The Hindu Business Line : Making diversity work

Tell me a job that you can do without using computers, I shall give that to you,” said a recruiter at a leading MNC bank in Chennai to S. Satheesh Kumar, 26. That incident, fresh in his memory, still leaves him aghast. “The corporate world crashed my confidence levels,” he reminisces, seated at the conference room of Tata Consultancy Services, Chennai. Kumar is part of the IT major’s Learning and Development division. After completing his six-month training programme, Kumar awaits his confirmation letter from the company which, he says with confidence, “will come any time,” adding, “I am already confirmed. It has to come in black and white.”

For Kumar, a visually challenged person, the difference between white and black is really one of confidence and the absence of it.

Elsewhere, in Mumbai, Jeevan James Rebello, 46, who has spent 23 years of his life at HSBC, has only one complaint. Monsoon, he says, is a nightmare for him. “I wish there was some extra care taken by the company to provide transportation for people like me with 75 per cent physical disability.” The only option for him is to stay home during the season, he adds.

If Mumbai monsoon forces Rebello to take off during the season, Sumathi Ganapathy, 38, who also works with HSBC, decided to be on her own right from day one. “Am on crutches, but I commute by my two-wheeler. The only challenge that I faced before I started work was to convince my folks that I can work too,” she smiles.

Talent crunch

Kumar, Rebello and Sumathi are among a growing number of people with disabilities who are now making a place for themselves in the corridors of corporate India. The talent crunch experienced by India Inc is equally helping their cause. “Of course, it is becoming part of the corporate agenda for recruiters like us. For how long can the industry be harping on talent crunch? As we grow, we need to look at different channels. It is not only about deriving business value, it also helps us in our diversity agenda,” says Tanuj Kapilshrami, vice president, Human Resources, HSBC India.

Corporates are beginning to realise that there are new ways of approaching issues of social inclusion and resolving them. “Identification of core areas to place such ‘special’ people is the biggest challenge. Among the differently-abled, visually impaired are the ones who remain neglected,” feels Nina Screwvala, who heads Maitree, an initiative at TCS that provides training to differently-abled people. Under the programme, TCS absorbs the crème de la crème as its own resources. However, recently, HSBC short-listed 16 of them for its different departments. “We are targeting to recruit 100 differently-abled people in our organisation. This is part of our diversity initiative,” informs Kapilshrami of HSBC.

Beyond stereotypes

There are efforts to move beyond stereotypes and find better ways to integrate the disabled into the socio-economic fabric. Take the case of S. Radha, 25, who was forced to take up English Literature even though her interest lay in medicine. Her visual impairment was the hurdle. She blames the Tamil Nadu government for failing to provide enough support to visually impaired students. “Who wants special seats in buses and other concessions,” she asks adding, “we should be given enough support at the academic level to pursue our interests in the long run.” At TCS, she is part of the Infrastructural Development Management team. Her job is to coordinate with different teams for software requirement, as also scheduling conferences and other meets at the company premises. JAWS (Job Access with Speech) is the software that facilitates her to do all this.

“We are not challenged. All we want is an alternative source to do jobs that normal people conduct in a normal way,” says Kumar. He faced several rejections, despite having good qualifications, before he finally landed up in TCS. If rejections made Kumar under-confident, they made Vikas Munot, 25, more determined to strive for excellence. Munot, who is also with TCS, used to carry a demo version of the JAWS software in his pen-drive every time he attended a job interview. “No one is interested in seeing the demonstration of the software,” he laments. Corporates, he says, look at the software as an added cost to the company.

Technological aids

“Don’t we buy a Windows licence without making an issue out of it? Corporates must also look at JAWS as a facilitator to tap a talent pool that is readily available and long neglected,” says K.C. Anand, CEO, Healthsoft USA Llc, a Chennai-based medical transcription company. The company aims to build a staff that comprises at least 25 per cent of differently-abled persons. “A lot of Venkateshes are waiting to be handpicked by companies with opportunities,” feels Venkatesh, 34, a veteran employee at Healthsoft. Having been with the company for more than seven years now, he says he has not felt the “seven-year-itch” yet. Content with his employer, he is also the brand ambassador for the company. Anand believes differently-abled people have better productivity levels, and are sincere at their work. “They are more focused and stable,” says Screwvala echoing Anand’s views.

However, employers admit that they do face a challenge when hiring differently-abled people. “The challenge is not about hiring. There are not enough organisations or associations facilitating such hires,” feels HSBC’s Kapilshrami.

There is also another twist to the tale. “When a disabled person knocks at the doors of a company, he or she has to be extremely talented in order to not only safeguard his or her position, but also to open doors for others as well. When a disabled person is offered a job, the yardstick of his or her capability is the performance of his/her predecessor. If the latter has done a decent job, the former will stand more chances to enter the company,” points out Munot of TCS. Unfortunately, he adds, this condition applies only to the physically challenged people.

There are no clear indications of the kind of money companies invest in training and re-skilling employees with disability.

Agenda for diversity

However, Indian industry realises that for such initiatives to truly transform the business model, they would need to be more than just a development project that business supports. “This is going to be part of the management agenda for all those companies that are struggling to fill gaps,” says Anand of Healthsoft.

Like, for example, at Ahmedabad-based Designmate — an Information Technology Communication (ITC) company, the business model grew naturally out of employing a physically challenged boy from the street who implored the company to give him work. The company that creates e-learning material for schools currently has 79 differently-abled people among the 129 animators it employs.

A tight labour market in recent years is helping open corporate doors to those who were previously seen as either too expensive or difficult to employ. People who were hitherto left “out” are now welcomed “inside”, because they are needed. And newer technologies are only making the integration that much easier.

Having said that, corporation as an institution is primarily motivated by profits. A more efficacious strategy to create inclusive workspaces would be to move beyond stereotypes of providing “special facilities” to developing improved designs for a workplace that hums with diversity. This, definitely, merits a boardroom strategy.

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