People@Work. The diversity trap: Who is being called to the party?

* “If you don’t have enough women leaders at the top, how can you hire diversity talent for me?” asked a COO of a large MNC asset management company.

* “I don’t care about diversity right now; all I want is to ensure we hire talent in time in the first two years and survive; we shall address the overall diversity later,” said the CEO of a new MNC in India.

* “It’s been 15 years in India; we haven’t been able to get diversity at the senior and middle managerial level. Can you hire a few women managers as a special project for us?” requested an HR director of a large tech centre.

What do these conversations tell you? First, people believe diversity means gender; Second, the political or power situation of each organisation determines diversity significance; and last, but not the least, diversity is ad hoc and more of a band-aid.

Why has corporate India confined its diversity initiative to just gender in a multidimensional country like India? Perhaps we should restart by reflecting on what diversity truly means. Especially now, when slogans like #JitniAbadiUtnaHaq and calls for caste censuses are reverberating.

Defining Diversity

We know that diversity refers to the presence of variety within the organisational workforce, such as in identity (gender, culture, ethnicity, religion, disability, class and age). Though Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has been doing the rounds, the lack of tangible metrics beyond certain policies has meant that measuring E&I is still a touch subjective. A quote that allowed me to distinguish DEI better is, “Diversity is being invited to a party; Inclusion is being asked to Dance.”

In a country that has 28 states and 8 union territories, 22 recognised languages, and an entrenched caste system, diversity is not difficult to establish. Yes, it requires a sensitive classification, acceptance and a methodology that does not further complicate the polarised corporate setups. In one of the GCC pitches recently, I pointed out to an overseas visitor that four of the Indians in the room came from four different states, and our collective ability to speak about 10 Indian languages was the kind of diversity worth considering in the Indian context. Things like states and languages are diverse but can also become a divisive factor. Remember a couple of states asking private companies to hire more locals and the uproar it caused? Societally, we are already divided by caste and at a corporate level, if we start making more distinctions it will increase divisiveness.

Oh Women!

Data from the quarterly reports of the Top 5 India IT Services Bellwethers (Wipro, Infy, TCS, HCL, LTIM) shows that they currently employ 5.39 lakh women. That’s a 44 per cent growth from 3.74 lakh in March 2020. Overall, the IT industry has seen a marginal movement of 2 per cent in the overall tech workforce to about 36 per cent. India also has progressed in appointing women on company boards -- from 6 per cent in 2014 to 17.6 per cent of directorships of the NIFTY-500 companies. Based on the current aggregate of 1 per cent increase in women appointments for the last three years, NSE-listed companies will get to 30 per cent gender diversity only by 2058. A faster movement toward gender equality makes sense, but forcing that across levels also has its consequences.

Some of the roles like HR, Marketing, and Legal have almost been reserved for women in many MNCs. These are soft targets and shouldn’t organisations try harder and hire women for more influencing roles like CFO, COO and CEOs. Citibank became the first Wall Street banking major to have a female CEO in 2021. She has made some bold calls so far, but according to CNBC, Citi’s stock has shed almost 40 per cent of its value on her watch and is clearly lagging behind its banking peers.

When organisations openly hire/promote women for certain roles for the sake of diversity or optics, will it cause angst/attrition among men who, in some cases, may have been equal or a better fit for these roles?

Diversity Redefined?

Bloomberg obtained data for 88 S&P 100 companies and reported an overall US job growth of 323,094 people in 2021, the first year after the Black Lives Matter protests. 94 per cent of this headcount increase went to people of colour. Taking a cue, can we hire more talent from socioeconomically backward families in India who are clearly underrepresented? Could a deliberate nurturing/skilling of people from underprivileged tribes give us sustainable and scalable diversity?

India has 1.3 crore employable people with disabilities (PwD); 38 per cent of them have hearing disabilities and visual impairments. With all the technological advancements, the country has the potential to skill and bring them into the mainstream services sector and knowledge industry.

How about hiring from a variety of enterprises, especially when you are scaling up? You must have observed the trend when we hire new leaders; they bring their followers in hordes, cloning their previous employer’s people and culture. A CEO of an insurance major who is setting up their tech centre has hired four leaders from his previous organisation and another five from his other ex-employer. Imagine if each of these leaders replicates the same principle how monoclonal this new set-up will soon become? You think organisations can also diversify their workforce by spreading out their hiring from a vast number of competing firms rather than a select few?

As much as 50 per cent of the gender balance is par for the course, India offers many options to make its case for diversity.

Can we apply this quote to our workplaces? “Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without”!

(Kamal Karanth is co-founder of Xpheno, a specialist staffing firm)