#124: Gowri Kustagi on the next step beyond Diversity and Inclusion, her three most important leadership lessons, and the overlooked essentials of employee well-being

On this episode of The Shape of Work, we have Gowri Kustagi, L&D and Diversity Lead- AMEA Region at ABB Industrial Automation.

Having been a global leader with over 25 years of strategic experience across various HR functions such as change management, D&I, leadership, talent and organisational development, Gowri has worked with giants like Reuters, Le Meridien and Cerner Healthcare.

With a background that extensive, it’s no surprise this episode covers a lot of ground.

We discuss with Gowri:

• The three most important leadership lessons from her professional experience
• How any organization can truly embrace diversity: the next step beyond “Diversity & Inclusion”
• Work culture - who sets the tone? 
• Talking to the C-Suite about Inclusion and Diversity
• Does workplace diversity generate a higher job acceptance rate?
• The overlooked essentials of employee well-being
• Ways diversity and inclusion changed in the last year

Three Important Leadership Lessons from Gauri

These are three leadership lessons, according to Gowri:

1. Learn from Everyone
2. Build your network
3. Need the leader to be self-aware 

Leadership is an art that cannot be learned by reading books. Books only serve to give pointers, but the real-life lessons play out without guaranteeing how it will happen. A leader needs to be self-aware in facing those challenges which life throws back at you.

Pointers & Steps for Creating and Maintaining Workplace Diversity & Inclusion (DNI)

Gowri states that the increase in diversity does not directly translate to effectiveness. It now depends on how an organization harnesses diversity and its willingness to shape its power structure.

Three critical modifications can help make an important and powerful business case for the DNI initiative.

• Transform the platitudes that we make into sound empirically-based conclusions.
• Business leaders must embrace a broad vision of success that encompasses learning, creation, innovation, flexibility, equity, and human dignity.
• Leaders must ask themselves the hard questions in terms of creating effectiveness with demographic diversity.

Three-steps to bring in more DNI

1. Build trust among people in the organizations, where they feel safe to speak freely. 
2. Actively work against discrimination by building psychological safety and trust.
3. Embrace a wide range of styles and voices and learn from cultural differences.

Tactics to bring about DNI

• Offer flexible work schedules.
• Conduct pre-hire assessments to gauge the candidate’s personality for job fit.
• Encourage referrals from diverse employees.
• Use blind hiring methods that prohibit unconscious biases from creeping in.

Correlation between DNI and Talent Acquisition

Bringing in DNI has a lot to do with the journey undertaken by the organization. If the organization is ahead in its journey, the HR team can easily depend on getting referrals from existing diversity within the company. 

L&D for Employee Retention

L&D is today looked at as an intervention to resolve business challenges. Recent studies indicate that high attrition within companies is primarily due to the lack of “developmental opportunities”. Companies often cite L&D as an engagement tool that encourages employees to foresee growth in their assigned job role through developmental opportunities.

Follow Gowri on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Junius Dsilva