Dive Brief:
- New research finds that Americans believe the most important initiative companies can undertake is investing in their employees through training and growth opportunities, followed by recruiting and talent retention.
- Those surveyed for "Finn Futures," an initiative of Finn Partners, a communications agency, also ranked diversity and inclusion programs last in importance – regardless of the surveyed person's race or ethnic background.
- For example, non-white Americans say investing in employees, providing flexible work environments and recruitment was at the top in terms of importance, while diversity programs ranked near the bottom of the list provided in the survey.
Dive Insight:
Among the six workplace initiatives tested, fully one third (33%) rank investing in employees first; over half (55%) rank it in the top two.
Christopher Lawrence, Finn Partners director of research, says the lower ranking of diversity programs seems to "fly in the face" of what people believe to know about the value of diversity to businesses' bottom lines. But the fact that this ranking is consistent across all demographic groups may indicate that these programs themselves are not seen as immediately beneficial to individual workers who are hyper-focused on career growth and trajectory.
In short, according to the survey, all employees place greater value on training and investment – essentially, color-blind programs that benefit all employees, regardless of gender, age or race – for concrete, personal importance.
