On April 7th, 2018, Kenilworth Hotel, Kolkata experienced an interactive session on ‘Diversity and Inclusion at the workplace’ for HR Professionals. Conducted by All Things Talent, a forum for HR professionals powered by iimjobs.com and hirist.com, the event provided an opportunity for the audience to learn and intermingle from the field’s experts.
The Kolkata session started off with a brief presentation by Prashant Sharma (Marketing at iimjobs.com), who, alongside introducing the topic of discussion, also put out the reinstate the objectives of All Things Talent as a forum for the HR community.
Picture: Prashant Sharma (Marketing at iimjobs,com) introducing the topic of discussion.
While the event revolved around the ideas of Diversity and Inclusion at workplaces, it also focused on various aspects of HR practices, strategies, marketing whilst tapping issues that come along with them.
The speakers of this event included:
- Arun Ray – Director & Head Human Resources Generalist Hub at Ericsson India
- Shivani Chaturvedi – Chief People Officer at Mjunction services Ltd.
- Adhiraj Dey – Corporate Vice President Human Resources at Blue Omnichannel
- Indrani Chatterjee – Director – Human Capital & Chief People Officer at PwC
- Dr Siddhartha Pande, senior HR Leader with decades of experience.
The discussion started off with the first speaker, Arun Ray. He began by sharing a picture of Ricky Ponting, the Australian cricket ex-captain. “He [Ponting] has acquired a lot of respect and prestige from the cricket world. And I love his cricket as well, his running style etc.”, he said. He followed that discussion with an example of Barcelona’s team players, who became the best of friends after having received support from each other. Arun drove home the point that success stories came together along with team efforts.
Arun also used multiple examples of diversity off his presentation and made it relatable for the audience. He was all for recruiting a diverse crowd, as they often led to good outcomes if those diversified talents were staged in sane values.
Mr. Arun Ray’s speech was followed by Shivani Chaturvedi’s presentation. After having introduced herself, Shivani explained that earlier, Diversity and Inclusion were just one of those ‘buzzwords’ she ended up getting caught in. “It was just fashionable for the corporate to talk about it”, she said. She talks about her military experiences, which keep her extremely grounded and passionate in her life. “There are military veterans out there who are a small group of people, with very diverse talent”, she said. She appreciates that there are veterans out there who are a part of iimjobs.com and other corporate sectors as well.
In her talk, she explains that while the youth does come from some kind of entitlement, it is important for them to make it inclusive for their leaders as well. On the same lines, Shivani added, “inclusivity is not all about equality. We need to look beyond equality and look at equity”.
Following Shivani, Adhiraj Dey came forward to share his thoughts. Before his introduction, Mr. Adhiraj Dey started off by reading one of the President of India’s tweets. “Please don’t just accommodate women, give them the power”, he said responding to the tweet.
After having given his introduction, Mr. Dey held a very interactive session with the audience, answering many unanswered questions on D&I. He also emphasized on the statistics of the LGBT population in the diversity of people. “We’ve to think of the ground realities when it comes to D&I”, he said.
The final speaker of the day’s event was Indrani Chatterjee. With over 18 years of HR experiences, Indrani Chatterjee said, “Everyone is an HR professional, we must not differentiate as business or HR”. According to her a successful organization should have HR persons to understand the people.
She motivated the audience along with her personal experiences, particularly emphasizing the fact that ‘you’ yourself can be the change when it came to diversity and inclusivity at the workplace. Along those lines, she highlighted the fact that India is a country of Unity in Diversity, and by nature, we Indians are extremely adaptable and acceptable to it. She discussed various causes of Diversity like maternal leaves, women, gender and cultural aspects in her presentation.
The speakers’ presentations were followed by an interactive panel discussion, where the HR experts answered interesting questions that were put forward by the enthusiastic audience.
This interaction not only involved a question and answer session but also had many from the audience who shared their experiences and opinions of their own on the topic.
The eagerness of the audience in engaging and questioning the speakers made it quite an enriching experience. The event ended with a luncheon. We would thank our speakers and the audience for making this event a grand success.
