Diversity in the workplace is essential to business success, Channel 4’s diversity executive, former MP and current member of the House of Lords, Baroness Oona King says.

At last night’s lecture hosted by NABS, an organisation dedicated to the enhancement of the advertising profession, King discussed diversity, recruitment and corporate leadership.

Hiring practices that reflect Britain’s multiethnic and mutlifaceted workforce should be encouraged. But, crucially, “It has to be linked to the business case and the bottom line,” King says.  Research by McKinsey says companies that are gender diverse are 15% more likely to outperform the competition and companies that are ethnically diverse are 35% more likely to do so.

But hiring practices need not follow the active discrimination route – hiring people from different backgrounds simply because of that difference. King says the development of diverse talent is a way to work toward a more diverse business. It takes longer, but apprenticeship schemes, mentoring and training courses will prepare those outside of the standard recruitment pool to better compete for jobs.

For the creative industries, this is especially important as creativity relies on thinking differently and coming up with new ideas. King says a diverse workforce will have a greater breadth of experiences upon which to draw. “We are the industry that determines how people think,” she says. Thus, communicators should be diverse and should consider their campaigns from more than one perspective at the outset to avoid unintentionally excluding or alienating groups like ethnic minorities, women or the LGBT community. Channel 4 has long had diverse programming and working toward a more diverse workforce. The broadcaster's successes helped win it the right to air the Paralympic Games which ended up being the most successful programming in the history of Channel 4.

This impacts leadership too. King describes the adaptive leadership model as one that will allow a company to be most successful in the long run – much like an adaptive species can thrive even when circumstances related to climate or habitat change. “Having a future or not having a future is the finest of lines,” she says, and leaders are empowered to make a company adaptable enough to ensure it has a future.

The leader must also support the move to a more diverse workforce. However, once the entry-level barriers are overcome, keeping people of diverse backgrounds in a company is a huge challenge. “We haven’t concentrated on mid-career progression,” King says, pointing out that in the creative industries and in the media people are often expected to work for free or without a full salary. Those from less advantaged backgrounds may be unable to do so. Those diverse recruits should also be trained in the cultural norms of the industry and be encouraged, via mentoring or other support systems, to develop their careers.

But this problem is largely hidden, King says and companies should first understand that it exists. Channel 4, she says, now has a social mobility agenda that seeks to encourage this mid-career progression. King says companies should ask, “Are you an inadvertent middle class theocracy?”

For communications professionals, the mid-career progression issue is most prevalent with women who return to the workforce after having children. Numerous studies point to the business success of organisations that support returnee mums. “We think we’ve dealt with it because we have maternity policies,” King says. She says the definition of success for women with careers needs to change. “Do women have to become men to succeed? [Should they be] forced to give up on a family or not have one?”

The event was part of the NABS Tuesday Club Talks series. The next event takes place on 3 November.