Making Diversity Delicious

Diversity in the workplace is not only necessary it must be delicious, that’s right delicious for everyone involved. When you think about the word delicious, what comes to mind? You might be thinking of food or your favorite dessert. When I think of delicious, I think of something that is so good you can’t get enough of it. The word delicious brings up feelings of anticipation, stimulation of the senses, satisfaction and fulfillment.

I believe organizations, companies and business must be delicious in diversity. The million dollar question is “do you run or manage a delicious company?” Is your organizational climate delicious?

If you are unsure check out the questions below to see how your organization measures up:

1. Do you have people of color (women in particular) lining up to work for you?

2. Are you able to retain employees of color at a high rate (because you make them feel good about working for you)?

3. Do your employees of color tell you or demonstrate they absolutely love working for you and your company?

4. Is your organizational climate so good that people (all people) love and savor the idea of diversity?

5. Do your employees of color give you the impression they anticipate coming to work for you, feel emotionally stimulated in your work environment, and or that they are satisfied and fulfilled by working for your company?

If you can not answer yes to these questions you may want to consider discovering why and then do something about it.

When a company or organization is “delicious” the following is true: (from the Catriceology Lifestyle of Delicious WomanTM)

• A delicious business is one with services and products so irresistible people are lining up to work for you and telling the world how sweet it is to work for you. It means that your teams and leaders are like honey and everything they do attracts the bees of prosperity equaling getting the best employees, more sales, more clients and simply more of the bottom line.
• When businesses and organizations are delicious, people crave what you have to offer, they anticipate doing business with you and can’t wait to buy from you again.
• Delicious organizations have a social reputation that attracts the best candidates and an internal climate that keeps them there.

Delicious in diversity must take it a step further. Why? Often times people of color are the only or one of few in many companies. That in and of itself can be souring to the psychological palate. Many people of color I know, have not felt their workplaces were delicious and in fact thought just the opposite. Over the past 13 years I have observed and know for sure that people of color leave “good” jobs because the social climate of the organization is does not fully embrace diversity and instead send a clear message they are are obligated to make it work. These people I know did not anticipate going to work but instead dreaded going because of the company’s failure to create an inclusive work environment that “feels good” to people of color.

Organizations MUST do more than hire people of color, they have to figure out how to keep them there. The goal is to make the ennvironment and the leaders “delicious”, so good people of color will want to work there, refuse to go anywhere else and tell everyone they know “your company is the most delicious place to work!”

If companies and organizations want to hire and retain the best talent and keep people of color interested, engaged and empowered they must work to become delicious! Simply put organizations have to walk the walk and the diversity/inclusion vision must be clearly articulated from the top down. There must be a consistent, ongoing and conscious effort from leaders and employees to ensure that all staff are respected and valued. I can’t imagine why a company or organization would not want to be delicious and have people of color lining up to work for them.

The question for organizations is: What is your plan to make diversity delicious for your company/organization?

By Catrice Jackson