Leveraging on Diversity in Nigeria’s Workforce: Strategies for Inclusion and Equality

Nigeria is blessed with diversity. Diversity in Nigeria’s workplace ranges from socio-cultural differences, geographic, age, learning style, personality traits, gender, language, education, ethnicity, and religion among others. It is however incumbent on organizations that want to gain competitive advantage to widen their perspective on workplace diversity and diversity management. Management must consciously ensure that diversity management is part of its routine operations. However, DEI compliance in Nigeria’s workplace is worrisome. Organizations and government civil/public service discriminate in terms of recruitment, promotions and placements. It has become pronounced that to get employment in a number of organizations, it is now a matter of ‘who you know’, not necessarily ‘what you know or the qualifications and experience you possess’. This paper therefore studied workplace diversity in Nigeria, in a bid to propose strategies for promoting equality and inclusion. The researchers adopted historical and descriptive research methods; hence data were gathered from mostly secondary sources such as scholarly journal articles, and textbooks among others. The researchers’ workplace experiences were also brought to bear in this paper. It was discovered among others that Cox’s individual, group/intergroup as well as organizational levels of diversity hold swear in Nigeria’s workplace; only 35% of Nigeria’s leading companies have at least a tolerable level of diversity, equity and inclusion. A number of strategies recommended among others include; enacting a strong legal framework that governs DEI practices and compliance in the workplace; inclusive leadership and unconscious biases training; relationship building; flexible work model.