Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, the Three Pillars of Modern Businesses
Dr.Saundarya Rajesh‘s social enterprise, Avtar Group, is India’s only organization that provides both strategy and implementation solutions in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Dr.Saundarya’s work in the space of gender diversity & inclusion in the workplace is unparalleled in India. Not only is she among the earliest and most impactful voices on gender inclusion, through Avtar she has also helped hundreds of companies hire thousands of women professionals.
An inspiring speaker, an author, and a sought-after DEI strategist in India and International forums, Dr.Saundarya’s journey towards creating inclusive and equitable workplaces is inspirational. She aspires to continue helping organizations, communities and societies harness the true power of diversity!
The Start
During the initial years of Avtar, I found that organizations were hesitant, uncomfortable, and reluctant to hire women who were on career breaks. It was in the mid-90s, when the liberalization, privatization, and globalization movement were sweeping across India. The government had opened up the Indian economy as many new businesses were being set up. Organizations were vying with each other to hire people from different talent pool. I realized this was a problem that plagued just a few women professionals but almost 48% of women in India. The Corporate India did not know how to handle CVs from women professionals who were returning to their careers post a break because of compelling familial reasons. I call this the butterfly effect. I wanted to challenge the status quo and make sure that Indian corporates realize that women who have taken breaks from careers could indeed make a good bet. We, at Avtar wanted to inject the much-needed oxygen for increasing women’s workforce participation called the “Flexibility” in Indian organizations. We wanted companies to move from being just hirers or employers but be talent magnets for the lakhs and lakhs of women professionals raring to contribute to the country’s GDP!
From the corporates’ perspective, organizations must embrace the concepts of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion to develop this fantastic quality called “Empathy”. When empathy is in place, you start thinking about equity. Equity then creates enablers. The three aspects of diversity – consciously hiring different people; building equity that is creating customized enablers; and Inclusion that is embedding empathy within the organization wherein everyone feels included and belonged.
Does diversity, equity, or inclusion contribute to business growth?
Here is where diversity helps. Diversity is about bringing together very different people, with each having their way of problem-solving, approaching challenges, getting motivated, and spending money and time. With inclusion you bring that empathy as the excellent glue that smoothens the edges of these very different people. You can have a workplace that embodies diversity, equity, and inclusion, which helps you solve problems better, innovate and come together as a high-performing organization. So, organizations have experienced all three benefits. Companies with DEI strategies in place have innovated better, have better profits, top line, and customer satisfaction.
How Big should be the DEI efforts?
Recently, an MD of one of the large multinational brands’ that has successfully increased the DEI ratio in the workplace, asked me a few pertinent questions. Is it sufficient for an organization to be alone on an island of inclusion? Is it enough of the big organizations wholeheartedly accept diversity, equity, and inclusion and see the business benefits? This is an organization that has great gender balance and excellent employee engagement showing business results.
Now, we have been talking about Diversity for more than 20 years in India. If an organization like that of the one I mentioned above were to insist that suppliers, vendors, and distributors also practiced the tenets of DEI, then you are building an entire ecosystem of organizations comprising small, micro small and big ones establishing the business, talent, and culture cases of DEI. Indeed, it takes effort, but these organizations have established a business case and talent case, culture for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And they have also proved that it is possible to create careers for the under-represented talent pool and make inclusion a very successful business practice. So now, they must become mentors, to all smaller organizations in their respective ecosystem, then businesses are indeed good. In fact, at Avtar we recently launched a nation-wide initiative #BusinessisGood, a corporate mentoring program wherein frontrunners of inclusion will support the new entrants into the DEI journey. Through this program, larger role-model organizations will be able offer their support to smaller businesses within their sphere of influence in understanding the nuances of DEI as a growth influencer.
Supplier and Customer Diversity
In many large organizations, we always find big business deals or purchases contracts. For instance, if you're this large corporate, you would have a lot of usages for, let's say, stationery. You will typically go to a particular stationery supplier who has been supplying for a long time to you, and they would give you the best rates. That relationship continues. While this works well, except that there is an inherent danger that you are not building the community around your needs, but you're only providing business to just that one favoured supplier. big corporates with lots of purchasing power should start engaging with different underrepresented groups in terms of suppliers. It could be a woman-owned business or a queer group-owned business. Or it could be a business that a person with a disability owns. You are helping the community rise to their fullest potential, providing them with business opportunities they would never have had before. Through the #Businessisgood initiative, we are aiming to focus on not one organization, but encompass a larger community by bringing in supplier diversity.
