The second AXA Call to Action Event has called for more focus on Diversity and Inclusion, which it stressed as an apex area for all corporates to be achieved by 2020.
The event, held in Bangalore on Tuesday, Nov. 22, saw industry experts deliberate on the current practices and emerging aspects of diversity and inclusion that organisations need to be aware of to manage the expectations of the 2020 workforce.
"Diversity and Inclusion is an important part of our business and is, in fact, a strong lever for business growth. It fosters innovation in an organisation as diverse people bring their perspectives to the table aiding a 360-degree approach and helping organisations proactively meet customers and partners need better," said Marie Elhabre, CEO of AXA Business Services.
The discussions among experts at the events focused on inclusion, empowerment, engagement and growth. In addition, gender diversity beyond empowering and establishing a culture that is gender neutral was also stressed at the event.
In terms of generational diversity, the deliberations centred around deepening the collaboration between tech-savvy, young workforce and senior employees in a true sense of corporate responsibility.
The speakers also stressed on the need to be connected with the diverse industries and to see how well the corporates are prepared to implement the new diversity framework to reach 100 per cent inclusion.
"While diversity is in nature, inclusion is a choice. Our AXA Call to Action event seeks to address this new and share back with the industry best practices from the panel discussion," said Marie.
Echoing similar view, Nagarajan V., AXA Communications Head said, "The industry has moved away from affirmative action/managing diversity towards holistic diversity and enabling inclusion. He also noted that enabling inclusion would require organisations to focus on the twin pillars of addressing subconscious or unconscious bias as well as making the business impact very apparent.
The panelists included Jaya Virwani, D&I Head, Talent Team, Global Delivery Services, E&Y; Padmapriya S., Head, Business Development, GSC & EBS, Societe Generale; Dr. Pradip K Dutta, Group VP – Synopsys Inc. and MD – Synopsys India; Archana Vohra, Director, Seller Enablement, Amazon; Jessie Paul, Founder and CEO, Paul Writer; and Srikrishna Madhavan, Head, Finance Operations CoE, AXA Business Services. The panel was moderated by Prashant Sankaran, Director, Interweave Consulting.
AXA is a key player in life and health insurance sectors and claim to be the important changing agents for innovations, spanning big data; risk modelling, robotic automation, and transformation of lives.
