Page 5 - All Inclusive

FACTS AND FIGURES
ALL INCLUSIVE
When talking about diversity and inclusion in the workplace, the majority of us think of policies that integrate people with disabilities, reduce the gender gap or avoid discrimination on the basis of race or beliefs. But the advantages of having a diverse workforce are not simply equitable, they form the very basis of successful and measurable outcomes.
In these times there are many reasons for promoting a more diverse society. We live in a globalised era, with shared issues that stretch across the world and affect a global workforce. As well as ethical and moral concerns, business leaders increasingly recognise that diversity is an important factor in their commercial success, an essential driver of innovation, and an important bridge to a wider number of the customers they serve.
In turn, this has driven a great deal of research into the characteristics of diversity and the development of tools that support inclusion and more cognitively balanced teams at work. Diversity comes in many forms. Some studies talk about four dimensions or layers (1), others group it into primary and secondary orientations (2) and define 34 unique diversity characteristics (3). The dynamic nature of diversity makes each dimension quite blurred, but still useful in understanding the links it has with the identity of an individual and how that evolves.
All human beings are born with their own unique characteristics, with identities that are shaped over time as a result of lived experiences, their interactions with other people, their ways of thinking and their beliefs. As a result, it can be useful to distinguish between inherent (or “demographic” (4)) characteristics which people are born with such as sex, race, family background, cognitive and physical abilities and so on, and acquired or experiential characteristics that are gained by experience, learning and interacting with people and society.
These might typically include characteristics such as personal development, ideology, ethics, skills and social roles. In between these two groups of characteristics, we might also add a third - cognitive diversity. This is defined as those which mark a difference between the inherent and the acquired, which manifest as the way we address challenges, our value systems, attitudes and learning and thinking styles.
The sum of these three dimensions of identity contain all of what makes every human being unique, and defines diversity as “the collective,
TYPES OF DIVERSITY
Characteristics gained through life experience
ACQUIRED
COGNITIVE DIVERSITY
FACTS AND FIGURES 5
INHERENT
Characteristics that define us at birth
Types of diversity
Data: elaborated from “The 3 Types of Diversity That Shape Our Identities", by Celia de Anca and Salvador Aragón, 2018.