Many folks spent the weekend of February 28th binge-watching Netflix’s House of Cards. This season saw Frank Underwood on the campaign trail facing off for the nomination against two female candidates. If you haven’t seen the show, it’s a riveting narrative about political powerhouses. With Hillary Clinton widely expected to be the Democratic nominee in the upcoming 2016 election, I started reflecting a bit about diversity in the workplace and corporate boardrooms specifically.

While it may not surprise you, women still make up less than one-fifth, or 19.2%, of board members at companies in the S&P 500.  It is worth noting that strides have been made (back in 2009, 18 percent of new corporate board members were women; last year, it was 29 percent), but these statistics show we have a ways to go when it comes to diversity in the boardroom.

But it’s not just gender that affects workplaces. There’s a great article in the December 2014 issue of HR magazine about hidden biases that HR professionals must be careful to avoid. Most of the time when thinking of biases, people consider skin color, gender and age, but as the article points out, individuals can harbor unconscious prejudice about a lot of different characteristics, including:

  • Height and weight
  • Introversion and extroversion
  • Marital and parental status
  • Disability status
  • Foreign accents
  • Where someone attended college
  • Hobbies or extracurricular activities

Diversity in the workforce is something we have to be careful about not only from a liability standpoint, but from a business outcome as well. What’s the business outcome of limited diversity? A study by McKinsey & Company found that the return on equity for organizations with the most diverse boards was 53 percent higher than those that were the least diverse.

So not only is greater diversity in the boardroom the right thing to do, it could make your organization more money! Recently, I was at an event where executive coach Mary Holt spoke about her firm’s commitment to raising the number of female executives from 20 to 30 percent over the coming year, these types of endeavors are what is needed across business landscapes.

For Frank Underwood, we’re going to have to wait until the next season to see if he survives the challenge from a female political foe, but for now, take a look at your own organization and your hiring practices to ensure you’re placing an emphasis on diversity in your workforce.