As HR, do you only hire a certain employee profile? Or are you constantly on the lookout for diverse candidates? Think wisely, as your answer might just make the difference to your company’s bottom line. By Lee Xieli
Joe Tan, a 35-year old Chinese man, is a typical employee in your company. Imagine then you have 99 more workers who are of the exact same mould as Joe, all of them a cloned image of each other. What would happen if you hire a Caucasian woman in her 20s for a change?
Could this person with a different perspective of things potentially give your company a much needed creative boost or even help tap on a previously impenetrable market? This is just a hint of what corporate diversity can give your company. So what is diversity?
“When it comes to diversity, it should be blind to us what you look like, where you come from because when it comes to hiring talent, it should always be based on meritocracy,” says UBS AG’s director of community affairs and diversity adviser Leona Tan.
Diversity in hard times
We are approaching an era where it has become imperative for companies to make a business case for diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Business leaders are beginning to see a link between workforce diversity and organisational competitiveness. Yet this idea of embracing differences is hardly a new one, to UBS at least.
Having seen the importance of a diverse workforce five years ago, the Swiss bank had begun a three-stage roadmap which started with educating and instilling diversity into its corporate culture. Next, it integrated diversity into its work processes and policies such as recruiting, performance management and talent development.
Now in its third phase, the bank plans for its employees to start taking personal ownership and accountability of diversity. In return, it hopes having a diverse workforce would lead to an increase in bottom line, a boost which is badly needed as it aims to return to profit this year.
But it doesn’t get any easier for UBS. Recent news of further writedowns and a rumoured 8,000 additional job cuts has undoubtedly made it difficult for its employees to believe in diversity. UBS AG’s Leona Tan admits as much. “With the redundancy that has been going up, people are becoming more and more mindful of diversity.”
Especially in Asia, there could be a misaligned perception that the retrenched population might consist of only Chinese and not other races. This is where having a strong understanding of how diversity is the flipside of meritocracy would help ease the fears, explains Tan.
“Redundancy for us is when the function is no longer relevant so it needs to be explained that it’s not so much the person but the function,” says Tan. “Whatever diverse backgrounds you come from, you are being hired, retained and developed based on meritocracy.” Values her employer continues to emphasise even in economically-challenged times like this.
This same meritocracy principle applies at a smaller family-owned MNC setup Sennheiser Consumer Electronics Asia. With over 100 employees under her care in Asia, regional HR manager Goh Ban Ping agrees in order to practice diversity, companies need to hire and reward employees based on their merits. But her opinion differs slightly from UBS at this point.
“As much it’s said on diversity, culturally they must fit as well,” says Goh. Otherwise employees would fail to succeed in the organisation if they can’t get along with their team or see eye-to-eye with the manager.
Consequences of ignoring diversity
For companies that wish to compete globally, its leaders must understand an organisation’s ability to innovate is intricately linked to its diversity. Without a diverse workforce, it’s hard to gain a deeper understanding of your consumers and this lack of consumer connection would result in one simple consequence.
“No one will buy your products,” says Unilever’s global vice president of diversity Rhodora Palomar-Fresnedi. “If no one buys the product because we cannot connect to them and we cannot innovate, then it’s almost predictable you’re going to be beaten by your competitors.”
It is especially critical to delve deeper into the consumers’ mindsets now, says Tan from UBS, as competition heats up in all industries. “When times are hard, your creativity and innovation streak has to go up significantly because you have to come up with different ways of doing something better.” The only way to do better is employing people with different perspectives who would “bring you to the next level of creativity”.
Furthermore it’s been proven, says Palomar-Fresnedi, well-managed diverse teams always outperform homogeneous teams. “If our management pool is predominantly men, it is not as quick to get the consumer’s insight as you would if you have more women in your management team.” She adds, “You could get it in your head but you never really understand it yourself. It’s quicker if you have more of a diverse talent pool.”
Commercial organisations are hardly the only ones profiting from diversity. Non-governmental organisations too have realised the value of working with diverse people. Habitat for Humanity Singapore, a non-profit Christian organisation which builds simple affordable housing for people in need, welcomes volunteers or employees from all backgrounds and all faiths. The only requirement? They need to have a similar passion in eradicating poverty housing.
“Because the beneficiaries we serve are so diverse, different volunteers can bring a lot of experience and creativity to the table and we appreciate that,” says its resource development manager Felicia Oh. “They can bring to our attention things we may typically overlook, miss out or have become our blind spots.”
Volunteers with a different cultural background or overseas volunteering experience can also transfer valuable knowledge to local Singaporean volunteers, explains Oh, which benefits Habitat in the long run. Encouraging diversity has helped it reach out to more people and provide a greater cross-cultural experience for beneficiaries, volunteers and donors.
Jumping through hurdles
To avoid hiring homogenous people within the company, organisations must learn to iron out the discriminatory kinks such as race, colour, age and gender found in a diverse pool of talent. Especially gender, which according to Unilever, is one of the “biggest most obvious dimension”. The fact is, female leadership talent remains a minority in most companies.
“All around the world, women cannot be themselves. It is hard to be a woman, to be a mother. It’s being able to progress in a business or industry dominated by men,” says Palomar-Fresnedi. The traditional career path for women is outdated. Women now need tools such as flexible working arrangements, different definitions of success and job advancements for their careers.
Likewise, Tan believes more women are stepping up in UBS given such programmes it has put in place during the last few years. “We give them the tools to help them balance their personal life so they can perform better at work.”
