The idea of workplace diversity gets a lot of support while, too often, the actual actions needed to create a diverse workforce do not. Why? Because of a question people may feel nervous about asking: Why are we doing this?

It’s understandable that people would be hesitant about asking this. It could easily be misunderstood as an objection to diversity when in fact it is a question that can and should be asked about any initiative, product, or service that grows within a business.

There are a lot of assumptions about diversity that actually obscure the answer to the question of why it matters. Those assumptions — and they aren’t incorrect — focus on issues of fairness and equality. Those are, in business terms, “soft issues” and people don’t always see them as directly bearing on the bottom-line needs of business. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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