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The Importance of Cognitively Diverse Teams and How to Build Them

We’re living in an era of globalization, technological transformations, and multicultural diversity. And it’s nothing new that these factors have had a significant impact on organizations, their strategic models, and the customer behaviors. To stay relevant in this highly inter-connected and competitive landscape, businesses are already embracing the new market dynamics. But what’s that one thing that most companies are overlooking? 

Read on to find out!

Businesses Are Embracing Diversity, but What Are They Missing? 

With diversity comes innovation, and it's no longer a secret. Research carried out by the Boston Consulting Group found that businesses with diversified management teams came up with more innovative ideas, resulting in 19% greater profitability than companies that don’t embrace diversity. 

But what kind of diversity are we really talking about? Are we implying that businesses should hire more people belonging to different religions, genders, cultures, and speaking different languages? Or are we talking about having a team of people who think and process ideas differently—a cognitively diverse team? 

Don’t get us wrong: Businesses that are working towards maintaining balance among different cultures and genders are doing great, and they must continue with their efforts. It's going to take 215 more years for us to finally reach gender-based income equality, as estimated by the World Economic Forum (WEF). 

But again, to stay ahead of the competition in the present disruptive market, businesses need to widen their horizons when it comes to diversity. They don’t just need different people in their teams; they need people who THINK differently.

Why Cognitive Diversity Is Everything Businesses Need These Days

Alison Reynolds and David Lewis stated in a 2017 Harvard Business Review (HBR):

"Lack of cognitive diversity has two impacts. First, it reduces the opportunity to strengthen the proposition with input from people who think differently. Second, it fails to represent the cognitive diversity of the employee population, reducing the impact of the initiatives."

Just like including all genders, cultures, and ages in the talent pool has helped businesses flourish and grow, different attitudes, ideas, and behaviors of employees—in short, cognitive diversity—can amplify the organizational performance and workforce productivity.

Intellectually diverse teams are more open toward embracing change and challenges. Their exchange of ideas and collaboration enables them to view challenges as opportunities and work accordingly. Review research by Deloitte Insights stated that diversity of thinking reduces risks by 30% and increases innovation by up to 20%.

To summarize it all, diversity can only be optimized if companies can provide a fair playing field to all their talented minds who can think in multi-dimensional ways.

If this inspired you to make your workforce cognitively diverse, get in touch with us! We’re an experienced commercial recruitment service that operates in 125 cities in the US and caters to disaster restoration jobs. We have been able to help 293 companies get their workforce! Trust us to help you make the right decision for your organization. For more information, call us at + 1 (888) 482-6019.