Over the past decade much attention has been paid to the concept of diversity in the workplace. Over recent years we have seen companies come to recognise that a company lacking diversity is most likely to be impaired in its' ability to innovate.
The research is very clear. In order to foster an innovative culture within an enterprise, a key enabler is having a diverse range of people who think differently and come up with different ways of solving problems and challenges.
In a series of attempts to make our work environments more diverse, the corporate environment has tended towards focusing on areas of inequity based on gender, sexuality and some are even starting to tackle "ageism". We have Women in Technology groups to support gender balance in the workforce. In some cases, the approach has been to actively discriminate in favour of particular demographics over others.
In parallel to this, more and more attention is being paid to encouraging people to take up more Science, Technology, Engineering and M