Diversity was selected as a best practice area since changing demographics make it more important to select, retain and manage a diverse workforce. According to the IPMA/NASPE Benchmarking Committee, “diversity efforts in the workplace facilitate the exchange of new perspectives, improve problem solving by inviting different ideas, and create a respectful, accepting work environment, all of which make good business sense.”
In the book Beyond Race and Gender, R. Roosevelt Thomas defined managing diversity as “a comprehensive managerial process for developing an environment that works for all employees.” The key for employers is to make diversity an asset within the organization. Diversity is different from affirmative action since affirmative action is the framework for a diversity management program. Diversity management has been described as looking at:
1) The mind set of an organization;
2) The climate of an organization
3) The different perspectives people bring to an organization due to race, workplace styles, disabilities, and other differences.
Benefits of diversity management
Diversity management strategies can help to create a link between the internal and external aspects of the work of an organization. Whilst each organization needs to work out its own priorities, these benefits can include:
• Attracting, recruiting and retaining people from a wide “talent” base.
• Reducing the costs of labour turnover and absenteeism.
• Contributing to employee flexibility and responsiveness.
• Building employee commitment, morale and “discretionary effort”.
• Managing better the impact of globalization and technological change.
• Enhancing creativity and innovation.
• Improving knowledge of how to operate in different cultures.
• Improving the understanding of the needs of current customers or clients.
• Improving knowledge about the needs of new customers and clients.
• Assisting in the development of new products, services and marketing strategies.
• Enhancing the organization’s reputation and image with external stakeholders.
• Creating opportunities for disadvantaged groups and building social cohesion.
Challenges of diversity management
Taking full advantage of the benefits of diversity in the workplace is not without its challenges. Some of those challenges are:
• Staff speaking different languages.
• Resistance to working with members of other ethnic, racial or cultural groups.
• Discriminatory remarks due to differences in accents, ethnics or races.
• Prejudice in promotion, rewards and compensation, performance appraisal as a result of differences in background or races.
The above-mentioned factors require development of larger repertoire of managerial skills and strategies to be able to manage. Thus, Human Resources practitioners should take cognizance of the fact that Diversity Management should involve planning, developing and managing human resources while acknowledging and appreciating the similarities and differences all employees bring to the work environment.
Therefore, Human Resources practitioners should be able to create a positive environment, promote personal and professional development, empower all employees in the organization to reach their optimum potential, attract talents and ensuring the removal of barriers that sabotage productivity.
Making it happen
Managing diversity is a journey, not simply a project!
But there are some key areas you need to consider:
• Engage and enlist the help of top leadership.
• Identify and acknowledge the kinds of diversity that are important.
• Work with different stakeholders to understand your own “business case”.
• Communicate what you are doing to employees, customers, clients, investors, funders etc.
• Make sure that people know what diversity means to them and their work.
• Review the impact of your diversity management strategy.
• Develop policies and practices that reflect and implement your commitment to managing diversity.
• Build the support and trust from people inside and outside the organization.
• Learn from others and benchmark what you are doing.
• Diversity training can help an organization’s management and staff increases their awareness and understanding of diversity as well as help them develop concrete skills to assist them in communicating and increasing productivity.
• Include diversity objectives in job descriptions and appraisal systems and recognize and reward achievement.
Above all, make diversity management a living part of your organization!
Survey: Taking the Pulse: Diversity and Inclusion (by Kevin Oakes, CEO of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp, December 2008)
The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), asked more than 200 companies about their focus on diversity and inclusion. The result: A majority of those companies lack any kind of focus on diversity and inclusion.
With talent management all the rage today, it would be natural to assume companies recognize that diversity and inclusion have a direct impact on critical talent issues.
To find out what is happening with diversity, i4cp asked companies to respond to a few core questions:
What infrastructure is in place for diversity and inclusion strategy and efforts in your organization?
Does your organization have a chief diversity officer? If so, to whom does the officer report?