Impact of increased DEI focus, on company’s growth – business and talent
The last year’s Avtar & Seramount annual DEI analytical study, Best Companies for Women in India and Most Inclusive Companies Index (BCWI-MICI) BCWI reveals that companies invested in DEI see tangible results:
• 62% of the companies recorded an increase in operating profit
• 73% of the companies recorded improved innovation
• 81% of the companies reported an increase in customer satisfaction
These are clear business and talent cases for DEI focus by any company. Diversity has led to improved productivity, customer satisfaction and innovation. Studies also show that DEI focus gives the companies an added advantage over companies that do not have a DEI focus.
Tier II and III Cities – A Large Piece of the Talent Pie
A satellite office in these spots would be ideal to attract talent from these cities. While women’s entry into the workforce is smooth, marriage makes them drop out because they follow their spouses to cities of their work. So, when a woman may relocate in the entry level, the same is not sustainable when she gets married to a person in another city. The talent in such cities could be women who have relocated with their spouses but are unable to find an equal opportunity in another field. Satellite offices enable to place them in suitable roles, and this is increasingly being explored by many companies.
Remote hiring is another route, which helps a lot of women to pursue careers without contemplating dropping out of the workforce due to many factors. The report, ‘Women, careers, and marriage: Evolving dynamics in India Inc. in the post COVID world’ by Avtar released in March 2021 surveyed 11 cities including tier-2 cities like Jaipur, Ranchi, Ahmedabad, and Kochi. It found out that 76% of women applying for jobs from the non-metros were married women, indicating not only significant growth in the career aspiration levels of women in these locations but also greater familial enablement in terms of women pursuing their career aspirations.
Greater innovation and creativity
There is a strong talent case for DEI because a diverse workforce comprising genders, age groups, generations etc. can lead to increased creativity and offer a wide scope for innovation. In a rapidly changing environment and ever-evolving world, larger representation of the talent from diverse backgrounds will be the answer to address the complex challenges that businesses face today. For innovation and creativity – gender agnostic – to thrive in an organization, inclusivity must be embedded in the organization’s DNA. When leaders exhibit traits of diversity, their teams out-perform and out-innovate others. Deep level diversity can also help give a granular understanding of human behaviour making it necessary for teams generating ideas to be diverse.
An inspiring speaker, an author, and a sought-after DEI strategist in India and International forums, Dr.Saundarya’s journey towards creating inclusive and equitable workplaces is inspirational. She aspires to continue helping organizations, communities and societies harness the true power of diversity!
The Start
During the initial years of Avtar, I found that organizations were hesitant, uncomfortable, and reluctant to hire women who were on career breaks. It was in the mid-90s, when the liberalization, privatization, and globalization movement were sweeping across India. The government had opened up the Indian economy as many new businesses were being set up. Organizations were vying with each other to hire people from different talent pool. I realized this was a problem that plagued just a few women professionals but almost 48% of women in India. The Corporate India did not know how to handle CVs from women professionals who were returning to their careers post a break because of compelling familial reasons. I call this the butterfly effect. I wanted to challenge the status quo and make sure that Indian corporates realize that women who have taken breaks from careers could indeed make a good bet. We, at Avtar wanted to inject the much-needed oxygen for increasing women’s workforce participation called the “Flexibility” in Indian organizations. We wanted companies to move from being just hirers or employers but be talent magnets for the lakhs and lakhs of women professionals raring to contribute to the country’s GDP!
From the corporates’ perspective, organizations must embrace the concepts of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion to develop this fantastic quality called “Empathy”. When empathy is in place, you start thinking about equity. Equity then creates enablers. The three aspects of diversity – consciously hiring different people; building equity that is creating customized enablers; and Inclusion that is embedding empathy within the organization wherein everyone feels included and belonged.
Does diversity, equity, or inclusion contribute to business growth?
Here is where diversity helps. Diversity is about bringing together very different people, with each having their way of problem-solving, approaching challenges, getting motivated, and spending money and time. With inclusion you bring that empathy as the excellent glue that smoothens the edges of these very different people. You can have a workplace that embodies diversity, equity, and inclusion, which helps you solve problems better, innovate and come together as a high-performing organization. So, organizations have experienced all three benefits. Companies with DEI strategies in place have innovated better, have better profits, top line, and customer satisfaction.
