Building Diverse and Inclusive Teams

Diversity means having people from different backgrounds on the team, including protected groups that are based on race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and people with other characteristics that make them unique. Inclusion is building a safe environment for the team where everyone feels welcome and valued. Diversity and inclusion are often used together, but inclusion is what helps us benefit from diversity. Diversity and inclusion in the workplace are new concepts. However, a lot of work has recently been done to create awareness about diversity and inclusion and to emphasize its benefits. The tech industry has particularly adapted to this and has been focusing much more on diversity and inclusion in recent years.

As an engineering leader, your responsibility is to invest in hiring from under-represented groups, e.g., women or people of color, and create a safe environment where everyone is heard and treated respectfully without discrimination.

Having diversity without inclusion is not very useful. You must provide a safe environment where people from underrepresented groups feel included and can share their opinions and thoughts transparently. This might require explicit effort, especially when you hire the first person from an Underrepresented Minority (URM) group.

Note: A good manager always focuses on both diversity and inclusion, but focusing only on diversity without putting in an effort to be more inclusive is not good enough.

Advantages of a diverse team

Diverse and inclusive teams do better when compared to teams that are not diverse in many ways.

• Diverse teams will have more creative and innovative ideas to solve problems. People with diverse backgrounds have their own perspectives and ideas, which homogenous teams lack.

• It's statistically proven that teams with diverse backgrounds have a lower attrition rate.

• Teams are healthier and happier because of the presence of different ...