Diversity and Inclusion: Creating a sense of belonging and purpose

Diversity and inclusion is no longer a nice to have.

If 2020 was responsible for putting diversity and inclusion at the top of the management agenda, 2021 is the year for action and progress. Oracle spoke to UNLEASH about how to navigate this complex space. Read on for some of their key insights.

• According to McKinsey, companies with higher diversity in their board and executive teams have 36% better financial performance.
• A report by Deloitte says companies that practice diversity and inclusion have 2.3 times more cash flow per employee and 1.4 times more revenue.
• A study by Boston Consulting Group found that companies with more diverse management teams achieve 19% higher revenue.

In the US, NASDAQ is proposing companies on the exchange must have at least two diverse board members. In Germany, the government will be enforcing quotas for women on boards of greater than three. These are just a couple of the many new diversity and inclusion policies and mandates enforced by regulatory bodies and governments across the globe.

Diversity and inclusion is no longer just a top priority for employee engagement and retention, it is also a strategic imperative for delivering better business outcomes and ensuring compliance.

In this interview, UNLEASH sat down with Emily He, Oracle’s senior vice president of the human capital management cloud business group, to discuss how the multinational organization is approaching diversity and inclusion and what tools and strategies they are implementing.

Here are some of the themes that were discussed:

Connecting diversity and inclusion with business outcomes

Emily told us that the biggest challenge organizations are facing today was connecting diversity and inclusion with business outcomes.

She noted how some companies are taking steps to track demographic data and measure diversity and inclusion but this is simply not enough.

“We’re encouraging companies to not just measure diversity and inclusion, but to really connect that to the business outcomes, and more importantly embed diversity and inclusion practices in everything they do, ” Emily told UNLEASH.

“Organizations must focus on making employees feel like they belong and then translating that into equitable access to career growth opportunities.”

It’s all about transparency

Transparency is key. “Publishing data on gender, ethnicity, limiting management ethnicity management, etc. is really, really important. But it’s also about transparency into career and development opportunities for those who might have not have been considered before,” Emily added.

For this reason, Oracle recently launched a solution called Opportunity Marketplace, which enables employees to see not only job postings but also volunteer opportunities and other projects they can participate in.

The importance of intentional practices

One of the silver linings of COVID-19 is the heightened sense of community. However, Emily stresses the need to be more intentional about how we foster that sense of belonging in the workplace, especially when people are working remotely.

Emily gave an example of the intentional practices at Oracle: “As soon as the pandemic hit, we started doing employee surveys on a weekly basis, and based on employee surveys, we would introduce new benefits to employees to make them feel like we are responding to them.”