Adding Value to Project Management with DEI
Diversity and inclusion are essential to the success of any company in the global and modern marketplace, and those companies who have yet to step up their DEI measures are not doing themselves or their projects any favors.
In June 2020, the Project Management Institute (PMI) reported on the subject; their report, A Case For Diversity, found that a staggering 88% of the people they spoke to felt that a project team that was inclusive added value to their work when it was diversified into areas like experience, nationality, age, race, culture and even sexual orientation. Unfortunately, the report also found that around 27% of companies had suspended any diversity and inclusion initiatives that they might have been working on due to the pandemic.
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Diversity is a long way off
It is likely that you will have covered the issues of diversity, and the benefits of having a diverse and inclusive project management team, at least in part during any project management courses you or your team have undertaken. Whilst this may be something you would want to put into practice, the reality is that in fact, many organizations are still not as diverse as they could be.
There are relatively few females in certain fields which means that these teams are far less likely to be as diverse as they could be simply because there are not the individuals with the relevant skills to join them. It is important to remember that diversity does not simply mean selecting a diverse range of individuals for your project. They still need to possess the relevant skills to enable them to successfully complete your project.
Why are inclusion and diversity important to project management?
Diversity and inclusion are about more than just having a range of different people on your team. In fact, it is not just the right thing to do but rather the smart thing to do. At Parallel Project training, https://www.parallelprojecttraining.com they believe that companies who offer programming that is gender-based for example are likely to see higher performance figures amongst their employees, and where there is leadership that is culturally diverse an organization is more likely to see higher organisational performance.
The ideas of diversity and inclusion are not separate entities but rather ones that work together, whilst still being separate ideas. A good way of thinking of it is that diversity is the “what” and inclusion could be considered to be the “how”. When you add a wider range of individuals to your project management team it makes sense that you will be opening up the floor to a bigger number of ideas and concepts that will come from a number of different backgrounds.
This means that there is more potential for a clever and different way of looking at the project to be put forward – something that might make all the difference to project success. When you ensure that you are inclusive you can promote a culture within your workforce and also enable your diverse workforce to thrive and this means a happier workforce, a happier project team, and hopefully an even better outcome to your project.
