DEI Beyond Hiring: Fostering an Inclusive Workplace Culture
If you find that despite your best efforts, biases persist, true inclusivity stays out of the picture, and marginalized communities remain excluded in your workplace, you’re not alone.
Many organizations face similar challenges, especially in balancing the need for diversity with existing policies and practices that may inadvertently perpetuate inequality.
In this blog, we’ll explore the current state of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in India, highlight the gaps and challenges in private sector inclusivity, and examine how true inclusion can be achieved.
Index
What is the Current State of DEI in India
India is recognized as a diverse country that guarantees equality for everyone and prohibits discrimination over religion, race, caste, gender, or place of birth.
But there’s a challenge that we need to address.
While the constitution and laws want to provide equal opportunities for everyone and uplift marginalized communities, mostly it has been limited to papers for only public sectors.
One main reason for this could be that at the time of independence, the public sector was the only employer, so the laws were created keeping that in mind.
What is the Scope of Inclusion in India
The private sector employs more people today than the public sector. They’re also gradually embracing inclusivity.
But there’s a problem.
Their efforts are mainly limited to gender diversity (specifically towards women even though India recognizes three genders). And even for women’s diversity, they don’t give any commitment or put affirmative actions in place.
It leads to the persistence of biases, and the marginalized communities tend to stay marginalized.
Now, you might ask, what about private companies that claim to promote inclusivity?
They do it, but often their employment records tell a different story. Not because they don’t do what they preach, but because their definition of inclusivity needs fixing.
Their annotation of inclusivity is treating all employees with similar respect, benefits (by levels of course), and performance measures.
But would you call it inclusivity?
See, if you enquire about the employee records of such companies, you’ll find a lack of equity pay between genders. Plus, it’ll direct you towards self-imposed company policies about the maximum pay hike that can be offered when hiring.
It means if they hired a woman from a low-paying company, she’ll continue to be on a lower pay scale given the requirements to adhere to these policies.
In fact, if you were to audit the hiring practices of private organizations, you’d find that most of them don’t even have roles poised for diverse hires. Nor do they have measures to assess the potential of such employees without biases.
Even though the laws require equal pay for equal work, factors like education and location (like tier-based cities) take precedence, and organizations don’t have unbiased merit assessments for them.
In addition to that, the hiring practices don’t record the diversity status of candidates.
If they did it, they’d be liable to give the reasons for rejection of a candidate from the marginalized community.
Organizations Workforce Diversity Report and the Responsibility of Employers
Do organizations report the distribution of their workforce from an Inclusion standpoint? To answer that, first, let’s understand inclusion in India.
To this date, India recognizes:
The next type of diversity is “disabled.” They make up about 2.2% of the population.
In 1999, the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People surveyed the top 100 companies in India based on sales, profits, assets, and market capitalization for the financial year 1997-98.
The sectoral breakdown then was as follows:
Out of which, only 70% of the companies responded:
The percentage of disabled employees in these 70 companies was only 0.40%:
Currently, as per EY’s Humans at the Centre of Sustainability Transformation 2023 report, in India only 1040 listed companies have a strategic focus on DEI . Yet only 23% of women constitute permanent employees.
Based on such data, it’s questionable to declare we’re truly inclusive.
The SC, ST, and OBC account for approximately 70% of India’s population.
But do you see private companies employing 70% of their workforce from these diverse groups?
If not, their claim to be inclusive is false.
Upon posing a question about their equal hiring practices for inclusivity, you often receive a response that the candidates from these communities lack the required skills.
Nonetheless, I believe this is the responsibility of the employer to impart those skills to these candidates.
A Call for True Inclusion
The global standard for diversity and inclusivity DISM (Diversity and Inclusion Service Management) and ISO-30415 outline 27 diversity types, set processes, and practices for organizations to be recognized as “truly inclusive.”
Just like other ISO standards like ITSM (Information Technology Service Management), this standard helps organizations embrace comprehensive diversity standards, be recognized as inclusive employers, enhance D&I effectiveness in ESG, and reduce litigation risks.
Over 25 countries have adopted this standard, and the numbers are growing.
AlterEgo Accelerators, in collaboration with Inclusion Score, has introduced the DISM – ISO 30415 Certification in India for organizations, activities, advocates, allies, professionals, and promoters of D&I to get certified and establish truly inclusive practices in India, contributing to the upliftment of all communities.
So, join us. Together, we can build a more equitable and inclusive society
Author: Indranil Sen Head of Human Resources at Tamarind Global
A strong advocate of establishing workplace culture and branding based on employee centricity. The foundation of his values is deep-rooted on his years of experience with corporations such as American Express and IBM. Indranil is an executive alumnus of the prestigious IIM Calcutta, University of Georgia Howard and Cornell. With HROne Commune, he aims to share his learnings.
Head: Human Resources | DISM ISO 30415 Educationist | DEI Business Process Expert
2 天前Thank you HROne for the feature ??