Dell EMC India: Building a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce

Dell EMC India COE has transformed itself over the years, delivering innovation in the areas of Cloud, Big Data and security. The company perceives a diverse and inclusive workforce as a business imperative, a key driver of innovation, and a metric that helps attract and retain top talent.

The business case for diversity at workplace has never been so apparent. Shortage of millions of skilled workers can be eliminated by equal employment of diverse workforce. A country’s GDP can grow by as much as 20-30 percent, just by including women as a part of the workforce. From a corporate performance perspective, companies with diverse leadership and management tend to perform at least 50 percent better than their peers.

For Dell EMC India, the business imperative for diversity and inclusion is intrinsically linked to its innovation strategy, as multiple voices help in generating newer and fresher ideas about products and practices. Dell EMC India COE proactively established a comprehensive Diversity and Inclusivity (D&I) strategy to ensure equal opportunities at the workplace to its employees irrespective of gender, cultures, age, and also to nurture a truly inclusive work culture. 

Dell EMC India COE’s D&I strategy works at multiple levels for maximum impact. The key initiatives include: 

• Women in Action has been designed to foster gender inclusiveness and ensure holistic development through employee engagement, professional development and community outreach programs — including regular speed mentoring sessions. A training program RISE aims to create a pipeline for senior women leadership by identifying and grooming potential talent.
• The Disability Empowerment Resource Group (DERG) India Network is committed to improving the quality of life and the standard of services to all team members with disabilities, individuals and their families. DERG aims to assist EMC employees and their families by promoting awareness and understanding of disabilities, in addition to providing networking opportunities around the globe, use of online resource library, seminars etc.
• 'Redefine Abilities' is a one of a kind, industry first internship program for persons with profound disability that aims to provide proactive and structured internship opportunities for potential candidates and help secure Economic independence and dignity for PwDs.

Other activities and highlights include:

• Partnership and continuous engagement with NGO's.  
• Participation in conferences to understand and network with other companies and NGOs working towards enabling and engaging PWDs (eg: Leveraging human capital through disabled talents hosted by GRAAM (Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement, Bangalore Blind Walk -Project Vision).
• Social Media Campaign inviting PWDs to apply to Dell EMC. 
• Employee Referral Drives with Dell EMC educating DERG hiring process and encouraging referrals.

• Today, women constitute close to 29 percent of the company’s workforce
• Since the launch of the India chapter of the Disability Empowerment Resource Group (DERG) in 2012, EMC India has seen a 450 percent rise in differently-abled employee base.
• The Redefine Abilities initiative set a leadership benchmark within the industry and the team has consulted with other organizations on establishing similar programs
• The TA team voluntarily learnt sign language to communicate better with their hearing impaired colleagues in a first of its kind gesture of inclusivity.