Dear Colleagues,

Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) in the workplace is an important topic at the intersection of two socially related UN Sustainable Development Goals: Gender Equality (#5) and Decent Work and Economic Growth (#8). While it is being talked about for a while, it also has a new word added which is ‘Belonging’. The word Belonging centers around the employee experience of feeling accepted in the workplace, valued, useful and wanted. With multigenerational, multi gendered and cross sectional workforce, it is important for each one of us to feel a sense of belonging. It is not enough to write DEI statements into the vision and misssion statement, the appropriate ‘Organisational Culture and community’ needs to be developed, one that eliminates unconscious biases, boosts employee engagement and incraeses the employee net promoter score (eNPS).

According to a 2022 Gallup study only 31% of employees said that their organization is committed to improving racial justice or equality in their workplace and 25% said that issues of race and equity are openly discussed where they work, while 37% said that they participated in a training program on D&I, and 30% saying they participated in a town hall on the subject. Hence while the employres are claiming that they have increased their spend on DEIB, it is not reaching the stakeholders nor is it creating the right impact. Hence the efforts on DEIb could easily get lost. However a common agenda and well articlated action plans could help. DEIB is an evolving concept and needs strategic vision, training and development to be implemented well in organisations on a sustained basis. Building awareness and advocacy maybe just the first step.

For this, it is important to collect the different organizational case studies, challenges, research papers that have been implemented and consider their impacts. Research articles and reviews in this area of study are welcome.

Dr. Kakoli Sen

Section editor