The Hindu Business Line : Learning to manage diversity

S. PADMANABHAN, EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT and Head, Global Human Resources, TCS, at the Nasscom HR Summit on `The War for Talent' held recently in Chennai.

Diversity in companies is no longer about being melting pots, but being salad bowls," according to Grady Searcy. And he should know for he is Vice-President, Human Resources, Global Workforce Engagement at EDS. "We want people to retain their identity yet be integrated into the company," he said while speaking at the Nasscom HR Summit on `The War for Talent' held recently in Chennai. In a session on managing cross-cultural teams, speakers emphasised that managing a diverse workforce is no longer a choice, but an imperative.

The Indian workplace is no different from global MNCs. Infosys announced an intake of 300 graduates from universities in the US in 2006 and about 25 from universities in the UK in 2007 as part of its commitment to create a diversified workforce. The new employees will develop their engineering skills at Infosys Development Centres across India for six months before returning to Infosys offices in the US. TCS has announced plans to hire about 4,000 people from across the world.

Diverse workforce

"Currently, 7.5 per cent of our workforce consists of non-Indians," said S. Padmanabhan, Executive Vice-President and Head, Global Human Resources, TCS. Tracing the journey of diversity in India, Padmanabhan said that the whole exercise started in early 2000 when customers started setting up operations in China. "They wanted a known company to service their software needs there. And so, we had to set up operations there. Customers were expanding globally and we had to align our growth with them." For instance, now clients want to set up operations in Hungary because both would be in the same time zone. "And so now we have operations in Hungary and are recruiting people there," he added.

Another reason why companies opted to work out of multiple locations and therefore have a diverse workforce was the 9/11 disaster. "We wondered if we should risk all our assets in one place. There was a need to de-risk ourselves from such disasters." Obviously, diversity is no longer a simplistic exercise with companies boasting exciting hiring ratios comprising women, men, ethnics, age groups differently-abled employees and so on. "It is much more complex than this and is four-dimensional," explained Searcy.

Geographical culture

A diverse organisation is shaped or influenced by the basic corporate culture, which comes from the vision and mission of the founder-promoter. Then there's the influence of the geographical culture. The company is largely influenced by the personal culture of the people at the mid-management and senior management levels. Then, surprisingly, it is also shaped by the client culture.

This also means that diversity leaders and HR managers have started to ride the wave, albeit carefully. According to J. Kalyanaraman, Senior VP, Human Capital Management, HCL Infrastructure Division: "One of the most significant impacts of this trend has been on the entire human resource management system." EDS' Searcy said that diversity leaders have to go beyond ethnicity and gender diversity. "They have to be global business strategic partners and more important have access to the Board," he added.

Outlining some of the challenges for companies opting for an increasingly diverse and global workforce, Kalyanaraman said that as workers are increasingly relocating and migration is on the rise, organisations need to devise retention strategies with "a passionate focus on individual, team and geo-wise expectation charts." He recommends that companies should conduct a deep study of issues such as worldwide compensation and aspiration benchmarks. "No two countries have the same retirement benefits," said Padmanabhan of TCS. Therefore, policies have to be diverse enough to accommodate all demographic and social fabrics, pointed out Kalyanaraman of HCL.

Throwing light on some of the challenges faced by Indians as they transition to becoming a global company, Padmanabhan said: "We have been dealing with and are used to working with foreigners as clients or business associates, but certainly not as team members." He felt that our attitude towards non-Indians should change when we are peers.

Inherent capability

Dr Pallab Bandyopadhyay, Chief People Officer, Cambridge Solutions, said that managing diversity is not new to a country that has a multi-racial and multilingual population anyway. "We have the inherent capability to deal with this situation." Moreover, the IT industry was exposed to this situation very early on as most of its clientele was based outside India. "Unlike a textile manufacturer who sends consignments to a buyer and the deal is over, IT companies work with clients on a long-term basis and sometimes send employees on-site at the client's office, thus making us their colleagues," he reasoned out. Moreover, IT companies started going global long before the others did. In fact, Cambridge Solutions currently has 70 per cent non-Indians in its employee pool because of its various mergers and acquisitions.

When it comes to diversity, Scandinavian countries are better informed and sensitive to issues such as being an equal opportunity employer, said Mr Bandyopadhyay. "They place great value to being an equal opportunity employer, in fact, sometimes far more than the US," he said.

Changing attitude

Also what is changing now is the attitude toward working in India. "For non-Indians, coming here is considered a prestigious assignment and a great value-add to their resumes. "That's why you see a lot of expats in the country today and therefore we have a more diverse workforce."

For success in diversity programmes, EDS' Searcy recommends that companies should have global goals and local strategies, hire culturally competent leaders and emphasise on communication, "which plays an integral role."

In an independent study commissioned by Accenture on cross-cultural communication problems, it was found that the chief factors causing problems between onshore and offshore workers were different communication styles (76 per cent of the times), different approaches to completing talks (53 per cent), different attitudes toward conflict (44 per cent) and different decision-making styles (44 per cent). About 200 US business executives whose companies have outsourced business processes outside the country were interviewed here.

Kalyanaraman of HCL emphasised the vital role played by HR when he said: "The secret lies in creating base HR systems that are employee empowering and not transactional or servicing oriented."

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