A critical business imperative for any corporate workplace today is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Companies are spending time and effort on strategies to build inclusive workplaces inside and out. But have they reached a point where inclusion needs to be approached from an outside-in perspective to embrace its true benefit?
Modern customers are heterogeneous in every way. They are well aware and want to associate with brands and products that align with their core values. To serve such a customer base, companies need to look beyond themselves – to their broad ecosystems be it suppliers, vendor partners, prospective candidates, social media influencers and the list goes on. It has brought us to a point that the entire value chain, which produces a product/service, needs to be diverse to understand the needs and requirements of customers better.
Supplier diversity as a concept came into existence in the 1950s, with General Motors setting up one of the first supplier diversity programs. Now many more companies have realized the benefits of a diverse supplier base and have set up programs that also aid their sustainability goals and plans. In addition to empaneling diverse suppliers, companies also help the suppliers in terms of educating them on management subjects and creating opportunities for them to gain capital investment.
To ensure diversity in suppliers, enabling suppliers to create an inclusive culture in their workplaces is the first step. And this is not easy. Time and again, many research studies are pointing to the fact that inclusion in workplaces is what makes diversity work. Hence the need to build an Inclusive Value Chain (IVC). Are companies working on supplier diversity programs willing to make this big shift?
Building an Inclusive Value Chain necessitates radical thinking and thought leadership from leading organizations. It also calls for visionary leaders who can look beyond company-level transformation and work towards repurposing the entire industry to embrace goodness and well-being over profits and top line. While this strategy will ultimately produce profits (in fact, X times the past profit values), the most critical aspect of this strategy would be the impact on future-proofing the business, creating a business model — agile enough to meet future needs. Here’s to the businesses of the future, the ones that embrace and practice inclusion in the truest sense.
