Why Rietta Appreciates Diversity

As a company, Rietta likes ideas, products, services, procedures and practices that have been shown to be effective at making us better at security, stronger developers, and more efficient at delivering quality services. We like industry best-practices. We have an appreciation of evidence-based peer-reviewed studies, and like many organizations, we allow quality studies and information inform our policies and procedures. This helps us to serve our clients' needs with excellence, and to help us to continually improve and evolve. One of our practices is to embrace workplace diversity and strategically develop and foster an inclusive and diverse work environment.

Rietta recognizes that our understanding of diversity is one of its strengths. For Rietta, diversity includes legally protected status differences in ethnicity, gender, sexual-orientation, age and ability. But we also know that diversity is more than that. “Diversity also refers to the unique life-experiences and backgrounds that make people who they are - and how this affects their work, especially as a team” [1].

Diversity could mean hiring developers from many backgrounds, including those who:

• are self-taught,
• graduated from an Ivy-league university,
• were previously a stay-at-home-mom then attended a bootcamp,
• have decades of experience,
• were born in another country, with a different religion than the rest of the team,
• or have one or more legally protected statuses.

In a nutshell, workplace diversity is about bringing together people with different perspectives and viewpoints, from all walks of life, both culturally and professionally. We aren’t just being broad-minded; we are deliberately choosing diversity in our company because we feel diversity fosters excellence. We want to be the best company we possibly can be, and our hiring policies reflect this. Why do we feel this way about diversity? The answer is simple. Diverse teams perform better and report greater job satisfaction.

Harvard built a study to test speed of problem solving. They’ve shown that teams that are cognitively diverse solve problems faster than less diverse teams[2], and one researcher in the aforementioned study noted that “people like to fit in, so they are cautious about sticking their necks out. When we have a strong, homogeneous culture, we stifle the natural cognitive diversity in groups through the pressure to conform”[3].

Diversity in the workplace boosts business. In a report by McKinsey, the top 25% of companies have 33% more ethnic diversity than the bottom 25% of companies[4]. Studies show that those companies that most embrace and encourage diversity in their hiring and management practices are more innovative[5], perform better[3], have a 35% better EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) rate and a 33% higher creation of long-term value than the least diverse companies[6].

Companies whose employees feel their employer values diversity and builds inclusivity enjoy an 83% higher ability to innovate than companies without those policies and culture[7], have an easier time hiring and retaining talent[3], and have a more reputable brand identity[3]. In short, Rietta knows when inclusion is the goal, and diversity is more than empty stat-seeking, diversity and inclusion policies make a measurable and clear difference in performance, innovation, and profitability.

References

1. Sinclair-Jones, Julia. (2018). Bulletproof Arguments For Diversity in the Workplace. Retrieved 2021-06-01.
2. Reynolds, Alice & Lewis, David. (2017). Teams Solve Problems Faster When They’re More Cognitively Diverse . Retrieved 2021-06-01.
3. Chignell, Barry. (2018). Five reasons why diversity and inclusion at work matters. Retrieved 2021-06-01. 4.Hunt, Vivian; Prince, Sara; Dixon-Fyle, Sundiatu; Yee, Lareina. (2018). Delivering through Diversity. Retrieved 2021-06-01.
4. Forbes. Global Diversity and Inclusion: Fostering Innovation Through a Diverse Workforce. Retrieved 2021-06-01.
5. Myers, Jack. (2020). Opinion: The numbers don’t lie: Diverse workforces make businesses more money. Retrieved 2021-06-01.
6. Deloitte. (2013). Waiter, is that inclusion in my soup? A new recipe to improve business performance. Retrieved 2021-06-01.