Reach new customers
Your customers are diverse; your workforce should be too. Without people from the global majority, gender diverse, neurodivergent and disabled people in your boardrooms, you’re missing representation of key demographics that are looking to purchase your products or services. Having black, brown and asian employees, supervisors and managers, gender diverse folk, as well as those with lived experience of neurodivergence and disabilities means that you have professionals who can help you understand how to reach all of your customers.
Increase innovation
Having employees, supervisors and managers that think differently to you is essential for expanding your business. According to the Neurodiversity in Business: Research Report 2024, neurodivergent strengths include creativity, visual reasoning, hyperfocus, detail processing, innovation, critical thinking and analysis, systems thinking, and crisis management. Having people of the global majority in your boardroom also results in ‘a wide, much higher quality of debate’.
Financial growth
Increasing representation in your boardrooms and offices also promotes financial growth. According to recent research, ‘Companies with the greatest proportion of women on executive committees earned a 47 percent higher rate of return on equity than companies with no women executives.’
The World Economic Forum characterises the lack of disabled representation within businesses as, ‘a representation crisis…56% [of disabled consumers] regularly encounter inaccessible communications across all media.’ Without disabled and neurodivergent representation, businesses risk their communications being inaccessible to a significant proportion of their customers, resulting in missed marketing and sales.
Make a commitment to diversity and inclusion within your business
If you’re ready to make a commitment to diversity and inclusion, improve your business practices and attract new talent to your team, take a look at the following opportunities.
The Race at Work Charter is, ‘a public commitment by businesses to improve equality of opportunity, created in response to the Race in the Workplace: The McGregor-Smith Review on workplace disparities. It has recently been reset with a new commitment to support NEET young people (18–24) from ethnically diverse and lower socio-economic backgrounds, helping to open pathways into good work.’
By signing the Race at Work Charter, your business is committing to, ‘supporting young people’s pathways into good work and enterprise, to capture ethnicity data and publicise progress, to commit at board level to zero tolerance of harassment and bullying, for managers to ensure fair access to opportunities and development, to support career progression for ethnically diverse employees, progress employees from allyship to solidarity, and include diverse-led businesses in supply chains.’
Neurodiversity in Business is a UK charity, with the goal of improving conditions for neurodivergent people in employment. Businesses can become a member of NiB, and in doing so get support in building neuroinclusive workspaces, attend monthly workshops (both online and in person) and share good industry practices to support neurodivergent individuals to excel within your business. NiB also has a resource hub, where businesses can get information about specific neurodivergent experiences from experts and specialist organisations, and hosts the UK’s largest neurodiversity conference.
The Times Top 50 Employers (TT50) for Gender Equality is, ‘...the UK’s most highly profiled and well-established listing of employers taking action to create workplaces where everyone, regardless of gender, can thrive.’ Businesses that enter the TT50 will have their current policies reviewed by specialist advisors, as well as receive advice on how to improve their staff recruitment, retention policies and their overall approach to gender equality. You can apply for the Times Top 50 Employers for Gender Equality 2026 on the Business in the Community website.
