Buffer is a global company with both the opportunity and the responsibility to bring a variety of cultures, backgrounds, life experiences and perspectives to our work in order to truly represent our customers.

There are 3 main reasons that any business can and should focus on diversity:

• It makes teams more innovative
• It builds better products
• It’s the right thing to do

Let’s look at each one in a bit more detail.

Diversity benefit #1: Creative, innovative, happier teams

Research shows that socially diverse groups (those with a diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) are more innovative than homogeneous groups.

• People with different backgrounds bring unique information and experiences to tasks
• Interacting with individuals who are different forces group members to prepare better, anticipate alternative viewpoints and expect that reaching consensus will take effort.
• Diversity encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving.

Prof. Ron Burt of the University of Chicago conducted an empirical study indicating that people with more diverse sources of information generate consistently better ideas:

This data is borne out in the results of studies of diverse teams.

• Racially diverse teams outperform non-diverse ones by 35%
• Another study showed that companies with women in top leadership roles are more profitable.

A focus on diversity also brings in more candidates: In a recent Glassdoor survey, two-thirds of the people polled said that diversity was important to them when evaluating companies and job offers. Deloitte found that 80 percent of employees say that inclusion is an important factor in choosing an employer.