How to Leverage Benefits to Diversify Your Workforce

Today I’m here to help you understand the value of your organization’s ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). If after reading this week’s editorial you need help creating your own roadmap to achieve your DE&I goals, please reach out to me directly at [email protected] with any thoughts, comments, or questions. I would love to share strategies to help your organization provide more inclusive benefits plans and share information about our DE&I self-assessment tool. I’m here to help!

Having a diverse leadership team and employees increases the bottom line.  

Having a commitment to DE&I is a critical piece to ensure your organization can attract and retain the best talent in the industry. Today’s younger workforce is demanding their employers be diverse and open to embracing all opinions, thoughts, and ideas. However, from a CFO perspective, there are obvious benefits to organizational success and ultimately financial performance and innovation that comes from embracing the diversity as well.

For example, more inclusive and diverse leadership teams see higher revenues and higher rates of innovation that place them at a competitive advantage over their peers. In fact, over 1/3 of employers believe it’s a strength in their workplace. So we know that leadership is focusing on DE&I and that it’s important from a broad organizational standpoint, but what does that mean from a benefit standpoint? Well, 30% of employers are expected to make inclusive benefits a key area in 2022. From a tactical standpoint, it’s important to consider what benefits your organization is offering to appeal to a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

Diverse benefits for a diverse workplace.

Historically, benefits lacked in the DE&I space because of an assumption made by employers, HR, and benefit staff. Traditionally, the assumption was that an employee would join the firm, get married, have kids, buy a house, save for retirement, and eventually retire after a 40 year career with the same company. Not these days, right?

But that’s not the story of most people and many people and employers are really beginning to recognize and embrace that fact. For example, not everybody will have children. Some folks who have children might not have a partner or might have a same-sex partner. Other employees may be taking care of not only their family but possibly a generation before them by caring for their parents. Others might have a disability or, based on their background, might be more susceptible to certain health conditions.

It’s as important as ever to structure a benefits program to address many of these facets and strengthen both employee experience engagement and value prop for talent out in the marketplace. The more flexible your programs reach within all types of employees, the more inclusive they are.

Next steps?

According to a recent Mercer survey, 81% of U.S. organizations are focused on DE&I, but many face challenges, including not knowing how to get started. As more employees call on their employers to tackle this important yet complicated issue, I’m here to help you understand how inclusive your current benefits offering is and identify opportunities for improvement. There are many levers employers can pull to deliver more flexibility in their benefits plans, which will create a more inclusive work environment.