How are leaders held accountable for driving diversity?
What are the roles of diversity "teams" in your organization, and what practices do you use to integrate diversity and inclusion?
Does your organization have a global diversity strategy, and if so, what are its key elements?
The survey, titled "Taking the Pulse: Diversity and Inclusion," led to four key lessons about diversity and inclusion.
Lesson 1: Most companies do not have a robust "diversity infrastructure." And size does matter.
Larger organizations are more likely to have an infrastructure in place to support diversity initiatives. Infrastructure in this instance means training programs, diversity councils, affinity groups and diversity consultants.
The first big finding was the lack of focus companies have on providing diversity training. More than half of the companies surveyed simply don't do it. However, as companies increase in size, so does the likelihood they offer diversity training. Seventy-five percent of organizations with more than 10,000 employees offer some type of training.
Size also mattered when it came to sponsoring diversity councils and affinity groups. Just 34 percent of all companies said they have diversity councils in place to provide feedback on issues such as race, gender and sexual orientation, though more than two-thirds of larger companies said they have this today. This was the same for affinity groups: Less than a quarter (23 percent) of all companies have affinity groups in place to support minorities, but 61 percent of large organizations do.
Lesson 2: Few companies have a head of diversity.
While the title chief diversity officer has grown in popularity during the past few years, today, a full 68 percent of the companies surveyed do not have a dedicated head of diversity. Ninety-five percent of organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees don't have a chief diversity officer, compared to 63 percent of employers of more than 10,000 workers.
Reporting relationships were somewhat enlightening. When a chief diversity officer is in place, that individual usually reports to the head of human resources (68 percent). However, almost a quarter of respondents (23 percent) said the chief diversity officer reports to the CEO. That kind of visibility can make diversity a priority in an organization.
The diversity buck hardly stops at the CEO's desk. Just 31 percent of companies overall said their CEOs are subject to annual diversity reviews, and only 23 percent of companies overall report that diversity-related results are tied to compensation. Almost 20 percent of companies admit their leaders are simply not held accountable for driving diversity.
Lesson 3: To the degree they exist, organizational diversity teams focus on strategy and training. When diversity teams are in place, they can have a significant impact on how effective diversity and inclusion efforts are in an organization. The first task of a diversity team often is to develop the organization's diversity strategy. Of the surveyed companies that have diversity teams, 39 percent said the teams' primary role is to develop diversity strategies.
When asked which strategies these teams use to integrate diversity and inclusion initiatives, 49 percent said they put education programs in place. Nearly a third (32 percent) implement corporate diversity councils. More than a quarter focus on the top: 27 percent use annual CEO diversity reviews to improve efforts in their organizations.
As before, the larger the company is, the more widespread the use of training on diversity. Seventy-three percent of large companies report using education programs to support diversity initiatives, compared with 44 percent in companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.
Lesson 4: The majority of companies do not have a global diversity strategy.
Finally, there is a lack of focus on diversity at most companies - 65 percent of companies do not have a worldwide diversity strategy. However, of companies that do, program support revolves around several core areas such as periodic reviews, training initiatives and communication.
MANAGING DIVERSITY: INDIA
India companies are the riding crest of the wave of success and progress. India has emerged as the second fastest growing major economy in the world. The diversity in Indian industry spanning core sectors to information technology and service oriented industries which is very much the part of this growth story.
In the context of LPG model (Liberalization, Globalization and Privatization) adopted by India in 1992 during the regime of Narshima Rao has opened the door for world economies to trade with India. Thus India companies have to tackle marketing challenges at a nationwide level by adapting to different languages, market preferences effectively and workers from diverse cultures yet at the same time considering India as homogeneous market for optimizing on scale.
Diversity is more evident in case of mergers and acquisitions. India Inc had 92 mergers and acquisitions across the world. The Indian corporations shall encounter diversity at various levels i.e. at individual , organization , national and global level and success will come to those corporations in which leadership is able manage the challenges of diversity at each level in an integrated manner.
