Cognizant’s Summit on Importance of Diversity and Inclusion in modern enterprise space

One of the world’s leading technology giant, Cognizant, hosted an industry summit on 27^th of Nov 2018 in Mumbai. The summit brought together renowned business leaders, influencers, and policymakers to discuss the growing need for progressive Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) in business policies for today’s digital era of technology and science.

More than 150 participants from disparate fields and regions attended the event and contributed to its grand success. Participating dignitaries included activist and model Rudrani Chettri; renowned storyteller Dr. Seema Anand; National Award winning filmmaker Apurva Asrani and Dr. Saundarya Rajesh along with cognizant leaders Debashis Chatterjee, President, Global Delivery and Cognizant Digital Systems & Technology and other regional and territory heads.

Diversity: A pillar of productivity, profitability, and engagement

McKinsey presented these findings of diversity and inclusion in the workplace:

• The Center for Talent Innovation found that firms with high diversity levels experienced an 80% performance improvement compared with companies with low diversity levels.

• American Sociological Association found that for every 1% rise in the rate of diversity in a business, there was a 3% to 9% rise in sales revenue.

During the discussion, Ashwini Deshpande of Elephant, along with Cognizant’s Manish Bahl and other panelists shared perspectives on how, in an increasingly digital world, companies can design bias-free technology-enabled products and services.  In another session, experts encouraged leaders to ‘be the change’ and spearhead an inclusive organizational dialogue to enable true progress.

Filmmaker Apurva Asrani led a thought-provoking conversation on the biases faced by the LGBTQ communities and ways in which people and society can work towards mainstreaming India’s LGBTQ communities. 

Diversity & Inclusion @ Cognizant

Cognizant D&I philosophy is that organizations with a diverse workforce and an inclusive work environment are better prepared to meet the complex demands of a dynamically changing business environment. The organization has made the D&I mandate along with its company-wide women leadership programme, ‘Propel’, aiming to identify and develop 400 future women leaders by the end of this year.

Speaking on the occasion, Sumithra Gomatam, President – Digital Operations, Cognizant, said, “Diversity has always been a defining feature of the Cognizant DNA, right from inception. We firmly believe that our differences encourage various perspectives and ideas that foster innovation. Different voices and views lead to new ideas, the creation of new services, and provide valuable insight into customers.