Diversity in the New Normal

Post-2020, COVID changed the world.

Homes became offices, quarantine centers, and schools! Responsibilities equally split between members of the family. Firms worldwide shifted to the telecommute mode to curtail the spread of the pandemic.

Parents became part-time teachers, playmates, and COVID defenders while donning full-time employees’ hats in a never seen before situation.

The corrosive pandemic affected businesses and their ways of working throughout the world in more ways than one. Organizational goals, policies, hierarchies, team dynamics, incidents all changed. The stress of a changed domestic life and the pressure to match up to the required competencies to deliver at work made life challenging for people globally.

And surprisingly, issues related to diversity began to raise their ugly heads.

Diversity training in the workforce enables employees to accept individuals from varied ethnic backgrounds and orientations, such as color, ethnicity, language, country, sexual orientation (LGBTQ+), religion, gender, socioeconomic status, age, and physical and mental ability.

I had read this definition many times before. However, I never quite thought much about it until I connected with two of my old friends. They had incidentally suffered due to the lack of such an initiative at their respective offices.

Ron, my friend Tim’s supervisor, usually calls for a critical daily update client meeting around 23:00 hours. While other team members used to join the discussion on time, Tim was always invariably a few minutes late. He used to proactively inform them that he would not be able to make it on time, as he had to put his 3-year-old daughter to sleep around that time. Often during the video call, his partner Murray would be found trying to soothe the child and put her to sleep if she woke up due to the sound of people talking. Considering they lived in a studio apartment with a combined bedroom, living area, and kitchen, Tim had little scope to shift to another room to attend the meeting.

Ron could not understand why Tim could not come to the meeting on time and couldn’t find another quiet nook to take the video call. Slowly his irritation turned to sarcastic jibes during the morning huddle, where he would joke about the matinee show at 23:00 hours before the other team members.

The result was that Tim began to dread interacting with the other team members and his boss. Tim went from being known as one of the most creative idea givers and chilled employees at work to one of the quietest ones. He would wonder what made people take jibes at him the most.

Was it the fact that he had a same-sex partner? Or that he had adopted a child of another ethnic origin? or that he lived in a humble space that couldn’t afford him even 10 minutes of quiet time…

While the video is an excellent medium for maintaining social connections, it may be taxing and frustrating for others. It must also be “alright” to be off camera. While seeing each other has benefits, it might be challenging for certain people due to disability/chronic pain, mental health, neurodiversity, or privacy concerns. Such interactions should not blur the distinctions between home and work too much. Leaders and policies must make it evident that everyone’s availability is limited. It is crucial to ensure that the work culture must respect people’s boundaries and home life.

Preeti’s office made it mandatory for employees to be always online on video. Unfortunately, Ameeta, an employee of this firm, was one of the many domestic violence victims during the pandemic.

As a result, team members would often see and hear things that should not have come to the notice of her office colleagues. However, the good part was that she got support from her colleagues in getting out of the situation. The firm also made it optional for people to be online on video calls all the time.

These are two real examples of what happens when employees are not sensitized to collaborate with colleagues from diverse backgrounds.

The far-fetching repercussions of the lack of respect for diversity are far worse.

Such training facilitates smoother team compatibility, boosts employee morale, broadens the mindset, and encourages the participation of team members. In situations such as those of COVID, we ended up connecting with our colleagues from near and far, hitherto united via video calls from office board rooms, at a more personal level. We saw their homes, their families, their cultures, their struggles with the fearsome pandemic, with all of us trying to row the boat of productivity and keep it afloat amid the riotous pandemic. McKinsey has an excellent data-backed report on how diverse employees felt during the pandemic.

Even when companies had to downsize their workforce due to the COVID-induced economic slowdown, women and people of color reported having felt the heat differently from the rest of the group.

G-Cube has created numerous such diversity campaigns for its clients. For example, campaigns focused not just on sensitization to such issues via a stand-alone eLearning or Virtual instructor-led session. But repeated reinforcement via spaced information and aids is used to reiterate the importance of diversity. We even designed our cohort learning interventions with suggestions to include people from diverse groups for maximum impact contributions.

In fact, one can go beyond the standard WBT, ILT route when it comes to intervention as crucial as this one. For example, think of multiplayer team games that join members from across the world in a team. Team members from diverse backgrounds can be asked to bring in learnings specific to their environment to contribute to the solution for a hypothetical problem in the game. This practice will enable people to form bonds, appreciate the differences, learn from them, and help them carry the spirit forward when working together in an actual work situation. The possibilities are endless, and the fruits of this endeavor, worthwhile for everyone.

Diversity is the need of the hour, especially since the pandemic has shown that our world is One. Our problems are One, the people are One, and it’s up to all of us to work together collaboratively toward our combined goals and aspirations.

How do you deliver diversity training in your workplace? Have you enabled your multi-ethnic workforce to work cohesively and seamlessly towards your org-level goals, with respect and empathy as the underlying tenets of human relationships? Get in touch with G-Cube to explore the coterie of exciting, tried and tested frameworks and approaches we have used for our clients.