Workforce Diversity

The other day, I went to grab some lunch on our newly refurbished canteen floor and noted some of our workplace accessibility improvements including a disabled washroom, a braille directory, and a barrier free access elevator. Last week, we lit our HSBC main building in purple to celebrate International Day of Persons with Disabilities to generate awareness, understanding, and acceptance of people with disability. Building disability confidence for employees and customers is a key focus area within Diversity and Inclusion at HSBC.

Last month, I also participated in a panel for International Men’s Day which included raising awareness of health risks for men.

I also recently hosted some dialogues with HR colleagues from across Asia Pacific to discuss culture and ethnicity. The sessions reminded me how everyone has their own unique background and experience they bring to work. My colleagues acknowledged they benefit from the multitude of perspectives and varying worldviews from their colleagues. These exchanges are a stark reminder of the importance of mutual respect amongst colleagues, especially when we have co-workers with different work hours (especially this year), work styles, disabilities, representing different cultures, backgrounds, or even generations, etc. Diversity brings a wonderful richness to our workplace. When employees feel accepted and included, it can also boost employee engagement. It is critical to build a workplace culture where everyone feels valued, respected, empowered, and heard.

These refreshers and events reminded me how important it is as a HR professional to widen our recruitment base to create and enable our organisations to have a more diverse and inclusive workplace which better reflects the communities we work in and where everyone has an equal opportunity to develop and progress.

Companies that don’t actively fight to overcome bias – conscious or unconscious -arbitrarily cut themselves off from key sources of new insights and perspectives that have the potential to make them more agile and better able to serve their customers.

To reap the rewards of a diverse workforce more effectively, companies need to create new opportunities and networks to enable the right conditions for colleagues to be able to achieve their full potential. 

At HSBC, our diversity and that of our customers, suppliers and communities, is a feature of who we are and how we operate. We have eight employee resource groups (ERGs) focus areas which include gender, age, ethnicity, LGBT+, faith, working parents and carers, communities, and ability. Our ERGs play a critical role in achieving our D&I ambition and help us have a better understanding of different perspectives and experiences within HSBC and they help us respond with appropriate actions that help all of our colleagues to bring their whole selves to the workplace. Earlier this year, we took strategic and practical steps to improve opportunities for Black and ethnic minority employees and boost the diversity of our senior leadership.

There is always more work to be done in this space. We need to remember and remind ourselves that different ideas and perspective help us to innovate, manage risk, and grow our business in a more sustainable way. Diversity and Inclusion is vital to building a more sustainable business and continue to stay relevant, we need to continue to evolve in line with the customers and communities we enable and the colleagues that we care for.