Want Your Brand to Flourish? Start by Embracing People (All Kinds)
“I’d like to speak to your manager.”
You’re unlikely to hear these words spoken by a person of color. When they feel unwelcome in a store, they don’t usually speak out. Instead, they typically don’t come back — and they’re gone for good. That’s according to a study commissioned by Sephora in 2021 on racial bias in the retail sector. As brands attempt to avoid political attacks from those who swing “DEI” like a club and drop “woke” as a slur, it’s helpful to recognize that being inclusive toward all people and embracing differences in both customers and employees is not only about treating others as we’d want to be treated — it’s also smart business.
The rising political backlash against DEI emphasizes the urgent need to recommit to the inclusive practices and ideals that have long driven successful organizations. To help organizations navigate this challenging environment, Open to All launched a new resource: The Case for Inclusion and Belonging in a Divided America. This comprehensive toolkit contains data, talking points, assessment tools, and resources to secure internal buy-in.
Lost customers mean lost revenue.
The Sephora study gathered responses from thousands of U.S. consumers and retail employees and found that 30% of shoppers of color, twice as many as white shoppers, reported being treated unfairly in stores due to their ethnicity. And only 13%, less than half that of whites, reported their experience to store leadership. The upshot? Three in five of shoppers of color who felt unwelcome said they were unlikely to visit that store again, while two in five said they’d avoid the store’s other locations, too. Think of this as whatever the oppositive of brand loyalty is.
The future of your business requires it. The data demand it.
Do you want to be loved — as a store, as a community member, as a brand? Be welcoming. Embrace all people regardless of their identity across all the ways we differ from one another. Consider that findings from Edelman that 64% of consumers choose, switch, avoid, or boycott a brand based on its stance on societal issues. And that almost two-thirds of millennials and Gen Z express a preference for brands that have a point of view and stand for something, according to Kantar Consulting. And Unilever found that 33% of consumers choose to buy from brands they believe are doing social or environmental good. Customers care. So should businesses.
Business and innovation depend on a workforce of diverse graduates.
The stakes aren’t limited to a particular company’s quarterly earnings. It’s not hyperbole to say our nation’s competitiveness is in play. Dozens of major American companies argue that having a racially diverse workforce gives them an edge in the global marketplace. More than 80 corporations and businesses made their positions known in briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of upholding affirmative action. When you have companies from American Express Company to Hershey Company to Johnson and Johnson speaking out in favor of race-conscious admissions, it’s very clear: Corporate America needs employees with all backgrounds, experiences, and talents in order to thrive and compete.
In a brief by IBM, Aeris Communications, Inc., the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, IBM put it this way:
“The diversity of people, cultures, thoughts, and ideas within the STEM workforce is essential to IBM’s business — indeed, to its ability to deliver innovative, superior technologies worldwide. This is not a statement of fad or fashion. In 1953, IBM’s then-President, Thomas Watson, Jr., sent a letter to all IBM employees, emphasizing IBM’s need for a diverse workforce.”
But what about simply navigating modern society? Having diverse teams helps organizations relate to increasingly diverse customers, collaborators, and citizens. U.S. Census data show that the U.S. Diversity Index — a measure of the chance that two randomly chosen people will be from different racial or ethnic groups — was 61.1% in 2020, rising 6 points over 10 years, as reported in Tableau.
McKinsey & Company found that “the most diverse companies are now more likely than ever to outperform less diverse peers on profitability.” When it came to cultural and ethnic diversity, McKinsey found that “top-quartile companies outperformed those in the fourth one by 36% in profitability, slightly up from 33% in 2017 and 35% in 2014.”
The public is on your side.
More than half — 56% — of employed adults in the United States say focusing on increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion at work is a good thing, according to a Pew Research Center survey. That percentage is pulled down by workers who are close to retirement, of whom 52% agree, but boosted by the young, those aged 18–29, of whom 68% agree, who will be in the workforce for decades to come.
These are traditional values. They’re easy to access and even easier to defend.
Empathy, kindness, and a belief in the power of community are the animating forces of a business-led approach to DEI. Being a good human is simply good business.
Businesses can lead the way
To recruit, retain and nurture diverse teams, there’s a lot businesses can do. Open to All, a nonprofit working toward building a thriving, inclusive nation, has heard from many companies that are investing in their own competitiveness by taking a variety of measures — from supporting employee resource groups based on race and other identities to inclusive hiring practices and expanded talent pools to work-schedule accommodations, cross-departmental diversity training, apprenticeship and mentoring programs, leadership pipeline intentionality, pay transparency and an array of climate-related steps to create a sense of belonging for all.
It’s not just the right thing to do. It’s the smart thing to do.
If profit is a goal, these things matter.
Ready to champion inclusion in these challenging times? Download your copy of Open to All’s latest playbook and discover how to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion into every aspect of your business.