Challenges for Indian Inc.
A plethora of factors which contributes to diversity for India Inc are listed below:
Language. Race, gender, attitudes, skills, motivation, internationalization and strategic orientation issue, organization structure issues, organization structure and size, ownership, recruitment and retention , work culture, corporate communication, culture dynamics, political environment, macroeconomic forces, legal framework, public administration, communications, ethics, competitive advantage of the nations, geographical time zones, climate differences, geopolitical factors, demographic factors etc.
The aforementioned factors can be classified into three categories of diversity:
• Workforce diversity
• Diversity in market
• Stakeholder diversity
Workforce diversity: employees of India are becoming increasingly heterogonous and with the passing of days diversity is going to be important issues for HR manager for the following reasons:
• Large number of women joining the workforce.
• Workforce mobility is increasing.
• Young workers in the workforce increasing
• International career and expatriates becoming common
• Ethnic minorities' proportion constantly in the total work-force is increasing.
• Necessity of international experience is felt for career progression to many top-level managerial positions
Diversity in market: India is a large country with 29 states and 6 union territories. Linguistically speaking, it has a variety of languages, dialects, and cultures due to which the companies have to plan special marketing techniques including multicultural marketing to build and maintain a strong customer base. Also the Indian companies are targeting foreign countries and the culture of customers in those markets is also diverse. Thus here comes the need for the global manager.
Stakeholder diversity: Stakeholder diversity In the Indian context workforce diversity is the most dominant. Moreover as companies go global, managing diverse clients becomes another hurdle. Vendor rating and selection procedure should be carefully done to choose the right vendor from a diverse list of domestic and foreign vendors.
Managing diversity in Indian companies
The following approaches can help managers of India Inc to manage diversity and yield benefits.
• Managing diversity in India Inc should start from the individual level. Before moving for mergers and acquisitions the organization should prepare a master plan for recruiting and training people so that they can meet the needs of diversity management.
• Cultural training should be provided to the required managers of both the firms.
• Restructuring of the management structure should be well planned. International orientation of Indian Business needs to be improved. It is advisable not to view corporate strategy as secondary to daily operations, but to consider it as focus area. The vision, mission and values of the two merging organizations require alignment to have clarity on the core objective and purpose of the Indian Multinational and the way the objectives are to be achieved.
• Indian companies have management personnel and Board of Directors mostly comprising of only Indian nationals. It may be worth considering other nationals for different international perspectives.
• Women‘s share of employment is steadily increasing in Indian organizations. Companies should recruit according to the required male-female ratio for the suitable job. Issues concerning women employees including sexual harassments, night shift allocations etc should be taken care of. For example: Infosys the biggest Indian IT company have employees from over 70 countries. Women constitute more than 32% of workforce. Infosys Women Inclusivity Network (IWIN) recognizes the unique aspirations and needs of women and provides avenues for vocational, personal and psychological counsel to enable professional and personal development.
• Mentoring programs should be arranged by senior managers to identify promising women employees and play an important role in nurturing their career progress.
• The global Indian manager is challenged to retain the essence of the brand and message across diverse markets across different countries, while customizing the form, for effectively communicating the message. Indian managers should be trained and preconditioned to face these situations.
• A diversity manager has got a good role in the Indian context of managing diversity. He can really churn diversity to bring the hidden power out of it. He should coordinate diversity training programs at different levels and generate new programs to manage stakeholder diversities.
• Thus in all the facts, diversity helps an Indian manager to be equipped with all arrows in the arsenal to face any global situations.
Conclusion
In nutshell, Diversity means to create a cultural and social ambiance that is inclusive and empowers all groups in the corporation and it is an on-going process which enables executives, managers, and the workforce to become world citizens- persons who are able to transcend their own racial/ethnic, gender, cultural and socio-political reality and identify with humankind throughout the world, at all levels of human need. They are thus a transcending people who know no boundaries, and whose operating life-principle is compassion.
