Keeping Diversity In Mind

Thanks to our rich cultural heritage, Curaçao has a multicultural society with people from diverse backgrounds, speaking several languages, all with a global perspective on business. This is so deeply rooted in our culture that we tend to forget the great advantages it has on our daily work-life.

TEXT LESLEY HORNUNG

We often talk about Curaçao as a HUB for international business due to our geographical location, high-educated multi-lingual labour force and close relations with the Netherlands and the European Union. But do we actually practise what we preach when it comes to recruiting new talent and collaborating in teams? Do we leverage the power over our diversity?

Diversity is good for business
Having people who can think and work in highly different ways is crucial in a competitive environment where companies need to apply their capabilities in more innovative ways, partner successfully and harness technology effectively. Diversity and inclusion in the business environment leads to more innovation, more opportunities for all, better access to talent, and therefore, better overall business performance. Companies that embrace diversity gain higher market share and a competitive edge in accessing new markets – a so called “diversity dividend,” which was first quantified in a recent study by the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI).1 Business leaders increasingly recognise this. Results from PwC’s most recent 18th Annual Global CEO Survey2 show that 85% of the CEOs they surveyed whose companies have a formal diversity and inclusiveness strategy said it has improved their bottom line. Eightyone percent of CEOs say their organisations are now looking for a much broader range of skills than in the past. And to find the skills they need, companies are searching in many more places – 78% of CEOs say their business always uses multiple channels to recruit, while 71% say they actively search for talent in different geographies, industries and demographic segments. Nurturing adaptable talent is also important: 81% of CEOs say that their business always looks to equip employees with new skills.

Keeping An Open Mind
Although we can agree that diversity and inclusion are good for business, it’s not always easy to keep diversity in mind and consciously leverage the power of diversity in your team or when working with clients. In fact, keeping an open mind can be really tough. Why? Our brain operates on two levels: the conscious and the unconscious. It’s the unconscious processes that can influence our behaviour towards other people. This is called “unconscious bias.” Simply put, it regulates our unintentional natural preferences. This is perfectly normal and affects every one of us.

We like to think we’re pretty sophisticated decision makers, but in fact, unconscious processes play a huge role in the way we make decisions. When we’re faced with information that conflicts with our expectations, we’re more likely to reach to the wrong conclusion. This also happens in our relationships with other people. We have expectations that people from particular backgrounds will behave in particular ways, expectations that are generated from both social and neurological programming. You can see how this could become a challenge when working in a business environment with people from all sorts of different backgrounds, who all have their own cultural behaviours and traditions. We pay most attention to behaviours that fit with our expectations and we tend to ignore behaviours that contradict them. This is known as confirmatory bias and is one of the reasons why stereotypes are so persistent. When we recognize that someone is behaving in a way that is different to our expectations, we tend to explain that behaviour by linking it to that particular person.

The busier our brain becomes, the more likely we are to rely on unconscious processes, which can result in bias conclusions. When we’re juggling lots of information, working on different projects, or involved in back-toback meetings, our unconscious processes are more likely to kick in and relieve some of the pressure from our conscious processes. But our unconscious processes are more likely to introduce error based on assumptions. That’s why giving yourself enough time to make decisions accurately is one of the best ways we can make sure our decisions are genuinely objective.

Digging Deeper
The above explains how our unconscious processes affect how objective we can be. These processes are completely natural – everyone has them – but they’re also the reason why we need to be mindful when dealing with people. Not all advantages of diversity are observable. If we dig a little deeper, we can see something else going on. The large majority of CEOs with formal talent strategies already in place – more than 90% – said they’re addressing dimensions that are, in one way or another, observable: gender, knowledge/skills/experience, ethnicity/nationality, age, disability, and religion. By contrast, only a small number are addressing dimensions that are unobservable. Less than 6% said their diversity and inclusiveness strategy specifically addresses people who have different personal qualities like mind-set, people skills or adaptability. Very few CEOs are looking to enhance dimensions of diversity that fall outside conventional modes.

The bottom line of creating a more diverse and inclusive workforce in our local marketplace is to intentionally start using the diverse skill sets we inherited from our rich cultural history. At the same time, we still need to be aware of unconscious bias processes. We should deliberately look for non-observable dimensions of diversity when assembling teams and recruiting new talent. Our local labour market already offers such a diverse pool of talent; all we need to do is acknowledge the power of our diversity and leverage our skills to become an even more inclusive HUB for international business opportunities.


1 Source: recent study by Center for Talent Innovation: http://www.talentinnovation.org/publication.cfm?- publication=1400

2 Source: PwC 18th Annual Global CEO Survey: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-survey/2015/ key-findings/diversity.jhtml