The Hindu Business Line : Give them a chance

Consciously pursuing diversity among the workforce, including employing disabled or differently-abled people, can be a successful business strategy. IBM has shown the way.

COMPUTER companies think money, but IBM is thinking of diversity. On this, there is an article titled "Diversity as strategy" by David A. Thomas in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review.

There is a `people story' behind business success, says Thomas, taking us back by about a decade when Lou Gerstner established a task force for each of eight `constituencies': "Asians, blacks, gay/lesbian, Hispanics, white men, Native Americans, people with disabilities, and women. His idea was to "appeal to an even broader set of employees and customers" by understanding the differences among people within the organisation.

The agenda for the task forces was straight - find answers for four questions. These were: "What does your constituency need to feel welcome and valued at IBM? What can the corporation do, in partnership with your group, to maximise your constituency's productivity? What can the corporation do to influence your constituency's buying decisions so that IBM is seen as a preferred solution provider? And with which external organisation should IBM form relationships to better understand the needs of your constituency?" There is the inevitable commercial colour in question three, and there is no effort to camouflage the same.

If numbers are a proof of the task forces' work, Thomas plugs data in his article: women executives have grown almost four times in number, while "self-identified gay or lesbian" category increased by 733 per cent and those with disabilities tripled in headcount! An example of celebrating differences, rather than simply tolerating them; and actively pursuing diversity instead of passively accommodating it. Let me focus on the initiatives for the disabled, where there have been some `innovative solutions'.

The site www.ibm.com would inform one about Home Page Reader 3.021 — "a talking and magnifying Web browser for the blind and visually impaired" and ThinkPad— "a new, ultra slimline wireless notebook computer that is fully enabled for single hand operations". Two other products that the company developed years ago are "a remote-controlled keyboard for the disabled and a machine that types via voice commands".

On IBM's site you find an interesting comment of Jim Sinocchi, director for diversity communications at IBM: "You hire people with a disability for the same reason you hire anybody else — because they have the skills and talent to get the job done." Sinocchi is also a co-chair for IBM's People with Disabilities Global Executive Diversity Task Force.

As percentage of the company's workforce, the disabled form about 2 per cent. But 47 per cent of them are in `core jobs' that are key to company strategy. These jobs include software engineering, IT support, development, engineering and sales, explains Sinocchi. "Do you want to miss out on hiring a talented employee," he asks, "just because she uses a wheelchair, or because she walks a little differently, or because she can't hear?"

When the Rehabilitation Act was amended in the US, "requiring that government agencies make accessibility a criterion for awarding federal contracts", IBM took the cue. Thomas cites an estimate from IBM that making products more `accessible' can produce "more than a billion dollars in revenue during the next five to ten years." Read these statistics that are posted on IBM's site: "There are as many as one billion people with disabilities around the world — over 40 million in the US alone. In the US, approximately 12 per cent of the working population has a disability. An able person has a 70 per cent chance of becoming disabled in his/her lifetime."

The mantra, therefore, is not simply IT, but `accessible IT'. To create a `successful work environment for people with disabilities', there are three factors, according to Sinocchi: "Accessibility, accommodation and attitude." First, access to work should be convenient. Second, give them the tools so they can do their job "independently and productively". This poses a challenge for designers to make technology `truly pervasive' so it can be accessed `regardless of ability'.

But the third factor depends on `other employees': Are they comfortable working with people with disabilities? "Once you get to know a person and see beyond the disability, then your comfort level with the disabled person increases. Attitude is the biggest challenge to overcome because you have to teach generation after generation how to deal with their own feelings, their own insecurities, their own doubts, and their own myths about the disabled," is how Sinocchi puts it.

For IBM's `Accessibility Center', October is important as the `National Disability Employment Awareness Month'. This year's theme is "America Works Best When All Americans Work." In India, Census figures show that the disabled persons constitute 2.13 per cent of our population, that is, about 2.2 crore, which is about half (looks half?) the number of 40 million that the US has to cope with.

The recent example of Andhra Pradesh where the Government has offered to pay back software companies Rs 2 lakh for every disabled person they employed may well set a new theme for us too: "India works best when all Indians work!" Our success in IT may thus hinge on accessibility, even from sheer business angle, not counting on charitable disposition.

From a strategic angle too, IT-enabled services may weather the BPO backlash better if they were able to play a social card.

ITWorks@TheHindu.co.in

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