“Diversity is a pan-corporate issue that must be managed with an inclusive mindset. If we want a competitive edge, we must change things and generate a corporate culture that fosters the synergy of different viewpoints.” These were the opening words by Ana Sainz, managing director of the SERES Foundation, of the talk “Understanding diversity in the 21st century”, in the Esade-SERES Foundation lecture series, about the new challenges of diversity management and the great extent to which companies seek new approaches, because diversity means handling differences with an inclusive approach.

In the words of Ignasi Carreras, professor and director of the executive education programmes for NGOs at the Esade Social Innovation Institute, “the main challenge is how to really foster diversity by implementing policies of zero-tolerance to discrimination in companies. And not only this but building bridges between diversity and innovation and learning, and between diversity and leadership. Huge progress has been made in this direction in recent years”.

“Amadeus itself is a diverse company with 50 nationalities and 30 languages but this does not mean there’s no more work to be done. Diversity must be boosted to make it a mainstay of corporate culture easily recognised by other groups” said Valle Rodríguez, People & Culture at Amadeus. Santiago Alfonso, vice president of Marketing and Communication at the Cosentino Group, explained his company’s commitment to diversity: “We work in conjunction with CISCO to provide more guidance for women about engineering careers. On the other hand, we know that women are underrepresented in senior management, where they account for just 14.37%, although the executive committee is undoubtedly aware of this. In 2019, the Cosentino group implemented an equality plan and this year it will be fully implemented in the 43 countries where we have staff. Diversity is a competitive edge issue”.

Diversity and innovation

All the speakers agreed on the close-knit links between effective diversity management and the extent of innovation in a company. Santiago Alfonso outlined Cosentino’s programmes for encouraging the participation of new ideas in three areas: business, processes and conditions/wellbeing. “About 860 people are taking part and more than 60% of the proposals are from overseas. This competition-type project has led to great improvements for the company, such as Committed to Sustainability, which are not top-down measures” he explained.

Valle Rodríguez of Amadeus also warned the audience about the risks of managing diversity and technology. Technology can provide many opportunities but is sometimes biased. He recommended not only working with numbers but watching new inputs. “One of the Amadeus projects, ‘Amadeus Y’, involves inverse mentoring which brings together several generations, babyboomers and generation Y. The company has also taken part in Inspiring Girls, a project to encourage girls to work in technology” he said.