True transformation of corporate structures needs a plurality of views, skills and ideas
Loading player...
How do we adequately address societal prejudice? This question, and its various derivatives, has become recurrent on the agendas of management meetings throughout corporate SA. For many within their structures, however, this question is actually stripped of the weight of its required efforts and presents more like, how do we avoid being the next entity to appear in the headlines over a prejudice-based scandal?
In truth, we are not where we could be with the transformative efforts of corporates in SA. We agree that it may be harsh to completely dismiss the efforts of those corporates that have implemented well-meaning polices to address transformation and representation within their structures. A number of corporates have already come to accept the research that reveals that a diverse workforce provides more value-add for a company than a homogeneous group could.
However, “well-meaning” policies do not equate to effective policies. Those policies, which, admittedly, may have led to a degree of prescribed transformation and representation within these entities, may no longer be sufficient when we consider the pace of societal progression on these issues against an honest internal analysis of culture, development and retention patterns.
The wealth of diversity within a corporation only reveals itself when there is diversity of ideas, skills, approaches to practice and general experience within a corporation.
The truth is that a company that carries out this box-ticking exercise can’t easily be considered a space that allows for a worthwhile degree of variation to flourish, uninhibited by lingering, silent prejudices.
How, then, do we address the lingering prejudice even within the most well-meaning of corporate entities? We would be brazen to assume that we present the complete answer to this question. However, what we may present is a thought path through which corporates may begin answering that question for themselves.
We begin, quite bluntly, with the suggestion to make an increased effort to filter younger, more diverse groups of employees not just into the employee body but into its existing leadership structures.
Historically, the view has been taken by corporates that good recruitment statistics enable an entity to brag about doing enough to transform, or consider that employee list to be interchangeable with one’s experience of an entity. This ignores the reality that we are dealing with a larger, more invisible issue.
Employee quotas may appear to be a direct fix to boosting representation within the entity, but it does ...
In truth, we are not where we could be with the transformative efforts of corporates in SA. We agree that it may be harsh to completely dismiss the efforts of those corporates that have implemented well-meaning polices to address transformation and representation within their structures. A number of corporates have already come to accept the research that reveals that a diverse workforce provides more value-add for a company than a homogeneous group could.
However, “well-meaning” policies do not equate to effective policies. Those policies, which, admittedly, may have led to a degree of prescribed transformation and representation within these entities, may no longer be sufficient when we consider the pace of societal progression on these issues against an honest internal analysis of culture, development and retention patterns.
The wealth of diversity within a corporation only reveals itself when there is diversity of ideas, skills, approaches to practice and general experience within a corporation.
The truth is that a company that carries out this box-ticking exercise can’t easily be considered a space that allows for a worthwhile degree of variation to flourish, uninhibited by lingering, silent prejudices.
How, then, do we address the lingering prejudice even within the most well-meaning of corporate entities? We would be brazen to assume that we present the complete answer to this question. However, what we may present is a thought path through which corporates may begin answering that question for themselves.
We begin, quite bluntly, with the suggestion to make an increased effort to filter younger, more diverse groups of employees not just into the employee body but into its existing leadership structures.
Historically, the view has been taken by corporates that good recruitment statistics enable an entity to brag about doing enough to transform, or consider that employee list to be interchangeable with one’s experience of an entity. This ignores the reality that we are dealing with a larger, more invisible issue.
Employee quotas may appear to be a direct fix to boosting representation within the entity, but it does ...