Diversity challenge: why organizations need to invest in diversity programs

Despite affirmative action and increased focus on increasing diversity and inclusion initiatives (D&I) progress has been slow. Gender diversity at senior levels in most MNCs across the world still remains at a dismal single digit. While it’s a complex issue, paying greater attention to unconscious bias, role-diversity and acceptance will help generate further momentum and create true meritocracy in organizations.
Unconscious bias is due to our limited cognitive capacity. This results on us relying heavily on our automatic, error prone system to make unconscious associations. This means that when we see Indian male engineers, our brains learn that engineers are Indian and male. But when we suddenly come across something that challenges our unconscious association, a Japanese, female engineer, for example, it will be unsettling and we are likely to form an unconscious bias against it. Without keeping this unconscious bias in check and educating employees as part of D&I, you are putting your recruiting, compensation & benefit strategies and performance management processes at risk.
Role diversity is about ensuring key roles within the organisations can be done by a range of different candidates successfully. If not paid attention to as part of D&I, you run the risk of creating roles that are biased towards a narrow population. Take a traditional Senior Deliver Manager role in the IT services industry based in India. To be successful requires managing multiple time zones, putting in long hours and extensive travel because of the unpredictable nature of the role and client escalations. This role is set up to be more suitable for male candidates because of dominant social norms that require women to take on additional family responsibility which limits their mobility and time in the office. While I’ll agree traditional norms are slowly changing, proactive job reengineering to include job sharing, flexi-time strategies would help better attract and retain diverse talent at key life stages.
Celebrating individual differences and working hard to build teams with members who have complimentary skill sets as well as differences, rather than expecting people to change and conform will allow the true benefits of diversity to be realized. But let’s be honest, working with people who are different from us is hard work. Haven’t you secretly wished someone was more this or that (direct, sociable, risk taking, etc.) to make the working relationship easier. Unconsciously we seek homogeneity.
But like it or not we work and live in a world full of differences. A world that is increasingly connected and rich with diversity. As professor Devdutt summarizes beautifully: diversity inconveniences others. While homogeneity leads to greater efficiency (e.g., one language, one religion, one currency in idealized nation states) but it also results in loss of identity and effectiveness. For example, mandating one language can lead to conflict and misunderstanding for non-native speakers. This is why danger signs are the most effective when offered in many languages. Its effectiveness could be a matter of life or death.
Devdutt argues that we should focus on the things that bring us together and move away from things that tear us apart. Rather see diversity like a garden that is secure, controlled, safe and manageable, where the gardener decides what should bloom or get thrown out, we need to see diversity like a forest, which is unpredictable and frightening, and promotes survival of the fittest yet which plays no favourites and is a true meritocracy. Let’s hope organizations continue to invest and push for greater diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
