Summary – BullzI Rebuttal #1 : Workplace Prejudice

Thank you all for the wonderful responses and participation.

As the poll clearly suggests, prejudice, in some form or the other exists in corporate India. Some of you have also asked for answers on how does it get tackled. There are no simple easy answers but here are some of the things that are being practised.

Equal Opportunity Employer
“Equal opportunity is a descriptive term for an approach intended to provide a certain social environment in which people are not excluded from the activities of society, such as education, employment, or health care, on the basis of immutable traits. Equal opportunity practices include measures taken by organizations to ensure fairness in the employment process.” – Wikipedia

“: an employer who agrees not to discriminate against any employee or job applicant because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, physical or mental disability, or age” Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary

When a corporation declares itself as such it commits to having representation of all segements in its employee base. It also commits to having representation, of women, coloured, Hispanic etc at senior levels as well. At a functional, operational level it boils down to ‘minimum quotas’. I know of a certain corporation which hired a woman in a very senior position in marketing because they were short on women in senior positions.

Importantly, in such an organisation, there is a clear message that gets communicated that biases and prejudices on the basis of sex, colour, ethnicity etc will not be allowed to come in the way of work or careers.

The flip side is that it leads to very ‘politically correct’ environments where you choose all your words carefully, least you offend someone or land in some trouble. I guess it will even out as we go along.

The Sexual Harassment Act
I am using the term ‘Act’ here loosely to denote the whole set of procedures and bodies that have come up specifically to address this issue. For a complete guideline on this issue please read http://www.indiatogether.org/combatlaw/vol2/issue3/harass.htm

The awareness of the fact that the distressed party (largely women) can seek redressal, will in itself go a long way in dealing with this issue. It needs to be part of stated policy and procedures in a company. HR departments need to be extra vigilant in spotting the first signs (and there will be many signs from a harassed person) and nip it in the bud, publically if neccessary. Point to note here, the harassed person needs to know that if redressal is not forthcoming from within the organisation, she/he can seek it from outside as well. There are NGOs that will provide help.

Culture of Meritocracy and Competence
As some of you have mentioned, your organisations have transcended these biases and are run on the basis of merit and competence. It also seems to be truer of younger organisations. When the culture, systems and processes are transparently designed to operate on the basis of merit and competence alone, prejudices and biases remain minor irritants that do not really affect people. The ‘elite’ in the organisation will be those who are best equipped for their roles and not the caste brother, fellow Bengali (or whoever) or the ‘man’ just because he is a man.

The opposite of course is equally true and here the role of the Leader cannot be stressed enough. If he plays favourites on lines of race, caste, sex etc., the organisation will follow suit with double the enthusiasm. HR has a huge role to play here to spot these tendencies and eradicate as quickly as possible.

Managed Diversity
One of the traits in common amongst successful teams is their ability to manage diversity. It is the existence of different skills, personalities that makes for a balanced team. And all organisations are a sum of many different teams. Organisations can institutionalise the celebration of diversity. Depending on size, geographical location etc. organisations can celebrate different festivals, have special food days in canteens, run internal campaigns around ‘mother’s day’, ‘woman’s day’…..just different ways of saying all of this is equally important.

A Looming Challenge
Whereas we are learning, as a nation, to live with and respect many of these differences, the coming years are going to throw up a challenge much bigger with the potential to change the corporate landscape completely. As India Inc battles with trying to find talent to run their growth engines, we are already beginning to see increasing numbers of people from small towns, non-English medium backgrounds entering the corporate world.

Their numbers will invariably increase and the meritorious amongst them will knock on the doors of the corner cabins with increasing frequency. How is the old gaurd going to fight their feeling of superiority born from their command of English and their large town upbringing? How will it assimilate the new workforce in its leadership and still be outward looking? Hmmm….food for further thought.