Discuss about the HRMT 20026 Strategic Human Resource Management of Accenture.
The human resource department of a company is responsible for all the people and people related problems. Having an inclusive work culture is prevalent among several companies old and new, as it brings with it not only a sense of optimism in the work space rather it also has several advantages for the operations of the company. Diversity among the workforce enables the management to deals with problems in an efficient manner with the help of people from various background will have different perspective to one problem (De León et al., 2014). With globalization and advancement in technology the companies have a larger outlook towards business operation and ways and means to make the work space better and more accepting to the employees (Martin, 2014). In this report the diversity and inclusive approach of Accenture is going to be analyzed. The policies and the ways in which the company implements these are being determined in the assignment.
Accenture is an organisation that provides various operational services to the clients such as strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. The company operates in a number of countries and is aimed to drive innovation to make life simple. Accenture has been on Fortune magazine’s list of “best companies to work for” for consecutively 10 years (Accenture.com, 2018).
Accenture aims diversity and inclusive human resource as the company understands the importance of knowledge and skills and it is imbedded in the core values and principles of the company. The policy of the company is not to be discriminated an individual based on their religion, disability, gender identity, gender, ethnicity and expression, age or sexual orientation. However Accenture believes that it is not about these aspects in life that make a company inclusive it is about accepting an individual as a human being (Accenture.com, 2018).
The management is of the view that that an inclusive population in the company encourages innovation and creativity. The policy is to ensure that people are judged while hiring based on their qualification both academic and experience in the job profile. Inclusive policy of Accenture directs the people to have an encouraging and accepting work environment so that people are motivated and are focused on their prospect of the company (Accenture.com, 2018).
On the other hand the company also practices an inclusive policy for the suppliers as well. According to the Chief Procurement Officer, this policy helps the company in maintaining long term value among customers as well as the community. This practice also helps the company in maintaining the competitive advantage by offering cost-competitive supply.
The gender equality is the current drive of the company making sure that men and women should get equal opportunity and the management must ensure that the number of men and women population working in the organisation should also be equal. There is a 2025 objective that the company has set to achieve gender-balanced human resource, not only that the agenda for 2020 is set to have 25 percent managing directors to be women.
Accenture also supports the LGBT community by focusing on an individual’s achievements and encourages the people to be “Authentic Self”. The company promotes the culture in the workspace by channeling the hash tag #PrideAtAccenture at every significant social media platform (Accenture.com, 2018). Acceptance of people with disability is also the policy of the company based on the value that every individual is unique and has strengths to contribute. Based on personal issues and problems faced by the employees, the management also allows leaves. There are policies where the workplace is accessible for a person with disability in order to encourage and promote their performance (Accenture.com, 2018).
The productivity among the people associated with an organisation is directly influenced by the work environment, the policies of the company, the flexibility that the company allows the people. A person can perform better in an environment that is favorable and thus it can be said that acceptance of a person is important in a work space (Sabharwal, 2014). Accenture is a company that has encouraged inclusive and diversity among the people associated with the business as the management feels that it encourages innovation and creativity among the people (Barak, 2016). Accenture’s policies of diversity are aimed to inculcate a sense of belonging among the people. The interest of the people associated with the business aligned with the objective of the business helps in attaining success. The rich diversity among the people makes a healthy competition environment which again helps in improving the productivity of the people.
Another aspect of diversity that improves the production is responsiveness, as a multinational company Accenture has to deal with a number of clients who are from a varied background and have different approach to problems and conflicts, in these cases diversity among the people help in achieving high performance (Peretz et al., 2015). The policy of the company is to look beyond as well as break any barriers on the way of achieving success for an individual, this is an encouraging policy as a person who might have faced issues in the past regarding any kind of discrimination can work in such an environment freely knowing that they are not being judge based on any factor other than their job role and their skill.
Working with a diverse group of people enables’ the company to have a varied perspective on problems thus helping the management to deal with issues and sort out solutions in an innovative manner. This in turn helps in maintaining an environment in the organisation which develops a sense of belonging and acceptance encouraging the people with higher performance level. Accenture believes that diversity and inclusion among the people brings diverse talent and skill to strive towards achieving the objective of the organization (de Leeuw et al., 2014).
Innovation is the development of an existing idea and companies like Accenture bank upon their human resource to ensure there is continuous innovation in the process as well as in the service (Anderson et al. 2014). Diversity plays an important role in achieving in delivering innovation as people from various backgrounds have various and innovative approach in the way things are dealt with (Qian et al., 2013). For example a person who is an Indian will deal with an issue of an Indian client better than a person who does not understand the culture or the language that is used, in the process, this person can innovate the way of communication and the way to deal with issue.
Innovation is developed due to the exposure of knowledge and ideas among the people thus it is important for any organisation to have a diverse culture to develop the platform and help in innovation. Following are some of the aspects that the company gathers when it embraces diversity, firstly there is language diversity which helps in understanding and improving the competencies especially for a multinational company like Accenture (Van Beers & Zand, 2014). Diversity enhances the skill set and expertise improving the chances of an individual to innovate and perform better. The way a person thinks or channels expression is heavily dependent on the background of the person. Therefore it can be said that with the help of maintaining diversity in the company there can be innovation maintained (Ozgen et al. 2013). However, there is also innovation driven by inclusion. The company is focused on providing the people with equal opportunity and in doing so there are a number of innovations that has taken place in process. For example, Accenture is focusing on five trends in order to make a positive and encouraging work environment for the people who are differently able. These trends in the technology and process make innovation thus proving that diversity among the people encourages innovation and creativity (Qian et al., 2013).
