Impact of a gender inclusive workplace on a marketing and brand communication business

• Pooja Jauhari, CEO, The Glitch writes how having an atmosphere of inclusivity and diverse teams with Glitch has helped take the agency where it is today.
• She firmly believes you cannot get success from putting similar people together, rather putting together different, courageous individuals can lead to simple, impactful, remarkable solutions.

Diversity is the key to everything. It impacts how we think, behave, feel and react. With this balance, we become aware and I read somewhere awareness is like the sun. When it shines on your mind, you are transformed.

So, my mantra for The Glitch has always been to do with confidence, learn for awareness and audit to self reflect. This clarity comes from our diversity. It comes from our different opinions, back stories, ambitions, motivations and it is all aligned to one thing - Our diversity is a great force towards creativity. This drives our cycle of self-realisation and constant growth.

Building a company isn’t for the weak of heart, especially when you so often don’t fit in a traditional box. This is where balance is required. You need different sets of people who through their shared and individual experiences can be resilient enough to move forward with confidence. I enjoy the company of people who don’t fit in a box or stay between the lines but whose integrity is greater than any rule book. When you put a diverse set of people together and celebrate their individuality, you create something that can last a lifetime.

I often say that any company that fails to harness the collective strength of diversity is setting itself up for a huge disadvantage in the new world. I’m so often in awe of the people who choose to work at Glitch. Now creativity is more than just being different and disruptive. Making simple awesomely simple, that’s creativity. That doesn’t come from putting together individuals that look, sound and behave the same. It comes from putting together different, courageous individuals and most of all, individuals with different opinions that choose to create opportunities for learning which leads to simple, impactful, remarkable solutions.

The biggest impact of diversity is its effect on the bottom line. When people across the organisation know that their gender, personal choices and preferences will not impact their growth, it breeds freedom and conscious confidence. Diversity is our engine to creativity and with that engine powering our supersonic train, we move with speed. We have stops, yes we do! People get in and get off, but the mission stays strong. It’s the combination of every single person that got on this hi-speed train at some point or the other that propels the engine to move forward.

Diversity helps more so when the world is in crisis. I recently read something about companies and crisis that stuck with me. 'Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, good companies survive them and great companies are improved by them'. With diversity, being great is easy. It’s easy to understand different life situations. It’s easy to be empathetic. It’s easy to allow each other to be weak and strong together. So, let’s strive to be great in this crisis. Leaders flourish in times of crisis. I have seen that in so many interactions with my colleagues over the last four months. Leaders across levels choosing to pick up and move forward.

What resonates with all of us is that being challenged in life is inevitable, but being defeated is optional and it’s a little easier to win when you have a unique diverse set of individuals by your side.