GUEST LECTURE ON DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
Mr. Ajay Prakash Dhanak, HR Head,
Dr. Reddy’s Labs, Visakhapatnam, addressed the students of MBA first Year on
the topic “Diversity and Inclusion” on 13th November, 2015. He gave
a vibrant presentation and defined diversity as the collective mixture of
similarity and differences in people with respect to socio economic, cultural
backgrounds, age, gender, ethnicity, education levels, race, physical
abilities, etc. He said that talent may go scarce in 21st century
and also said that privileged people sometimes cannot understand the importance
of being privileged. He mentioned that diversity cannot flourish until and
unless there is inclusive environment which refers to the environmental support
provided by the organization to deal with the diverse workforce. He spoke about
historical perspective and diversity in Indian context. He argued the case for
diversity inclusion and described that 65% of Indians are of working age and this
will reach 68% by the year 2030. He gave an illustration of Google by saying
that 40% of employees in Google are women and 30% are of minority status. He
highlighted that diversity teams are more creative and perform better in
problem solving compared to homogeneous teams. He also mentioned the ways to
effectively run the diversity agenda in detail and also spoke about the
diversity quotient at Dr Reddy’s lab. This seminar was organized by Colloquium
club of GITAM Institute of Management.