The business case for attaining diversity, equity, and inclusivity

Although the idea of recruiting diverse candidates seems straightforward, DEI initiatives should be more complex to yield the best result and not fall flat. With the help of Éva Zanin, from the Global Diversity & Inclusion Department at Deutsche Telekom, we examine the prospects of a genuine yet business-focused strategy towards Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

 I entered the corporate sector after a decade of academic career being a social scientist and a researcher. In 2017 I joined Magyar Telekom’s sustainability team to put my skills into practice as the editor of the annual Sustainability Report. Along with the investors’ assessment of the corporate ESG performance we found that if we improve our performance as a more inclusive employer, we could actually improve employee retention, reduce negative fluctuation and even improve our investor rankings. How do we maintain human rights informed operations, provide an accessible digital environment and what do we do for gender equality, for example. That was when we started developing Telekom’s diversity strategy and its rollout. Last November I transferred to Deutsche Telekom to work on the global rollout of an international corporate DE&I strategy.

You have to know the why of it. Why do you do it? If this is something pushed on you by your mother company, ask back. Nobody has to do this because it is fashionable. Nobody has to do this because someone told them to. If you want to invest in diversity, you must have your clear business case. The best business cases for investing in diversity are always twofold. They come from serving our customers better and from us aspiring to be a more inclusive employer.

Becoming a more inclusive employer is becoming more and more necessary by the day as companies struggle with finding skilled technological and IT staff among other talent scarcities. It is a business imperative allowing companies to expand their market presence serving an ever growing diverse and complex customer base. The same applies to better products and services. Businesses must incorporate diversity into their programming, product development, B2B and B2C servicing. The best way to accomplish that is through a diverse workforce. Businesses miss out on great market opportunities by not representing or not providing sufficient services for people with disabilities or on a neurodiverse spectrum for example. In Hungary alone, we estimate that underserved market to be around one million directly and indirectly affected customers. Once businesses start to think about diversity, they will immediately have a business case for it.

There are no budgetary or business boundaries that organizations should be aware of to start working on their diversity initiatives. All resources are already on the ground for it. You do not need a chief diversity officer or a whole department dedicated to start. Even if you want to ask for an investment, think about it holistically, find the business case for it, and you will find the clear argument to put budget, skill, or human labour behind it. In an ideal scenario companies would understand that the business case lies at the core of their purpose and their culture of providing the best service for all.

We reference women first because the female population is the largest minority population on Earth. And when I talk about minorities, I mean access to power. But diversity is more of a spectrum of at least seven dimensions and their intersections. So, we can talk about gender, race, ethnicity, age, ability, sexual direction, and religion. We must think about these holistically, knowing we cannot act immediately in all dimensions. What companies can do is go back to their data and start to measure which are the segments or intersections that have the most pressing demand for taking action for the sake of belonging.

Integration can work in many ways, depending on the company’s resources. In any case, this is essentially still an HR-driven work. Some companies have the privilege to invest in specific departments working on diversity. But plenty of companies invest in diversity initiatives without having the budget of running a separate department or even having a person dedicated to diversity work.

If diversity, equity, and inclusion as a mindset are at the core values of a business and the company culture is conscious in a way that keeps employees and leaders reminded of that fact, then this will be reflected in their everyday business. Another approach is to work with diversity champions who contribute to the individual work of each customer-facing segment or HR work within the company. But first, businesses need to ensure that they are inclusive employers.

There are many, many differences. In my experience, some of the most successful companies in tech have invested in diversity, equity, and inclusion from day zero. What does this mean? For example, at Netflix it means they have their corporate culture deck at the center of their operations, thus diversity, equity, and inclusion is being reflected at the core of their business operations. The culture deck was not something additionally developed, but it is a core proclamation of what each and every person at the company stands for every day no matter what.

There is another interesting hiring trend that can quite easily threaten some small tech companies is a sort of a ‘masculine bias’. I have seen a number of very savvy young tech companies that were formed by a group of exceptionally talented guys who offered a unique, quick, fast, easy solution to a complex tech riddle. These companies usually reach their peak in 6 to 7 years and find it hard to grow bigger, not because of the lack of geniuses in the room, but because of the biased hiring processes relying pretty much on finding the best fit to an already homogenous team instead of hiring someone with a brand new perspective. They tend to hire not strategically but organically. When you have organic hiring, you have biased hiring and you tend to employ a more homogenous team. That usually has its limitations in market productivity because of the limitations of market space you can reach.

My primary recommendation is to invest in education. Without diverse minds, there is no diversity. This is why I find companies like Green Fox Academy particularly important. If there are opportunities that attract a diverse set of curious minds and allows them to bring their full potential to work and create brilliance in tech, companies will continue to have a diverse talent pipeline to build on.

And this brings me to my second point. Digital businesses need to work on their language. When they educate, recruit, and want to attract diverse talent, they should use a more inclusive vocabulary, terminology, to allow the wording, and the entire proposal of a career opportunity be attractive for a diverse set of talents. A good way to do so is to have a diverse set of test readers determining whether they feel encouraged to apply. It is essential to listen to their experiences. “Do you see yourself reflected in this proposal? What would I need to change for you to want to apply?”

The third thing that companies could do is to lead by example and let their culture shine through whatever they have to say. The corporation size does not matter but build a culture where people want to belong, because it radiates that everyone is included. Be open, and don’t be afraid of being open.

The fourth is to start to think about DEI from a business perspective. Find the business rationale for having diversity measures and sustainability measures in operations. Because if equity gives you more profit, at the end of the day, you will aim for it. But you always have to consult your business. How does this support my business? How can I link this to my business growth? Because it is contributing to your business growth, and it is a business question.

In terms of technology and IT development, start to think about your products from the perspective of universal design. Create your products in a way that they allow users with diverse abilities to participate in the digital world with dignity and independence.  That will be the key distinguishing factor very soon for all digital enterprises. This also points to the increased demand of having digital talents on the market who already learn coding with a universal design perspective.