What do you do if your R&D team lacks diversity and inclusion?

"Diversity fuels innovation, Embrace it in your creation. Different minds, fresh perspective, In unity, we're most effective!"

I do not see diversity and inclusion as separate factors. As uncomfortable as it may be, it usually means that you are wearing the wrong goggles. Often buzzwords, claims, TLAs and the latest cloud our vision. This leads to brash and oftentimes WASP candidates being given preference. Go back and read papers. Do not read the author names. Look at the numbers, submitted code and experiments. Try to reproduce with some of your data. From that, select your candidates. I have been part of a highly successful research lab in the past, with over 50% female engineers, showing that this is possible. Do not hire people, hire capabilities. Accept the people that carry them. You will find those capable people to be highly diverse. Include them.

The general thing would obviously be bringing in more diversity and inclusivity. Diversity in what? We have to map diversity to correct functional gaps. For inclusivity we can have cross functional meetings, townhalls , knowledge sharing sessions, team games, hackathons more often.

If your R&D team lacks diversity and inclusion, start by setting clear goals for diversifying the team. Ensure these goals are realistic and actionable, then actively seek diverse perspectives by recruiting from varied backgrounds, promoting an inclusive culture, and fostering open communication. Encourage collaboration and provide resources for training and development to ensure everyone's voice is heard and valued.

The best way to improve diversity and inclusivity is having the aim of hiring only Competence, and being blind to color, deaf to the mother tongue, indifferent to the region/religion and looking only for the fitness for the role to be played by the Hire. Recruiting diverse in age, qualification, institute, rural/urban and diverse sources, and training them to the need would give more capabilities to achieve the Organizational goals. Diversity is the most important parameter for any Team to succeed, because the skills, talents, observation, way of thinking and capabilities to solve the problems would be different for each member of the Team. None in the team would be stronger than the whole team, and there is synergy involved in a team.

Part of an effective strategy is to set up a corporate culture that embraces diversity/ includsion. E.g., the involvement of women engineers / setting up a multicultural environment, respecting the differences in customs, in way of thinking.

Implementing strategies to abide with the diversity and inclusion process, may imply outsourcing and taking risks. Sometimes when initiating pragmatic changes, there are certain elements of robust instrumental reasoning and planning required. Collective efforts are made inclusive, to ensuring that your business investment capability, is not always easy to adopt and adapt. Define explicitly from the very beginning, your unique skills and the need to harness and empower each departmental aligned interest, with the global consultation strategy.

Diversity is the best organic innovation strategy. When R&D team does not have diversity, it loses its competitive edge. Teams that don't have diversity in the workforce are like sepia toned rainbows. Boring and vintage!

In R&D space, we can not forcefully implement Diversity & Inclusiveness, it's all about the role & skillsets that we are looking for.. one must fit into the R&D culture of the organization and the Diversity should be allowed to naturally evolve over period of time. As an option diverse graduating student interns shall be inducted and during their internship period with their consent, interns can be evaluated for absorbing them into position, yet again the skill set & Organization's cultural fit must preceed over Diversity&inclusiveness. In a production set-up implementation of Diversity is quite easy and the skill sets can be cultivated over period of time&sustained. whatsoever, Equal opportunity is the core of talent acquisition endeavors