As I walked from my car into the office today, I took note of the various stickers on the back windows of people’s cars and saw everything from a pink ribboned “F*ck Cancer” to “Get Outside.” I noted the different license plate designs on the cars in the lot, from “Protect Our Pollinators” to “Ski Country USA’” I paused and looked around for a moment, taking in the variety of vehicle types from take-up-two-spaces trucks to tiny cars that plug in. In that moment, a thought came to mind along the lines of, “Diversity should never be a word that connotes negativity. Period.”
Diversity is a critical ingredient for innovation, productivity, problem solving, and decision-making. Diversity promotes tolerance, understanding, perspective, employee engagement, and intellectual curiosity. Diversity enables us to better serve our communities and members who represent all walks of life, backgrounds, experiences, and cultures.
Plus, when diversity is combined with fostering a sense of belonging, our organizations thrive. Diversity combined with belonging means happier teams, and happier teams mean happier members—which ultimately creates stronger communities. In other words, together diversity + belonging drive better business results* as well as social impact, and both are keenly important for our industry. After all, as credit unions, our mission and cooperative finance model are rooted in social impact.
A little over two months ago I was fielding questions from staff and other credit union leaders about whether we planned to continue our investment in employee resource groups and executing our strategy to foster belonging. While it broke my heart that these questions were being asked, my (and our organization’s) response was an emphatic yes.
In these uncertain times, and by uncertain I mean uncertainty with DEI initiatives, I implore us as an industry to continue to live out and lean into our 8th Cooperative Principle. This somewhat recently recognized principle focusing on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion posits that cooperatives are stronger when everyone is included and underscores our need to be proactive in building and serving diverse communities.
Diversity is a beautiful mosaic (of stickers, cars, beliefs, people and places), not something to shy away from. Together we have the power to make a difference in our communities but only if we stay true to who we are.
*Literally every piece of respected research (e.g., see here) on the topic of diversity says simply that diverse teams are good for business.