In the book Beyond Race and Gender, R. Roosevelt Thomas defined managing diversity as “a comprehensive managerial process for developing an environment that works for all employees.” The key for employers is to make diversity an asset within the organization. Diversity is different from affirmative action since affirmative action is the framework for a diversity management program. Diversity management has been described as looking at:
1) The mind set of an organization;
2) The climate of an organization
3) The different perspectives people bring to an organization due to race, workplace styles, disabilities, and other differences.
Benefits of diversity management
Diversity management strategies can help to create a link between the internal and external aspects of the work of an organization. Whilst each organization needs to work out its own priorities, these benefits can include:
• Attracting, recruiting and retaining people from a wide “talent” base.
• Reducing the costs of labour turnover and absenteeism.
• Contributing to employee flexibility and responsiveness.
• Building employee commitment, morale and “discretionary effort”.
• Managing better the impact of globalization and technological change.
• Enhancing creativity and innovation.
• Improving knowledge of how to operate in different cultures.
• Improving the understanding of the needs of current customers or clients.
• Improving knowledge about the needs of new customers and clients.
• Assisting in the development of new products, services and marketing strategies.
• Enhancing the organization’s reputation and image with external stakeholders.
• Creating opportunities for disadvantaged groups and building social cohesion.
Challenges of diversity management
Taking full advantage of the benefits of diversity in the workplace is not without its challenges. Some of those challenges are:
• Staff speaking different languages.
• Resistance to working with members of other ethnic, racial or cultural groups.
• Discriminatory remarks due to differences in accents, ethnics or races.
• Prejudice in promotion, rewards and compensation, performance appraisal as a result of differences in background or races.
The above-mentioned factors require development of larger repertoire of managerial skills and strategies to be able to manage. Thus, Human Resources practitioners should take cognizance of the fact that Diversity Management should involve planning, developing and managing human resources while acknowledging and appreciating the similarities and differences all employees bring to the work environment.
Therefore, Human Resources practitioners should be able to create a positive environment, promote personal and professional development, empower all employees in the organization to reach their optimum potential, attract talents and ensuring the removal of barriers that sabotage productivity.
Making it happen
Managing diversity is a journey, not simply a project!
But there are some key areas you need to consider:
• Engage and enlist the help of top leadership.
• Identify and acknowledge the kinds of diversity that are important.
• Work with different stakeholders to understand your own “business case”.
• Communicate what you are doing to employees, customers, clients, investors, funders etc.
• Make sure that people know what diversity means to them and their work.
• Review the impact of your diversity management strategy.
• Develop policies and practices that reflect and implement your commitment to managing diversity.
• Build the support and trust from people inside and outside the organization.
• Learn from others and benchmark what you are doing.
• Diversity training can help an organization’s management and staff increases their awareness and understanding of diversity as well as help them develop concrete skills to assist them in communicating and increasing productivity.
• Include diversity objectives in job descriptions and appraisal systems and recognize and reward achievement.
Above all, make diversity management a living part of your organization!
Survey: Taking the Pulse: Diversity and Inclusion (by Kevin Oakes, CEO of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp, December 2008)
The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), asked more than 200 companies about their focus on diversity and inclusion. The result: A majority of those companies lack any kind of focus on diversity and inclusion.
With talent management all the rage today, it would be natural to assume companies recognize that diversity and inclusion have a direct impact on critical talent issues.
To find out what is happening with diversity, i4cp asked companies to respond to a few core questions:
What infrastructure is in place for diversity and inclusion strategy and efforts in your organization?
Does your organization have a chief diversity officer? If so, to whom does the officer report?
How are leaders held accountable for driving diversity?
What are the roles of diversity "teams" in your organization, and what practices do you use to integrate diversity and inclusion?
