Want to maximize your competitive advantage? Access new markets? Groom a competitive workforce? Make smarter decisions? Outperform your competitor and “Do the right thing?” Think Diversity. It’s not just a numbers game. “Inclusion programs” aim to tap workforce talents across gender, race, age, disabilities and sexual orientation.
What’s driving the push toward inclusion? Economic and demographic changes, market forces and some good old-fashioned government intervention.
The link between workplace diversity and superior financial performance appears to be more than coincidental. And it appears to be one that multifamily should pay attention to. In this section, AP leads the industry’s first-ever look at diversity in multifamily, its impact and its relevance.
- 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies and 36 percent of companies at large have diversity programs.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects that women and minorities will represent about 70 percent of net new entrants to the workforce by 2008.
- Fully 81 percent of large companies have some form of diversity program, and half of the large companies surveyed have full-time staff dedicated to diversity initiatives, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Fortune magazine.
- A study by Michigan State University, Texas A&M University and the University of Notre Dame found that companies with the most minorities and women on their boards had shareholder returns 21 percent higher than companies with no minority or female directors.
