Diversity is a business imperative

EMPLOYEE DIVERSITY  MICROSOFT

Singapore - Employee diversity is a business imperative as it allows Microsoft to establish and build a strong talent base and mirror their markets and clients to understand them better, says Jessica Tan, managing director of Microsoft Singapore.

For Microsoft, the issue of employee diversity is a business imperative as it allows the company to establish and build a strong talent base, mirror their markets and clients and understand them better.

Employee diversity also helps to foster innovation within the organisation, Tan adds. "If you hire everyone from one type of institution or a certain field, or certain schools, you would see like-minded thinking and no new ideas will come."

And the company walks the talk as well. Tan, who will be speaking at the Human Capital Summit later this month cites an incident a few years ago where the Microsoft Korea management realised that it would have to diversify its leadership team in order to tap into new markets and areas for growth.

"We had great talent, but a lot of homogeneous thinking," she says. So the Korean outfit took on deliberate steps to make the team more internationalised. "We brought people who had the right competency levels to be part of the senior leadership team in Korea."

As such, Microsoft Korea now has a Russian, American and Singaporean on their leadership team. The only minor inconvenience that arose from this was that meetings no longer could be conducted in Korean but in English, she adds.

The same is true for gender as well, Tan adds, as she says 50% of her direct reports and half of the Asia Pacific board comprise of women. And in addition to Singapore, the managing directors for Microsoft outfits in Malaysia, Thailand and Australia are women.

But in order to support such an employee diversity strategy, Tan says companies first need to have an environment where employees are measured based on their performance.

Secondly, companies need to provide an environment for all employees to be able to perform well. This can be done with the use of technology, where one is able to work off-site, Tan says. "In our case, we provide tools and technology that enable people to do their work in a more flexible fashion. They don't always have to be physically there [in the office]," she says.

In addition, Tan says managers need to be trained on how to manage and coach a diverse workforce and be sensitive to the needs of the people. For instance, Tan says if a manager asks an off-site employee if the person is taking a break by being away from the office, this will hamper the attitude of workplace flexibility.

Lastly, Tan adds that diversity also means providing spaces for employees' needs - such as lactation rooms and prayer rooms. 

Employee diversity and inclusion does not mean that companies should ignore differences between employees, Tan says. Instead, it is about recognising, respecting, and allowing these differences to exist in an non-threatening environment.

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