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My Thoughts on Diversity & Inclusion


We are handling a largely complex workforce, owing to factors such as migration, cultural differences, generational changes, etc. There is a constant need evolving to make the workplace more friendly to people from different backgrounds. With this also comes the need to make more people aware of what inclusion is and why we need it.

I want to define what Diversity & Inclusion is for me before I proceed. Diversity talks about factors including, but not limited to race, caste, gender, sexual orientation. A diverse workforce, therefore, is a workforce of people from all backgrounds - educational backgrounds, geographical backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, sexual backgrounds, and more.

Inclusion is a concept closely related to diversity but has a stark difference. How I see the two concepts is - Diversity is who we are, Inclusion is what we do to embrace who we are. Inclusion is aiming to provide equal opportunities to work and grow for each individual, irrespective of background. Just because an organization has a diverse workforce, doesn’t automatically imply that it has an inclusive culture.

Diversity & Inclusion was one of the key workplace trends in the year 2019. It is no longer an idea that companies can simply choose to look at, but is increasingly becoming one of their essential goals. People from diverse backgrounds can challenge and equip each other. A diverse team will have people bringing in different perspectives and different stories. This, however, might not work very well in a company whose culture does not support or constantly push its workforce towards inclusion of everyone’s opinion.

An organization catering to a global audience works with a diverse customer base, and a diverse team is required to better understand the customer needs. Hence, especially for service-based companies, it has become a major requirement from our clients to have a diverse workforce and build an inclusive culture.

How do we drive diversity and inclusion at the workplace? Hiring individuals with diverse backgrounds who are open to sharing their journeys is one way of doing it. At the same time, also understanding that not everyone is at the same level of openness, and some people bring with themselves a more conservative mindset. I personally feel that driving inclusion is driving a change in that mindset - one person at a time. And like any other major change initiative, this initiative would also run its course of denial, resistance, exploration and commitment.

Another way of fostering this culture is by empowering our people, by communicating and emphasizing on how each individual is a leader, and is empowered to lead this change. This can be carried out by providing physical and virtual platforms such as D&I town-halls, online forums, in-house social media websites, etc. for employees to come forward and share their stories and novel ideas. I feel that each story is important and adds value towards the growth of the organization in this aspect, and this needs to be reiterated to the employees to make them feel empowered to come forth and share.

An inclusive culture is something that is built over time by having continuous and open conversations. Conversations that challenge the existing unconscious biases we carry with ourselves, and open us up to understand, accept and embrace our differences.
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