By Kay Du Fernandez,Konica Minolta – I’ve written before about diversity in the workplace and am proud to see strides taken within Konica Minolta to ensure that our people, and our community not only accept all people for who they are – in gender, in race, in age and in creative thought – but also recognize the important role that different thought leadership plays into our overall success.
Diversity Makes a Difference
A Forbes article on this subject (coined “inclusive decision making”) highlights better business performance with teams that incorporate variety in age, gender and geography. In a study that analyzed 600 business decisions made by 200 different business teams over two years’ time, they found the following differences:
- Inclusive teams make better business decisions up to 87 percent of the time.
- Teams that follow an inclusive process make decisions two times faster with half the meetings.
- Decisions made and executed by diverse teams delivered 60 percent better results.[i]
Upward Movement at Konica Minolta
A few years ago, we launched our internal Step Forward program, which provides support for upward movement in a corporate environment. It started in March of 2015 and we are entering our 4th year. Step Forward provides the tools, motivation and inspiration to help employees navigate on their individual journeys to success. The program is open to all employees, entry level to senior executives, millennials to baby boomers, and men make up 40% of the audience.
Monthly lunch meetings are held and we bring in speakers to talk about various topics to help the employees develop professionally and personally. Out of a Ramsey campus of 500 employees, we regularly get between 100 and 120 employees at these meetings. We also share these presentations via video on our Step Forward Jam intranet site to reach over 7,000 of our employees nationwide.
Measures of Success…