That is why it’s important for companies to first tackle gender differences before they continue on the road to diversity. “Once you become competent in addressing the biggest gap, it would be easier for you to develop capabilities to address all the other dimensions – race, religion, ethnicity, ways of working, language,” says Palomar-Fresnedi. It gives the company the ability to handle inclusion.
However, inclusion doesn’t mean giving employees more work-life flexibility choices, explains Palomar-Fresnedi, as it merely scratches the surface of a bigger issue, which is creating the right work environment for everyone. “We don’t want a situation where women feel very comfortable and included but the men don’t.”
So how do you create an inclusive work environment? In UBS, it’s working with respect for one another. “It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?” says Tan. And it is that simple, says Palomar-Fresnedi. Just remember inclusion means embracing differences and ensuring every person no matter what race, gender, colour, creed and religion will be able to bring his or her whole self to work.
“No part of you should be left at the door when you come to work.”
Championing the cause
Never underestimate the persuasion of a senior leader who can make a huge difference between an employee population taking diversity seriously and disregarding it. In fact, engaging business leaders to address the agenda will ensure a better chance of having diversity deeply ingrained within the corporate rank and file.
First, get top leaders to be fluent in their own beliefs, says Palomar-Fresnedi. Make them feel “I understand this, I believe in this and I want to do something about it”. This level of urgency can give the leader the momentum to drive the initiative forward.
“The power of one man could amplify for the organisation in a way nobody else in the organisation can,” she says. “He could also provide the right tone for it because sometimes people can be very defensive.”
Having diversity objectives in senior management’s yearly performance appraisals is another incentive UBS uses to ensure its leaders encourage workforce diversity at all times. Objectives could range from opening up a position for mobility, hiring to promoting employees regardless of gender, disability, race and sexual orientation.
Similarly, there are global diversity boards which are led by CEOs of both UBS and Unilever and they would set the strategy, define priorities for the year and ensure the whole organisation moves in one direction. Other processes for leaders include mentoring, coaching, training development programmes, succession planning and HR planning.
Who should take charge?
While there are plenty of companies that believe in embracing diversity, smaller corporate setups often do not have the luxury of separating the diversity function from HR. These companies would, in most cases, get HR to promote diversity and inclusion practices on the side.
One example would be Sennheiser. While it does not have a diversity programme set in place as HR is a relatively new function, it does advocate fair employment when hiring. “I am dedicated to bringing fair employment policies and at the same time balance business needs,” says Goh. “In this way, it will attract people to join Sennheiser when they know we are a fair employer.”
But depending on how HR is set up, Tan feels the responsibility should be entrusted to someone else, namely a business leader. “My personal view is it [diversity] should be championed out of the business side because when you have that push, it becomes more serious perception wise,” she says. “The messaging you send out to your [employee] population is that it is a business imperative to do this.”
It doesn’t mean the business leader can’t partner with HR. Even though Tan reports to her COO and not HR, she still works closely with her learning and development group and recruitment team to inject diversity into their programmes.
Setting the cornerstones
Once a company sets the foundation by defining what diversity means to its leaders, business objectives and employees, it’s time to present the business case with initiatives that produces tangible results. Even though diversity and inclusion are qualities very much understood in Unilever, the company is still articulating these values so its people have a greater awareness.
Palomar-Fresnedi calls it asserting the importance of diversity. “People know it, feel it in their skin but it is not verbalised so we start verbalising, articulating the business case, communicating it [internally].”
Similarly, it helps if the organisation has the numbers to support its business case for diversity, she says. “We talk about the talent pool and say, “Look if we don’t do anything now, we will have problems in the talent pool [later].”
Unilever has a programme called “One More” which is about increasing diversity one appointment at a time. So every appointment line managers make in their teams should be more diverse and more inclusive than the last.
UBS, on the other hand, has two computer-based – Diversity Online and Working with Respect – training programmes which all employees are expected to do once. The training scenarios highlight to employees, especially new joins, visually what the bank means by diversity. The programmes address discrimination issues and differences employees should be mindful of. The top corporate hierarchy also attends an additional half-day programme where facilitators coach them on managing diverse teams.
These specific programmes allow diversity to become “tangible for us”, explains Tan. But it doesn’t matter what programmes you choose as long as they fit your organisation. Palomar-Fresnedi says, “It’s about people growing inside the company as themselves and having the choices for themselves. If you grow as an individual, we grow as a business.”
Roadmap to embracing differences
Although change has been underway, it is still rare for any company of the size that UBS and Unilever are to achieve 100% diversity and inclusion. There will also be situations where discrimination lapses will occur. It is then a matter for business leaders to keep advocating the advantages of a diverse workforce.
Like how Habitat’s volunteers, despite numerous cultural differences, are knitted by their passion to help, once employees believe in the cause, the journey to diversity success should pick up its pace. Oh says a strong belief can really make a difference. “I’m convinced this passion goes beyond religion, gender and race because we all are fundamentally part of humanity.”
Even if the whole education and awareness process is a very slow one for now, Tan says, “At the end of the day, our success has been that our line managers are walking the talk.”
But ultimately, it doesn’t matter what position you hold, says Palomar-Fresnedi, you should feel you are valued in this organisation. “No matter what race, gender, colour, creed, religion or whatever dimensions you have, everybody in the business [is] able to say proudly ‘I belong and I make a difference’.”
