Soliciting diversity, Inclusion, and belonging in the workplace
Broadly speaking, the globe has gotten increasingly varied, but corporations haven't kept up, especially when it comes to creating an atmosphere that's both culturally diverse and gender balanced. To prepare for the uncertain future post-coronavirus, corporations must shift from compliance to diversity and reframe the notion of inclusion, diversity and belonging —for business revival, tenacity, and creativity — from conformity to inclusivity.
As industries strive to create a workplace that reflects current demographic trends, uniqueness, integration, and belonging are becoming increasingly important. Amid pandemics, corporates are exploring all best possible methods to maintain the consistency in business operations. Even for completely new recruits, diversity is now a key focus for most of the companies.
Diversity, inclusion, and belonging management are typically seen in large corporations, but in the face of a pandemic, it has become a requisite for all sizes of businesses to accept, particularly for local firms those find it difficult to compete with large corporations, and it becomes even more hard and expensive when companies seek talent from all these corporations.
In the current scenario, work-from-home culture has become the new normal for all of us, and it is in high demand. Employees are preferring those companies that provide permanent work from home or work till the pandemic is gone. Before the pandemics, companies showed little interest in strengthening their IT infrastructure so that they could provide employees with the option of working from home, which is now a need for firms to practice surviving in this global catastrophe. Small enterprises had no choice but to move forward with available solutions to practices to survive during this crisis. As soon as the pandemic hit, we saw a radical transformation in the hiring process in small firms. This is a proven fact that, Individuals of all gender identities, social backgrounds, traditional values, age, sexual preference, ethnicity, education, religion, faith, economic conditions, and disabilities can achieve their goals, aspirations, and passions due to diversity, inclusion, and belonging environment developed by organization.
Assessing the organization's needs can aid in D&I implementation. What is your current workforce, worldwide presence, product offering, who are your clients and what is their global presence, what industry do you belong to, and what kind of employee-benefits policy can you bring to the workplace in managing a varied workforce etc. Before introducing such events in an organization, the HR leader must have a clear vision and objective. Implementation of D&I is decided based on varied workforce. So, identification of your workforce strength matters before initiating.
If an organization is focusing on equal women participation, then policies and benefits related to women should be included in the organization, such as maternity leave, menstrual policy, leave, reimbursement for fertility treatment, creches on the premises, surrogacy policies, POSH committee, and transportation facility for late night shift or those women who work in night shift, restricted holidays for festival like Karrwa Chauth, etc. A recent report by diversity and inclusion company, Avtar Group says that diversity hiring in 2020 has gone up this year by 32 per cent as opposed to 23 per cent last year. The report also states that average representation of women in its list of 100 best companies for women has gone up from 33 per cent in 2019 to 34 per cent in 2020 (it was 25 per cent in 2016). Women representation on boards of companies has also increased to 27 per cent. Women are a talent pool, but they were the hardest hit by the pandemic because they must balance work and home life. They couldn't go to work because of their social responsibilities and other obligations, but the DI&B event has made an incredible contribution in bringing women from their homes to offices through hybrid working cultures or permanent work from home environments. These benefits, as well as policies that promote women's equality, will build a sense of belonging and acceptance. A well-defined talent acquisition policy is the first step in putting a diversity plan into action. This will assist you in determining what types of diversity aspects should be considered when planning manpower. For example, in the IT industry, where work from home is common due to the nature of the job, the talent team can hire anyone with good skills, whether it's a female employee wishing to return to work after maternity leave, a person with a disability, or even someone from another state.
To put it another way, when we travel to a new location that is not our home state, we look for indigenous food to help us acclimate to the new culture. Similarly, when people of diverse genders, races, sexual orientations, ethnicities, religions, faiths, and economic backgrounds join our company, it is our primary duty as an organization to create a workplace culture that fosters a sense of belonging for everyone. For example, if you have a team member from Maharashtra who works for a company based in the north, they will feel included if the Ganesh Chaturthi festival is included in the holiday list, regardless of whether it is RH. When an employee's workplace embraces those festivals in the office, and the entire team participates equally and celebrates, it creates a sense of inclusion and belonging .
To summarize, practicing diversity opens the door to success for any organisation, large or small, because it brings a diversified thought pattern on the floor, fresh concepts, and people from various work exposures may help organisations to revive, which is especially important in the face of pandemics; as an organisation, you learn about other industries through new hires' work experience; Multigenerational workforces are a fusion of experience and agility; these processes can help you manage your stakeholders and clients while also instilling a sense of belonging. If DI&B is implemented properly, it could be the answer to all of the industry's significant issues in this pandemic.