Encouraging creativity among the people, providing a diverse platform to perform, inspire the people to have a wider outlook towards various aspects. This helps in developing an innovation culture in the work environment. Innovation is a practice that is embedded in the culture of the company and inclusive policy is an extension of the culture (Ozgen et al. 2013).
In order to maintain a low employee turnover in the organisation companies employee a number of strategies and motivational policies. In this case culture and diversity encouragement plays an important role. Accenture with the help of the inclusive policies make it clear to the people associated with the business that they are welcome and by no means should they feel any way de-motivated due to their cast, creed, religion, gender, sexual orientation etc (Brewster et al., 2016). The company focuses on developing a feeling of belongingness and creating a valuable relation with the employees so that they are willing to perform for the company with the help of the management (Shen et al., 2014).
Accenture is an organisation that is driven by core values and principles and thus improving the HR culture in the organisation. No one would want to work in an organisation that does not respect or accept a person as he or she is. If a person has to pretend in order to fit into an organisation then this would not help in the performance as well as in the development of the career (Patrick & Kumar, 2012).
The role and responsibility of the HR department of Accenture is to look after the people associated with the company, in order to fulfill this responsibility it is very important to understand the significance of having a diverse culture. In the first video, there is corroboration of individuals the way they would feel if they were treated differently and this prove that the company is compassionate about people who are working for the origination (Podsiadlowski et al., 2013).
This policy of the company builds a reputation and goodwill of the company among the stakeholders. There are also chances of employee retention owing to the inclusive work culture as people feel that they are a part of something more than themselves (Podsiadlowski et al., 2013).
Personally I think that a person cannot be ever judged based on the discrimination grounds that have been stated earlier, especially in a workplace. For example: while we appreciate a painting we don’t ever see the background or the sexual orientation of the artist, rather we appreciate the skills that the person has exhibited with the painting. Similarly in a workplace a person should always be appreciated or punished based on their job role and performance. A women should never feel intimidated to walk into a meeting room full of men, on the other hand it should also never be said that an industry is dominated by women.
In this 21st century if people are still considering the discrimination factors to be important then, it is a failure on their end. By studying the Accenture case study on inclusive and diversity strategy I have concluded that the company has been promoting their work culture very well. However, for such a large scale organisation the fact that there are some of the basic parameters are yet to be met are also regretful. For example, the statistics in the official website state that the objective is to maintain 25 percent women participation and the directorial position is regretful. However, the company has realized and put forward their approach not only focusing on one section but a holistic approach towards diversity is something that other organisation can learn from. The case study has taught me that it is essential to treat an individual like a human being above any other segmentation.
Conclusion
It can be concluded form the above discussion that Accenture is a multinational company that understands the significance of having a diverse workforce, as well as employees a number of policy to enforce the culture among the people. The company not only encourages inclusive hiring but also having a diverse and motivating, positive work environment in order to ensure innovation and high performance. Accenture’s inclusive policy not only focuses on one aspect but also includes several elements in diversity like: gender, sexual orientation, background, ethnicity as well as disability.
Reference List:
Accenture.com. (2018). Diversity makes us stronger. Hear why. Retrieved from https://www.accenture.com/au-en/company-diversity
Anderson, N., Poto?nik, K., & Zhou, J. (2014). Innovation and creativity in organizations: A state-of-the-science review, prospective commentary, and guiding framework. Journal of management, 40(5), 1297-1333.
Barak, M. E. M. (2016). Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications.
Brewster, C., Chung, C., & Sparrow, P. (2016). Globalizing human resource management. Routledge.
de Leeuw, T., Lokshin, B., & Duysters, G. (2014). Returns to alliance portfolio diversity: The relative effects of partner diversity on firm’s innovative performance and productivity. Journal of Business Research, 67(9), 1839-1849.
De León, J. A., Huynh, C. T., & Plaisance, B. E. (2014). DIVERSITY In THE WORKPLACE. Organizational Processes and Received Wisdom, 191.
Martin, G. C. (2014). The effects of cultural diversity in the workplace. Journal of Diversity Management (Online), 9(2), 89.
Ozgen, C., Nijkamp, P., & Poot, J. (2013). Measuring cultural diversity and its impact on innovation: longitudinal evidence from Dutch firms.
Patrick, H. A., & Kumar, V. R. (2012). Managing workplace diversity: Issues and challenges. Sage Open, 2(2), 2158244012444615.
Peretz, H., Levi, A., & Fried, Y. (2015). Organizational diversity programs across cultures: effects on absenteeism, turnover, performance and innovation. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 26(6), 875-903.
Podsiadlowski, A., Gröschke, D., Kogler, M., Springer, C., & Van Der Zee, K. (2013). Managing a culturally diverse workforce: Diversity perspectives in organizations. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 37(2), 159-175.
Qian, C., Cao, Q., & Takeuchi, R. (2013). Top management team functional diversity and organizational innovation in China: The moderating effects of environment. Strategic Management Journal, 34(1), 110-120.
Sabharwal, M. (2014). Is diversity management sufficient? Organizational inclusion to further performance. Public Personnel Management, 43(2), 197-217.
Shen, J., Tang, N., & D’Netto, B. (2014). A multilevel analysis of the effects of HR diversity management on employee knowledge sharing: the case of Chinese employees. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(12), 1720-1738.
Van Beers, C., & Zand, F. (2014). R&D cooperation, partner diversity, and innovation performance: an empirical analysis. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 31(2), 292-312.
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