Business leaders need to stop using buzzword phrases such as ‘diversity is good for business’ unless they can back it up with solid evidence, according to Zurich.
Speaking at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development annual conference Nadia Younes, head of employee experience and wellbeing at the insurer, told delegates a lot of organisations put out statements about their values and vision.
“They say they have a zero tolerance,” Younes said.
“And I’ve counselled a lot of C suite executives that say ‘diversity is not only the right thing to do, it’s good for business’. That is a buzz phrase that I tell every executive to stop saying.
“Stop saying it unless you have the impact stories to back it up. If you want, say ‘diversity is not only the right thing to do, it’s good for business and here’s how’.”
Younes, who has led diversity, equity, employee experience and wellbeing initiatives across an array of sectors, cited the example of a project she worked on with a biotech company.
The project linked the firm’s employee resource groups that focused on ethnic minorities and racial minorities with scientists doing research on heart disease and diabetes because some of these communities had higher incidents of heart disease and diabetes.
Consequently, these groups and their understanding of their community and of the science improved the clinical outcomes of the drugs being developed.
Younes also touched on the infrequency of which leaders tended to look at data connected to underrepresented groups and said they were not paying enough attention to creating more diverse leadership.
“You’re lucky if they [leaders] look at data quarterly but usually they’ve looked at in arrears at the end of the year or when it’s too late to do anything,” she continued.
“Or they say, ‘we’re really going to focus on bringing in people, underrepresented individuals early in their career’, graduate programmes, internship programmes and that’s it. That’s where they stop.
“And the likelihood of having any equitable representation further up in the pipeline in powerful positions, in line positions, in leadership positions will take decades – if it happens at all.”