For rapidly growing global teams, such as in the financial technology sector, diversity and inclusivity are welcomed as beneficial without question. But, emphasises Anja Ellegaard Dahl, chief people and product officer at Inpay, it’s vital to establish a strong workplace culture throughout the business that maintains company values.
Working across a distributed set-up, with employees dispersed across the globe, can make it difficult to build a cohesive culture. If you add rapid growth to the equation, aligning a team to common processes and goals can present an even bigger challenge. A successful approach to building a business that can overcome these growing pains should focus on two key aspects – leveraging diversity and maintaining a unified work culture.
Leveraging diversity
Building a diverse pipeline of talent is crucial to maintaining a competitive advantage. Research shows that more inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders in their markets. Diverse teams also perform better – recent figures from McKinsey show companies in the top quartile of ethnic representation showed a 39% increased likelihood of outperformance versus those in the bottom quartile.
At Inpay, we have a global workforce comprised of over 45 different nationalities. Even in our Copenhagen headquarters, 70% of employees are non-Danes. Building diverse teams has a direct positive impact on our performance as a business, as well as our ability to attract and retain the best people. Diversity in our team means different perspectives which inspire innovative thinking and reflection. A culturally diverse team is also a culturally aware team, which is crucial for navigating customer relations with our global clientele.
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In addition to diversity in nationality, businesses should also embrace and champion age diversity. We now find ourselves with five generations in the workplace at once, a first in modern history.
HR professionals may subsequently have to navigate issues such as age-related stereotypes and misunderstandings. To tackle these, it is essential to encourage mutual learning and understanding among teams.
This could include HR delivering workshops teaching employees about age bias in the workplace. For example, negative stereotypes about older employees as technologically incompetent and stubborn can have serious consequences on their experience at work, such as not being offered training opportunities.
Only 8% of companies consider age to be part of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy. This disappointing statistic should spur HR professionals to place age firmly on their company’s DEI agenda, with policies and recommendations on addressing biases affecting certain age groups.
A combination of seasoned professionals and younger talent in the workplace offers a mix of experience and fresh perspectives. The OECD has also highlighted that an age-diverse team helps a business thrive, as there’s less chance a sizeable part of the team stops working at the same time due to common life events for a certain age bracket, like the birth of a child. Research also suggests more age-diverse companies are more resistant to shock factors, such as the Covid pandemic. Therefore, harnessing the benefits of age diversity should be a priority for HR professionals looking to help their companies thrive.
Unified work culture
HR professionals play a vital role in fostering internal communication where hybrid working is the norm. This is essential in building camaraderie among colleagues scattered across the world. One clear way to do this is to encourage teams to adopt collaboration tools for project management and online communication.
Adopting well-defined values is also essential in creating a corporate culture that can maintain cohesion, even in periods of rapid company growth. At Inpay, we’ve committed to maintaining a strong startup culture, even as we scale up, as it helps us retain a sense of community.
During our pre-boarding process, we introduce new hires to our people-led values, which include trust, accountability, respect and passion.
We also promote teamwork by organising in-person work events such as offsite gatherings in Sweden and quarterly planning sessions for product and development in Denmark; and social events, such as team-building walking trips in Morocco. We’ve found that getting out of the office and connecting in a new environment, especially surrounded by nature, helps massively in strengthening cohesion in our team as it encourages meaningful exchanges and bonding. For rapidly growing teams, off-sites and trips also help employees see the big picture and feel they are an integral part of a larger community and mission, rather than a mere cog in the machine.
Any rapidly growing business must take diversity seriously if it is to truly thrive in an increasingly interconnected world. Fostering teamwork and promoting core values that inspire colleagues and create unity is both fundamental to leveraging diversity – this is clearly where HR professionals can make all the difference.
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