Shift Happens: Why lack of employee diversity can hurt your company and how you can address it

Businesses pushing the same old excuses for having an overly homogeneous workforce can expect to find themselves in the minority

You’re the CEO of a large company. At a Zoom meeting, you realize that none of the participants are Black, Indigenous or people of colour. You raise this with HR, which says that they simply never field resumés from qualified minorities. What do you do? 

A caveat: two things here (should) stretch credulity. The first is that it took a Zoom meeting for the CEO to figure out that, when it comes to the colours in the company Crayola box, they’re missing a whole bunch of the darker shades. Second, a flippant response from an HR manager about workplace diversity would likely be rare today.

But it’s not as if the above scenario didn’t—or doesn’t—happen. And let’s face it: for years, the “lack of qualified minority applicants” trope was the go-to for companies that resisted diversity. Today, this won’t cut it.

Anthony Ariganello, CEO of CPHR Canada, provides insight in this article. Click here to read more.