The Reality of Diversity Inclusion and How We Can Turn the Tide Together

A corporate HR head’s typical best practices handbook describes diversity recruitment as developing a workforce strictly detached from any bias towards or against sexual orientation, race, background, religion, experience, education, arbitrary percentage of mental and/or physical abilities and socio-economic status. The recruitment however still remains a merit-based process to let the best possible fit for a candidate surface, hence allowing each applicant a fair shot at the opportunity.

So far so good? Let’s drive through some facts first.

Do you know which is the world’s largest minority? Persons-with-Disabilities. That’s 1.3 billion people that live with disabilities and only half of them ever find any respectable way to earn a living. Worse, women among them experience dual disadvantage because of both gender and disability. As per UNESCO, 90% of the children in that minority, coming from developing countries hardly ever get to know school education in their lives.

With that reported, as per WEF, only 5% of the companies globally are close to offering opportunities of employment to the said minority. 5%. Yes it is that low.

Speaking of culture outside office hours, with our cut and dry society as it is, we have at one hand a group of people with binary differences that is catered with priority and at other hand, a group of people with a wide spectrum of differences trying really hard to co-exist with the former and being completely ignored, everyday.

From time to time, nations across the globe do come up with labor laws that favor diversity inclusion but in reality those laws are either implemented half-heartedly or are allowed to be deprioritized time and again. Plus the companies that do end up actually including diversity in their work-culture, let PwDs work underpaid, unpleasant jobs at the most. Not just that, those companies register for programs in the name of diversity inclusion just to find rebates on tax, public contracts and grant opportunities.

This stark reality exists because of ignorance and unwillingness to employ PwDs and real lack of agencies that can help companies overcome that.

Our main motto should be to do our part to change this dark picture. Organizations can still derive tangible benefits of diversity recruitment in corporate culture, such as:-

1. Prevention of confirmation bias or echo chamber mentality.

2. Workforce with a wide range of experience and skills.

3. Faster and better day-to-day problem solving and innovation via diverse workforce.

4. Desired, noble shift in workplace making it PwD friendly.

Coming back to facts, the other side of the planet, where firms have managed diversity inclusion are enjoying 20% higher revenues and innovating 2 times more than their competition. In terms of choice of candidates to join a workplace, those firms rank much higher.

The divide is much clear now and together we can be synonymous to workforce diversity empowerment to help organizations heed the unheeded and enjoy advantages of diversity inclusion limited not just to moral nobility but also extended to actual coveted market growth.