Does your organization have a global diversity strategy, and if so, what are its key elements?
The survey, titled "Taking the Pulse: Diversity and Inclusion," led to four key lessons about diversity and inclusion.
Lesson 1: Most companies do not have a robust "diversity infrastructure." And size does matter.
Larger organizations are more likely to have an infrastructure in place to support diversity initiatives. Infrastructure in this instance means training programs, diversity councils, affinity groups and diversity consultants.
The first big finding was the lack of focus companies have on providing diversity training. More than half of the companies surveyed simply don't do it. However, as companies increase in size, so does the likelihood they offer diversity training. Seventy-five percent of organizations with more than 10,000 employees offer some type of training.
Size also mattered when it came to sponsoring diversity councils and affinity groups. Just 34 percent of all companies said they have diversity councils in place to provide feedback on issues such as race, gender and sexual orientation, though more than two-thirds of larger companies said they have this today. This was the same for affinity groups: Less than a quarter (23 percent) of all companies have affinity groups in place to support minorities, but 61 percent of large organizations do.
Lesson 2: Few companies have a head of diversity.
While the title chief diversity officer has grown in popularity during the past few years, today, a full 68 percent of the companies surveyed do not have a dedicated head of diversity. Ninety-five percent of organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees don't have a chief diversity officer, compared to 63 percent of employers of more than 10,000 workers.
Reporting relationships were somewhat enlightening. When a chief diversity officer is in place, that individual usually reports to the head of human resources (68 percent). However, almost a quarter of respondents (23 percent) said the chief diversity officer reports to the CEO. That kind of visibility can make diversity a priority in an organization.
The diversity buck hardly stops at the CEO's desk. Just 31 percent of companies overall said their CEOs are subject to annual diversity reviews, and only 23 percent of companies overall report that diversity-related results are tied to compensation. Almost 20 percent of companies admit their leaders are simply not held accountable for driving diversity.
Lesson 3: To the degree they exist, organizational diversity teams focus on strategy and training. When diversity teams are in place, they can have a significant impact on how effective diversity and inclusion efforts are in an organization. The first task of a diversity team often is to develop the organization's diversity strategy. Of the surveyed companies that have diversity teams, 39 percent said the teams' primary role is to develop diversity strategies.
When asked which strategies these teams use to integrate diversity and inclusion initiatives, 49 percent said they put education programs in place. Nearly a third (32 percent) implement corporate diversity councils. More than a quarter focus on the top: 27 percent use annual CEO diversity reviews to improve efforts in their organizations.
As before, the larger the company is, the more widespread the use of training on diversity. Seventy-three percent of large companies report using education programs to support diversity initiatives, compared with 44 percent in companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.
Lesson 4: The majority of companies do not have a global diversity strategy.
Finally, there is a lack of focus on diversity at most companies - 65 percent of companies do not have a worldwide diversity strategy. However, of companies that do, program support revolves around several core areas such as periodic reviews, training initiatives and communication.
MANAGING DIVERSITY: INDIA
India companies are the riding crest of the wave of success and progress. India has emerged as the second fastest growing major economy in the world. The diversity in Indian industry spanning core sectors to information technology and service oriented industries which is very much the part of this growth story.
In the context of LPG model (Liberalization, Globalization and Privatization) adopted by India in 1992 during the regime of Narshima Rao has opened the door for world economies to trade with India. Thus India companies have to tackle marketing challenges at a nationwide level by adapting to different languages, market preferences effectively and workers from diverse cultures yet at the same time considering India as homogeneous market for optimizing on scale.
Diversity is more evident in case of mergers and acquisitions. India Inc had 92 mergers and acquisitions across the world. The Indian corporations shall encounter diversity at various levels i.e. at individual , organization , national and global level and success will come to those corporations in which leadership is able manage the challenges of diversity at each level in an integrated manner.
Challenges for Indian Inc.
