Managing diversity and inclusion (D&I) is an increasingly critical aspect of creating a successful organisation.

However, diversity should be part of a company’s DNA and values, not just a desire to demonstrate corporate responsibility or the need for legal compliance.

While many organisations acknowledge a social need to embrace D&I to create greater social justice, how many fully understand the business case for building a diverse and inclusive workplace? Too many organisations respond by simply ticking a box to meet targets that can then be used as evidence of progress.

Companies should think more deeply than this. Diversity improves the performance of an organisations as it means teams can draw on a wide range of perspectives to carve out a competitive advantage. Research has shown that diverse teams see a 60% improvement in the ability to make decisions. A workforce that prioritises D&I is also more likely to have higher retention rates, better employee engagement and the ability to attract top talent.

In this blog, we’re going to break down what diversity means in the workplace, why it’s important and what we’re doing at PagoNxt.

What is diversity in the workplace?

Diversity in the workplace refers to an organisation intentionally recruiting a workforce comprised of individuals with a range of characteristics. These characteristics include gender, religion, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, education and other attributes, ensuring all are well-represented within your company.

Inclusive organisations support employees, regardless of their background or circumstance, to thrive at work. To do this, they need to have processes in place to break down barriers to inclusion, and importantly, they need to value difference.

We’ve seen an increased discussion on the importance of diversity in the workplace, with scrutiny of companies that fall short of inclusivity or demonstrate a bias towards marginalised groups. Equality is not just a matter of the ‘right thing to do’ but is shown to be commercially sound.

What really matters, talking about D&I in the workplace, is that if those practices are indeed successful, they allow to let you bring your whole self to work.

Why is diversity important?

Diversity is key for business innovation, but the value of diversity in improving innovation is more explicit in the payments space. Without innovation, payments companies often fail to solve pressing payment problems with new services and solutions that could yield tremendous business success. As such, fostering innovation within a company is essential to not only developing a sustainable business plan, but maintaining market share in a fiercely competitive space too, and diversity is key to this.

A McKinsey and Company report on diversity and inclusion that surveyed over 1,000 companies found that the top quartile of companies in terms of gender diversity was 21% more likely to have above-average profits compared to the bottom quartile companies, demonstrating that more gender-diverse companies are more commercially successful.

It’s estimated that a quarter of all workers in developed countries will be over 55 by 2030, yet according to a study by Live Career, Older People & the Workplace, 69% surveyed considered over 50 to be old. Stereotypes surrounding age could negatively affect your business and the progression that is offered to those of varying ages in the workforce. A workforce comprised of different age demographics enables each generation to bring different skills and ideas to the table.

More than two thirds of jobs will require some post-high-school learning by 2027, yet diversity in educational backgrounds can spur innovation and provide a creative solution to an existing problem.

What we’re doing to achieve diversity at PagoNxt

PagoNxt’s success in being unique in scale, ambition, and technology assets means we’re well-positioned to become a leading player in payments. With over 70% of the employees being tech people, this can be attributed to our innovative products and services and the value that the business places on diversity. We break down the barriers to achieving equality and empower employees across the business. We recognise the importance of not only investing and prioritising diversity within payments, but establishing an environment that is welcoming, comfortable, and safe for all entering the field too.

Promoting diversity, however, is not just about hiring or giving more growth opportunities across the business, but also about the embedded culture in the organisation that makes it possible for maintaining a good work life balance and psychological safety. The pressure of juggling a demanding job while caring for children, for example, is one reason why we see fewer women in the workforce in more senior positions. At PagoNxt, we put a lot of effort into cultivating a culture where our employees have the needed flexibility in their work schedule to dedicate time to their families without having to sacrifice their career growth.

So, what practical steps can be taken to address inclusion? Leadership is key in this journey, real leaders need to understand how important is their role to make it happen and be part of the solution. They need to understand that attracting and, crucially, engaging diverse employees to senior positions is important for value creation within any business. Engagement can be achieved by promoting an inclusive work culture, ensuring there are equal promotion opportunities for all and offering training programmes to help employers, specifically hiring managers understand the importance of an inclusive environment.

Everything starts with the leaders, but people is the most important factor in D&I practices. At PagoNxt, we have a co-creating approach involving people from every country, every department, every area. This allows us to benefit from diverse points of views, letting employees be an active part of the change.

A relevant example is what happens in Getnet Brazil, where people have the chance to join affinity groups, fostering active participation in the construction and execution of actions promoting D&I. Currently we have five groups, focusing on women, diversity of graduations and generations, sexual orientation, black people or disabilities.

Another illustration would be the collaboration with Universia, in a project called CodeGirls. We directly hired 11 candidates form this initiative. This segment recruiting is relevant to break a legacy that sees more men applying to coding jobs.

Furthermore, last year we approved our Code of Conduct at PagoNxt, detailing a set of commitments sustaining our culture that allows us to act with high standards of ethics and integrity. Among those commitments it can be found those related to our people and particularly how we rise to equal opportunities, diversity and non-discrimination, whilst keeping at the core meritocracy and striving for equal pay (comparable pay for comparable work).

The most exciting part of D&I is that is a fast-evolving discipline that improve people’s life. This is why, at PagoNxt, we are always innovating on what we can do better to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace. Right now, we are busy working in recruiting initiatives, entry or career acceleration programs but this is only the beginning.

If, as an industry, we can agree that diversity matters, then we can begin to invest in and hire a more diverse workforce which can have a positive impact on business productivity, operational efficiency and performance.

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