By Julie Moran and Mark Albrecht
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The workplace is filled with studies affirming that companies who create and maintain a diverse work force are more likely to out-perform competitors by 30-40 percent. Multicultural teams bring a robust set of diverse thinking and creative ideas that become the spark for innovation. Diversity and a culture of inclusion provide a competitive advantage. Although many companies advertise that they are equal opportunity employers, when you look deeper, how successful are they at following through on this commitment? Are they attracting diverse talent but then failing to retain and promote them to managerial and executive positions? An outflow of diverse high performing employees is tremendously costly to an organization.
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The leadership at Orlans, which is certified by WBENC as 100 percent women owned have long recognized what a recent McKinsey study concluded: diversity (and inclusion) is not a mathematical equation or a check the box exercise, it is a culture change. Orlans has made tremendous progress in recent years in increasing the diversity of our more than 500 employees: 73 percent are women; 20 percent are minorities, and more than 60 percent of our attorneys are female. We have done so by employing specific strategies to recruit and develop diverse talent.
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