How to Build a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce as a Small Business

It’s important for small businesses to hire a diverse workforce and foster an inclusive atmosphere as well if they want to maintain top talent. Equity is a virtue in and of itself, but research also shows that diverse teams lead to more innovation and higher employee satisfaction.

Although small businesses don’t have nearly the same resources as the multinationals, they’re actually better poised to make diversity and inclusion part of their culture from the ground up.

Start early

In some ways, small businesses are better poised to build more inclusive workforces if they commit to it early, according to Stefanie Johnson, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s business school who studies corporate diversity efforts and hiring biases.

“We tend to bring on or hire people who [we] know, who are in our circle,” Johnson said. “But as companies grow, they tend to replicate that and then it gets out of hand. At that point, it’s hard to move the needle on diversity.”

If you focus on diversity and inclusion early on, it’s more likely to be a core part of your company’s culture and it won’t be something you have to rush to fix later on.

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About the Author: DrStefanieKJohnson

Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson is an Associate Professor of Management at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. She holds a Ph.D. from Rice University and is particularly interested in the effects of unconscious biases in the evaluation of women and minorities, with the goal of finding ways to mitigate those biases. Dr. Johnson brings bias to light with an engaging and humorous approach to advanced scientific research, which has earned her numerous accolades and invitations to present her work at meetings around the world, including the White House for a 2016 summit on diversity in corporate America on National Equal Pay Day, and the 2016 Harvard Negotiation and Leadership Conference. She has published over 70 journal articles and book chapters in outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Applied Psychology and The Academy of Management Journal. She has extensive consulting experience and has created and delivered leadership-development training with an emphasis on evidence-based practice. In recognition of her unique research, Dr. Johnson has been awarded nearly three million dollars in external funding to study leadership and create leadership development programs aimed at increasing safety. Media outlets featuring her work include: The Economist, Newsweek, Time, and CNN. Stefanie lives in the Boulder Bubble in Colorado with her Biology Professor husband, two young kiddos, and two old kitties.