“Intention is the key to designing a balanced workforce”

How does maintaining a diverse and balanced workforce benefit an enterprise?

Diversity is not merely a token of goodwill, as it has come to be treated of late. More than the individuals who form a diverse collective, it is largely the company that benefits from a group that’s truly diverse in backgrounds of gender and culture. Avon, for one, is extremely sensitive to maintaining this fine balance and the results are perceptible – there is plurality in perspectives, more flow of creative ideas, different approaches towards problem-solving and, most importantly, a healthy environment where everyone has something to learn from each other.

 

How do you propagate and promote Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity in your organization?

Our entire legacy of over 135 years is built upon the foundation of diversity and inclusivity, so these principles are hard-wired into our very core. The key to designing a balanced workforce starts way before recruitment, with the ‘intention’ to create a fair and impartial environment for all, that’s free of biases. With our heart in the right place, these are some of the practices that help us maintain a balanced approach:

1. Diversity among top management, for it reinstates trust amongst the employees from diverse backgrounds
2. Acknowledgement of a variety of cultural practices, focusing on holidays and celebrations
3. Special attention to the ways we can embrace non-discriminatory practices and policies, by letting everyone be heard
4. Eliminating gender pay inequality in the organisation, for nothing wins people’s trust as transparency
5. Eliminating bias in the employee evaluation process and promotion opportunities

What are the key facets of building and maintaining a workplace culture that promotes equity?

I think that equality is a way of life. It cannot be established sustainably through ad hoc interventions/campaigns. At Avon, we do this every day in the way we make business decisions by being open & inclusive towards ideas coming from each member of the team  And the core of this trickles across, right from the way we hire, to the way we progress talent in the organization as well. This is how we institutionalize it.