Abstract
The main Diversity and Inclusion activities of CEVA aim at increasing the participation of women at higher echelons of the management cadre, retaining diverse talent, and increasing the number of employees with disabilities. The diversity and integration understanding is the commitment to continuous improvement in every sub-region retaining the talented human capital with a focus on work and life balance initiatives and development by mentoring programs, network groups on the intranet, e-teams, and communities on gender and disability. Although diversity is integrated at CEVA at both the regional and global levels, the main motto in implementing the Diversity and Inclusion activities is “Think global, act local.”
TopIntroduction
Diversity management from domestic and international perspectives is often defined as recognizing and leveraging differences at work. Local approaches to diversity management originate from the North American context and date back to the late 1980s (Tatli & Özbilgin, 2009). Global Diversity Management (GDM) is a management philosophy, which underpins a set of strategies, policies, initiatives, and training and development activities that seek to transcend national differences in diversity management policies and practices by recognizing and leveraging diverse sets of social and individual backgrounds, interests, beliefs, values, and ways of work across branch networks of organizations with international, multinational, global, and transnational workforces (Özbilgin & Tatli, 2008). Diversity management as a management philosophy aims to create awareness about heterogeneity in organizations, campaigning for global coordination of activities and following a set of actions and processes in accordance with strategies and policies so as to recognize and value this heterogeneity within a legal framework. However, there is a vested interest of multiple stakeholder groups over the aims and processes as expected outcomes of diversity management coupled with the legitimacy issues with respect to legal issues (Özbilgin & Tatli, 2011). Much work on diversity has been carried out either in domestic settings with little attention to its global counterpart or drawn on a single-level analysis with a focus on managerial or trade union dimensions of diversity.
This case study focuses on a global supply chain management company, CEVA, as a company that has considerable input in promoting diversity to reflect with its diverse customer and community base. This case study is based on extensive documentary evidence shared by CEVA Turkey and shows how CEVA displays commitment to diversity in its strategy.
CEVA’s 2010 – 2012 Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) strategy focuses on the following five areas embedded in D&I plans for employees, customers, partners and communities. The first three items below are the D&I global Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are regularly monitored:
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Engaging employees: Gender and disability networks are in place to cover all workforce
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Recruiting diverse talent: Ensure recruitment process is not limiting diverse talents
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Retaining diverse talent: Improve career and development plan to ensure long term attainment
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Building CEVA’s reputation: Explain how CEVA demonstrates D&I program internally and externally
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Building an evidence base: Setting up a reporting process and regular follow up
The focus of this case study is to analyze the key drivers of diversity initiatives at regional, national, organizational, and individual levels. Diversity encourages and capitalizes on diverse views, thoughts, and team contributions to continuously improve the business.
Key Terms in this Chapter
CEVA’s WiN: An internal platform that connects employees who are interested in supporting CEVA’s Gender Program, sharing knowledge and opinions, participating in events and discussions that help them to develop within the company, and its mission is to promote the development, advancement and effectiveness of women in support of CEVA’s business goals, values and objectives by creating a mutually supportive network and safe environment for shared experiences. CEVA’s WiN plan to provide professional growth for participants, provide awareness for other employees, and promote the Company’s mission, values and corporate goals.
KPI (Key Performance Indicators): Indicators against which progress is measured and assessed.
Gender Working Group (GWG) and the Disability Working Group (DWG): These are group of volunteer employees representing all regions and functions that are invited to join the GWG and/or DWG after a selection process for a period of six months has some key roles and responsibilities such as to shape the purpose and objectives of the gender / disability strategy, take ownership for defining and achieving mutually agreed outcomes, promote the strategy by agreeing on gender / disability initiatives, provide leadership and direction to the network.
Global Diversity Management (GDM): A management philosophy which underpins a set of strategies, policies, initiatives, and training and development activities that seek to transcend national differences in diversity management policies and practices by recognizing and leveraging diverse sets of social and individual backgrounds, interests, beliefs, values and ways of work across branch networks of organizations with international, multinational, global and transnational workforces.