Why a diverse workforce is good for business

Frances Denny, head of business operations at the firm, offers the example of one neurodiverse employee who felt uncomfortable in his previous work environment. Exploristics not only gave the employee a forum to openly express himself and his needs, but the company allowed him to work remotely on a full time basis.

“Ultimately the business feels the benefit of that,” Frances says. “It’s a two-way street because you’re creating a sense of loyalty. You’re helping the employee rather than working against them. I don’t think we would be anywhere without our EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) initiatives to be honest. It helps us work as a team and in turn works well for our clients.”

According to research from HR Dive, a US recruitment website, companies that prioritise EDI are 12 times more likely to engage and retain employees and 8.5 times more likely to satisfy and retain customers. This is not a box ticking exercise, insists Christine White, director of Diversity Mark, says. “Countless global academic studies have shown that this is more than simply the right thing to do. It is the smart thing to do.”

This was part of the message at the inaugural Diversity Mark Summit in October, 2024. Over 300 business and diversity leaders gathered in Belfast to discuss ways in which more businesses around NI might create diverse and inclusive workplaces. “The evidence is growing that a more inclusive economy is also a better performing economy,” Economy Minister Conor Murphy, who attended the event, said.

Achieving EDI within a work environment is not an easy task, though, particularly for an SME like Exploristics. “You are constrained in some ways compared to bigger organizations, but you do it because you know you need to do it for the business,” Frances says.

But even larger organisations like NIE Networks, which has 1,600 employees and services over 910,000 customers around Northern Ireland a year, must work hard to meet its EDI targets. What if there is an imbalance of diversity within an organisation and a shortage of applicants for jobs to correct this position? EDI should be about changing perceptions outside an organisation as well as within it, believes Paula Leathem, head of human resources at NIE. “We try to focus on our outreach programmes and other initiatives.”

Exploristics and NIE Networks are both accredited by Diversity Mark, which recognises a business’s EDI commitments. “We ask organisations to develop their own targets and initiatives,” Christine White says. “Organisations receive detailed feedback from our panel of experts. If there is a particular area they want to focus on – for example, race or ethnicity – we introduce them to another organisation that are maybe five years down the line on their EDI journey. There is a lot of peer support for businesses involved.”

Diversity Mark recognises multiple areas of difference within work environments: ethnic background, age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, etc. Within Northern Ireland where manufacturing is a core industry the gender gap is a glaring issue and men outnumber women in STEM subjects by three to one. “Very few girls go on to study STEM related qualifications to the point of employment,” Christine says.

But that is changing. “Manufacturing companies predominantly [in the past] had men doing heavy work and heavy lifting but robotics and automation are changing that perception.”

Companies such as Exploristics are paving the way. At the biotechnology company, 56% of team members are women and 60% of those female members are at middle management level and above. “For us, it’s always about the right person for the role, regardless of gender,” Frances says. “We’ve tried to remove barriers and create opportunities for people to move into management positions that maybe didn’t exist before.”

NIE Networks has been “heavily involved” in promoting gender diversity for many years and won the Special Award for Diversity and Inclusion at the Department for Economy (DfE) Apprenticeship Awards 2023. “The Diversity Mark accreditation gave us a wider, broader structure to look at all the areas in relation to age, disability, gender, LGBTQ+, ethnicity.”

Diversity Mark accredited businesses create employee groups in order to forge a greater awareness around inclusivity. These might include groups for women in technology, LGBTQ+ colleagues, carers and mental health support teams. NIE Networks has a programme of policies aimed at promoting and safeguarding a fair and inclusive workplace and it has networks and initiatives to encourage staff.

NIE’s electricity themed resource groups include Spark Unity (an ethnicity group), Empowered Abilities (a disability group), Pride Connect (LGBTQ+) and Equal Energy (gender). These groups are not only about creating employee inclusion within a company, they can also help inform the direction a business is taking: changing policy, strategy, and improving operational performance.

Diversity Mark, as part of its accreditation process, examines EDI at different levels within a business. “Our assessors encourage organisations to identify any potential barriers [to diversity].

For example, there is often a stereotypical board composition made up of men of a certain age,” Christine White says. Research from McKinsey, a US consulting firm, suggests that organisations with diverse leadership teams are 39% “more likely to outperform based on profitability”. There is logic to this. “If we’re all robots and in the same mould [a business] is not going to work,” Paula Leathem of NIE Networks says. “You need innovation, different voices around the table and people that think differently.”

A culture of EDI allows a business to attract talent from a wider pool of candidates, according to its proponents. Andrew Mills, a statistician, says this is what attracted him to work at Exploristics.

“If there is a barrier to entry into a company, or if you feel that some kind of difference might impact how the company dictates your performance, why would you to want to work there?” Furthermore, if a client sees themselves reflected in an organisation then an EDI attitude can to better customer experience.

Diversity Mark does appear to be making an impact. Organisations that joined the programme have seen a 40% increase in women in leadership roles within their first 12 months. But there is a long road ahead. “We are seeing the dial moving in terms of the organisations on board but there are thousands more that don’t get it yet. Our next phase is to think about the SME market and support and enable them to go on this journey,” Christine White says.

At the recent Diversity Mark Summit, Tim Soutphommasane, head of EDI at Oxford University, talked about the political polarisation that has led to a backlash to EDI. Incidents of racial hatred in Northern Ireland during 2024 also harmed the region’s reputation. There is a social imperative to EDI within the workplace, believes Christine. “Workplaces are helping to bring about more understanding and empathy for those that maybe are newcomers to NI.”

Ultimately, EDI makes business sense. “It’s very clear that companies who have a diverse workforce are stronger,” Susan Walker, who leads the equality, diversity and inclusion strategy for Allstate in Northern Ireland, says. “They’re more resilient to market forces because they have a diverse group of people looking at the business. They’re more attuned to risk mitigation. When you have a group of like-minded people looking at a business in the same homogenous way, they don’t have the same readiness of resilience.”