3 reasons you should be hiring women
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or leading the hiring process at a huge corporation, the benefits of hiring women can positively impact almost every aspect of your business.
As women leave the work force to care for family members, efforts to hire and retain women in the workplace are ramping up across all industries, particularly in tech jobs. In the U.S., this means a results-driven approach for many businesses. “We look for meaningful and practical metrics to measure the success of each of our diversity initiatives. For example, we have goals for representation of women,” says Deborah Dagit, chief diversity officer at Merck, in a Society for Human Resource Management report.
Gender diversity in the workplace is not just good for public relations, it’s good for business.
The reasons for diversity initiatives vary from business to business, but many companies don’t realize that diversity hiring is not just good for increasing minority representation – it’s also good for business.
Here are three benefits to hiring more women in your workplace:
1. Financial growth and results
If you want to grow your business and make more money, you need to have some women on staff and, better yet, in leadership roles. A McKinsey study in 2017 found that companies with above-average gender diversity earn 21% more than companies with low levels of gender diversity in the same industry. This same study shows that when women are in revenue-generating roles, they contribute to higher profitability for the company. Yet women are still underrepresented in these kinds of roles across the board.
2. Future-proofing your company
One of the intangible benefits of gender diversity for an organization is the diversity in opinion and experience that comes with more women in the workplace. These varying opinions lead to improvement in decision-making and innovation.
“To be a high-performance organization, companies need to encourage innovation at all levels of the workforce: there are always better ways to do the job. Improving gender diversity is one tool for achieving this,” says Rachel Combret, talent and development manager at Anglo American Copper.
This attitude is borne out by research. A study by The Boston Group found that companies with diverse executive teams make more money from innovative products and services. They are also more likely to find disruptive innovation in their products or services. Gender diversity in particular contributed to innovation revenue of 34% for companies with a higher number of women managers. Companies with few women managers saw just 25% of revenue come from new, innovation products or services.
3. Improving employee engagement
“Employee engagement” is a phrase that many people use interchangeably with “employee satisfaction” or “employee happiness”. However, employee engagement is defined by the Society for Human Resource Management as encompassing 3 key parts of employee behavior:
- Employees show physical energy while completing their work.
- Employees are emotionally connected to their work and feel inspired by what they do.
- Employees are fully immersed in their work and forget about everything else.
Gender diversity can lead to increased levels of employee engagement. A study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that employees at organizations with higher percentages of women were more likely to feel satisfied with their job, dedicated to the organization and that their work is meaningful. These results applied to all employees, not just women.
Gender diversity in the workplace is not just good for public relations, it’s good for business. Hiring more women, particularly in leadership roles, should be a target for all businesses that want to increase their profitability, invest in innovation and improve employee engagement.
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