A plethora of factors which contributes to diversity for India Inc are listed below:
Language. Race, gender, attitudes, skills, motivation, internationalization and strategic orientation issue, organization structure issues, organization structure and size, ownership, recruitment and retention , work culture, corporate communication, culture dynamics, political environment, macroeconomic forces, legal framework, public administration, communications, ethics, competitive advantage of the nations, geographical time zones, climate differences, geopolitical factors, demographic factors etc.
The aforementioned factors can be classified into three categories of diversity:
• Workforce diversity
• Diversity in market
• Stakeholder diversity
Workforce diversity: employees of India are becoming increasingly heterogonous and with the passing of days diversity is going to be important issues for HR manager for the following reasons:
• Large number of women joining the workforce.
• Workforce mobility is increasing.
• Young workers in the workforce increasing
• International career and expatriates becoming common
• Ethnic minorities' proportion constantly in the total work-force is increasing.
• Necessity of international experience is felt for career progression to many top-level managerial positions
Diversity in market: India is a large country with 29 states and 6 union territories. Linguistically speaking, it has a variety of languages, dialects, and cultures due to which the companies have to plan special marketing techniques including multicultural marketing to build and maintain a strong customer base. Also the Indian companies are targeting foreign countries and the culture of customers in those markets is also diverse. Thus here comes the need for the global manager.
Stakeholder diversity: Stakeholder diversity In the Indian context workforce diversity is the most dominant. Moreover as companies go global, managing diverse clients becomes another hurdle. Vendor rating and selection procedure should be carefully done to choose the right vendor from a diverse list of domestic and foreign vendors.
Managing diversity in Indian companies
The following approaches can help managers of India Inc to manage diversity and yield benefits.
• Managing diversity in India Inc should start from the individual level. Before moving for mergers and acquisitions the organization should prepare a master plan for recruiting and training people so that they can meet the needs of diversity management.
• Cultural training should be provided to the required managers of both the firms.
• Restructuring of the management structure should be well planned. International orientation of Indian Business needs to be improved. It is advisable not to view corporate strategy as secondary to daily operations, but to consider it as focus area. The vision, mission and values of the two merging organizations require alignment to have clarity on the core objective and purpose of the Indian Multinational and the way the objectives are to be achieved.
• Indian companies have management personnel and Board of Directors mostly comprising of only Indian nationals. It may be worth considering other nationals for different international perspectives.
• Women‘s share of employment is steadily increasing in Indian organizations. Companies should recruit according to the required male-female ratio for the suitable job. Issues concerning women employees including sexual harassments, night shift allocations etc should be taken care of. For example: Infosys the biggest Indian IT company have employees from over 70 countries. Women constitute more than 32% of workforce. Infosys Women Inclusivity Network (IWIN) recognizes the unique aspirations and needs of women and provides avenues for vocational, personal and psychological counsel to enable professional and personal development.
• Mentoring programs should be arranged by senior managers to identify promising women employees and play an important role in nurturing their career progress.
• The global Indian manager is challenged to retain the essence of the brand and message across diverse markets across different countries, while customizing the form, for effectively communicating the message. Indian managers should be trained and preconditioned to face these situations.
• A diversity manager has got a good role in the Indian context of managing diversity. He can really churn diversity to bring the hidden power out of it. He should coordinate diversity training programs at different levels and generate new programs to manage stakeholder diversities.
• Thus in all the facts, diversity helps an Indian manager to be equipped with all arrows in the arsenal to face any global situations.
Conclusion
In nutshell, Diversity means to create a cultural and social ambiance that is inclusive and empowers all groups in the corporation and it is an on-going process which enables executives, managers, and the workforce to become world citizens- persons who are able to transcend their own racial/ethnic, gender, cultural and socio-political reality and identify with humankind throughout the world, at all levels of human need. They are thus a transcending people who know no boundaries, and whose operating life-principle is compassion.
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