What is Needed to Create a Supportive Work Environment?

What should we do to make our company a better place to work? Bloomberg is known as being at the forefront in creating a positive work environment, and during his visit to Japan, we sat down for a conversation with the company’s chairman, Peter Grauer.

Yuko Nakamura: As Japan confronts the issues of an aging population, low birth rate and labor shortage, the importance of diversity is now being recognized in terms of leveraging the capabilities of women in society and in corporations. Many companies are now undertaking diversity initiatives, but why is diversity important in the first place?

Peter Grauer: If you are trying to solve a problem and you bring in four men with the same background, you are only going to get the same kind of ideas for the solution. On the other hand, if you ask four people of different backgrounds, cultures and gender to solve the problem, you will get a number of ideas coming from different perspectives. This is very important in the management of a company – good decision making as a result of incorporating diverse perspectives – and it leads to strong financial performance and results.

In many markets, it is women who make purchasing decisions. So when product development and sales are done only by men, this could result in misplaced assumptions [about what customers want]. The fact that involving women in corporate decision making is effective has been demonstrated clearly in America by Macy’s department store and Estee Lauder cosmetics company. In both companies, women make up more than half the executive team.

These days, the world’s investors favor companies that practice diversity and increasingly companies that do not are being discounted as investment targets. Increasingly, it is believed that companies that do not pursue diversity are behind the times, and that they will not achieve growth and their share price will not increase.

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