself. But in a small business, that can be costly to your bottom line.

Most people infer that diversity just refers to racial differences in the workplace. It can, however, include differences in gender, age, religion, thinking styles or sexual identity.

According to Global Lead, a Cleveland-based consulting firm, and Hubbard & Hubbard, an organizational consulting firm, diversity in a small business can affect everything from recruitment, retention, career development and office culture to community involvement.

"Diversity is about understanding the similarities and differences between people in the workplace. Inclusion is about leveraging those differences and similarities to generate better bottom-line results," says Janet Reid, founding partner of Global Lead, and "having diversity in a small business is the key to its success."

In some ways, diversity is more critical for small business than for larger ones. "There's no ability for people to fly under the radar," says Reid.

And it's important within a small-business culture that there's a policy of inclusion. It may be more comfortable for people to seek input from colleagues they are familiar with, but that can prevent workers from coming up with the best solutions to problems or even being able understand a wide range of clients and customers.

"To get to those insights, you have to have cultural dexterity where you can understand people's unarticulated needs," says Reid. One example would be Procter & Gamble's ability to see parents' need for disposable diapers when they expressed their annoyance with cloth diapers and pins. "They were able to innovate to create an articulated solution," says Reid.

Small-business owners across many industries recognize the importance of diversity.

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