Stuart Nathan

Last week's poll: Diversity

Opinion

The desire to ensure that companies in the engineering sector employ people of diverse genders, sexualities, social background, religion and ethnic origin continues to be a hot topic. 

Rainbow diversity

A total of 465 of you responded to last week’s poll, which asked whether diversity is important in the workplace.

Results show that 62 per cent of respondents thought competence to do the job a more pressing issue than an individual’s social background, gender, sexuality, religion or ethnic origin.

Just over a fifth of the vote saw 10 per cent agreeing that diversity is a social imperative and that companies should do their bit to ensure that all employees work in an environment where they can contribute and flourish, whilst 11 per cent agreed that diverse groups bring different viewpoints to problem solving and therefore make the workplace more creative.

A round 10 per cent actually thought diversity to counterproductive, believing instead that people from a similar background work better together.

Furthermore, only two per cent on the poll’s respondents thought that diversity makes the workplace a more pleasant place to be. Five per cent of you didn’t agree with any of the options presented, so why not tell us what you really think below.

Workplace diversity