How Big should be the DEI efforts?
Recently, an MD of one of the large multinational brands’ that has successfully increased the DEI ratio in the workplace, asked me a few pertinent questions. Is it sufficient for an organization to be alone on an island of inclusion? Is it enough of the big organizations wholeheartedly accept diversity, equity, and inclusion and see the business benefits? This is an organization that has great gender balance and excellent employee engagement showing business results.
Now, we have been talking about Diversity for more than 20 years in India. If an organization like that of the one I mentioned above were to insist that suppliers, vendors, and distributors also practiced the tenets of DEI, then you are building an entire ecosystem of organizations comprising small, micro small and big ones establishing the business, talent, and culture cases of DEI. Indeed, it takes effort, but these organizations have established a business case and talent case, culture for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And they have also proved that it is possible to create careers for the under-represented talent pool and make inclusion a very successful business practice. So now, they must become mentors, to all smaller organizations in their respective ecosystem, then businesses are indeed good. In fact, at Avtar we recently launched a nation-wide initiative #BusinessisGood, a corporate mentoring program wherein frontrunners of inclusion will support the new entrants into the DEI journey. Through this program, larger role-model organizations will be able offer their support to smaller businesses within their sphere of influence in understanding the nuances of DEI as a growth influencer.
Supplier and Customer Diversity
In many large organizations, we always find big business deals or purchases contracts. For instance, if you're this large corporate, you would have a lot of usages for, let's say, stationery. You will typically go to a particular stationery supplier who has been supplying for a long time to you, and they would give you the best rates. That relationship continues. While this works well, except that there is an inherent danger that you are not building the community around your needs, but you're only providing business to just that one favoured supplier. big corporates with lots of purchasing power should start engaging with different underrepresented groups in terms of suppliers. It could be a woman-owned business or a queer group-owned business. Or it could be a business that a person with a disability owns. You are helping the community rise to their fullest potential, providing them with business opportunities they would never have had before. Through the #Businessisgood initiative, we are aiming to focus on not one organization, but encompass a larger community by bringing in supplier diversity.
Impact of increased DEI focus, on company’s growth – business and talent
The last year’s Avtar & Seramount annual DEI analytical study, Best Companies for Women in India and Most Inclusive Companies Index (BCWI-MICI) BCWI reveals that companies invested in DEI see tangible results:
• 62% of the companies recorded an increase in operating profit
• 73% of the companies recorded improved innovation
• 81% of the companies reported an increase in customer satisfaction
These are clear business and talent cases for DEI focus by any company. Diversity has led to improved productivity, customer satisfaction and innovation. Studies also show that DEI focus gives the companies an added advantage over companies that do not have a DEI focus.
Tier II and III Cities – A Large Piece of the Talent Pie
A satellite office in these spots would be ideal to attract talent from these cities. While women’s entry into the workforce is smooth, marriage makes them drop out because they follow their spouses to cities of their work. So, when a woman may relocate in the entry level, the same is not sustainable when she gets married to a person in another city. The talent in such cities could be women who have relocated with their spouses but are unable to find an equal opportunity in another field. Satellite offices enable to place them in suitable roles, and this is increasingly being explored by many companies.
Remote hiring is another route, which helps a lot of women to pursue careers without contemplating dropping out of the workforce due to many factors. The report, ‘Women, careers, and marriage: Evolving dynamics in India Inc. in the post COVID world’ by Avtar released in March 2021 surveyed 11 cities including tier-2 cities like Jaipur, Ranchi, Ahmedabad, and Kochi. It found out that 76% of women applying for jobs from the non-metros were married women, indicating not only significant growth in the career aspiration levels of women in these locations but also greater familial enablement in terms of women pursuing their career aspirations.
Greater innovation and creativity
There is a strong talent case for DEI because a diverse workforce comprising genders, age groups, generations etc. can lead to increased creativity and offer a wide scope for innovation. In a rapidly changing environment and ever-evolving world, larger representation of the talent from diverse backgrounds will be the answer to address the complex challenges that businesses face today. For innovation and creativity – gender agnostic – to thrive in an organization, inclusivity must be embedded in the organization’s DNA. When leaders exhibit traits of diversity, their teams out-perform and out-innovate others. Deep level diversity can also help give a granular understanding of human behaviour making it necessary for teams generating ideas to be diverse.
.jpg "Retail Business Franchise & Retail Franchise Opportunities & Options Are Skyrocketing")
