Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

Diversity and inclusion are topics that have sparked important discussions as to how organizations achieve the balance of both in working environments. The world has undergone change in dynamic ways over the years with demographic transitions and a change in the social framework of our communities. These changes necessitate the integration of inclusion and diversity in various environments and fields such as the work place. In this regard, UN champions for inclusion and diversity for various groups of society. The SDGs by United Nations feature goals such as gender equality (Goal 5), reduced inequalities (Goal 10) and providing decent work environments (Goal 8). These goals guide institutions and organizations to mandate the development of strategies to ensure inclusion and diversity. The concepts, inclusion and diversity are important in ensuring equality and equality to all in global communities. Organizations worldwide are faced with a major challenge of ensuring inclusion and diversity without proper strategies. Organizations demonstrate unsuitable practices with outcomes being marginalizing of women and discrimination off people racially or ethnic and the minority groups of society communities.

Furthermore, diversity and inclusion are both incorporated in organizational as strategies to improve productivity, establish a welcoming workplace and improved profits. Diversity and inclusion in this case majorly is established through both recruiting and operations. The conceptualization of workplace diversity and inclusion traditionally has been undertaken by organizations through targeted hiring initiatives and developing policies that are culturally sensitive. However, inclusion is not applicable simply through policies development without action. The completion of the strategies requires the enforcement of the policies to accomplish company values and objectives. The clear understanding of what inclusion and diversity goes beyond traditional affirmative action by employers is required.

Inclusion and Diversity in our company

Our company influence is considered to be multinational with much of our workforce is of South Asian, Indian, Central Asian, Middle eastern, and multiple other nationalities. This dynamic in our demography requires our strategic setup as an organization to adequately accommodate the diverse culture and indifference of our employees. The need to appreciate and accommodate the different cultures is critical for us to ensure a comfortable working environment. To achieve inclusion and diversity we consider our employees differences as a uniqueness which gives them a comparative advantage. In a broader perspective, the company perceives the uniqueness to be beneficial for our business’ future. We view the uniqueness of our employees as a way of getting different perspectives of our business operation. Our strategy is focused on establishing an employee focused environment through our human resource management team and collaboration with our leaders to facilitate our company values.

-Commitment to Inclusion and Diversity

We are committed fully to achieving inclusivity and diversity. Our primary focus is our human resource team which is the foundation for achieving the inclusion and diversity in our working environments. Over the years, the team has made crucial contributions in managing employee interaction and ensuring we provide a comfortable working environment in our company. We recognized the necessity of avoiding occupational stress and workplace inequalities that require addressing. With a focus on achieving the SDG goals and meeting our diversity and inclusion goals our company makes the utmost investment in our human resource team by employing experienced and trained personnel to manage our team. We support the team in financial and resources as required. In addition, the Human Resource team is supported through the following cross cutting initiatives to ensure effective practice and operations towards inclusivity and diversification.

-Culture appreciation week

The company champions for celebrating our employees’ differences by introducing culture appreciation weeks throughout our franchise. The events are organized platforms for our employees to express themselves and share their culture. We use this as a way to create awareness of the differences that exist in our community and help employees understand the perceptions of people’s beliefs. The events include cultural expos in the cultural and religious calendars allowing a holiday break.

-Inclusive leadership programmes

In this programme we aim to target our management team in ensuring they take responsibility and are held accountable for workplace functionality. The Company advocates for the educating and training of our leaders on fundamental ways to achieve inclusion and appreciate diversity in their interactions with their subordinates. The company through this program aims to ensure employees are treated equally and foster a system that is inclusive for our diverse employees stemming from the different regions. The central message we send is that leaders have a responsibility to create a safe team environment for subordinates to express themselves, be heard and are part of a family. We encourage our Human Resource team to actively support and provide guidance too leadership groups of our business to ensure the responsibility of inclusion and diversifying our operations isn’t solely dependent on the Human Resource team.

-Instituting a Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce

The company strategically plans to establish an independent diversity and inclusion taskforce to establish an expert perspective on the level of inclusion and diversity the company has achieved. We mandate the taskforce to progressively monitor operations and work place structure ensuring inclusionary and diversity issues are handled with care. The department play an advisory and supplementary enforcement role alongside our human resource to manage workplace environment. Ensuring workplace conflicts are well managed and handled is a crucial necessity for ensuring our company values are met and impact our employees in positive ways. As a company we are committed to diversity and inclusion as such, we are willing to go that extra mile.

-Annual inclusion and diversity report

Strategically the Diversity and Inclusionary Taskforce will be mandated to prepare an annual report on the inclusion and diversity strategy performance. The company will be able to get a reliable perspective of its progress and contribution to sustainable growth through inclusion and diversity. Conversely, the report will be instrumental in pointing out our shortcomings in achieving inclusion and diversity. The identifications of the challenges support progressive growth by providing reliable information on what needs to change. We shall evaluate active leadership levels through out our branches and establish parameters to be measured such including employee engagement levels through an annual Employee Survey.

Conclusion

Our strategies are adequately to set the company at high levels of diversity and inclusion to ensure equality of our workplace environment. We encourage our employees to speak up and our management group to enhance communication levels to ensure all needs and concerns are dealt with. Through our taskforce collaboration with Human Resources department and all other employees we anticipate productive working environment that is based on qualities and values of trust, honesty and respecting differences.