6 Diversity improves a company's talent pool because the outreach required to find diverse job candidates improves the hiring process. Some believe that in order to hire minority workers, through affirmative action, companies must lower their standards or grant preferential treatment. In fact, research by Harry J. Holzer and David Neumark 7 shows that companies that actively recruit women and minority workers search more widely and screen their candidates more intensively. Companies with diverse workforces can capitalize on those employees' differences by assigning tasks to different staff members based on their unique talents or perspectives. Diversity not only helps create good ideas, but it can help prevent companies from unwittingly offending potential customers or overlooking market opportunities.
Diversity is especially important for companies that do business overseas.
Employees with different values, cultures, and religious beliefs are more likely to appreciate the need to tailor products to foreign customers-not to assume they want or need the same products as Americans. In addition, many Latinos and other minorities are multilingual, a valuable skill in the global marketplace. While English has emerged as the de facto language of international business, customers naturally prefer doing business in their own language, when possible. So, more than ever, corporate America has a reason to care about diversity in the workplace. And, as a result, we must persuade corporate America to care about diversity in higher education.