Reiterating workplace empowerment through cultural understanding in an inclusive & diverse environment

PTI, Apr 19, 2022, 2:02 PM IST

 New Delhi: With organizations strengthening their commitment towards building diverse and inclusive work cultures, D&I company The Bridge is enabling them to equip cutting edge skills such as cultural intelligence and cross-cultural exchange for better brand awareness, talent attractiveness and to build diverse and inclusive work cultures in the truest sense. The pandemic has accelerated adoption of D&I policies in corporate strategies and the company is encouraging deep cross-cultural understanding, promoting diversity and values such as tolerance, openness and empathy for team building, unconscious bias management and nurturing inclusive workplaces for visible results.

“The companies need to understand empowerment is a feeling and not a number. Sensitizing employees and associates from various cultural backgrounds with comprehensive strategies on diversity & inclusion create a culture of harmony in the organization. The solution lies in cultural quotients to measure the ability to function in a variety of cultural contexts. It’s something you need to make those decisions and it happens to be one of our core competencies,” said Sunaina Vij – Founder – https://www.thebridge.org.in/ As life is returning to normalcy, the corporates are acknowledging that to ensure lasting changes, it is important to measure the effectiveness of their D&I practices and how they are faring in building inclusive culture and workplaces rather than focusing on numbers and quick fixes. Understanding that lack of diversity is often systemic and cultural, the Bridge creates connections and facilitates exchanges between languages, cultures and most importantly different people to create a healthy work environment for all. D&I policies are becoming an area of focus for organisations. The practice has evolved over years. Taking a closer look at data, The Center for Global Inclusion and IMA Diversity & Inclusion benchmark reports show that in India, only 3% of organisations have met their DEI goals. Also, according to the Community Business report 2018, 100% companies surveyed have D&I goals, but 27% are publishing externally. 88% take steps to ensure equal pay, but only 35% conduct an equal pay audit. Going forward,the companies will revisit strategies for visible and actual results with tools such as D&I Dashboard for more visibility and insights.

Here, the Bridge is helping them by offering a gamut of professional services, which equip individuals and organisations with skills to understand the challenges of managing people, in both domestic and international markets. It provides comprehensive strategies on diversity & inclusion and on unconscious bias that can be further customized to particular needs.

About the Company: Like its brick and mortar counterparts, The Bridge exists to create connections and facilitate exchanges – in this case, between languages, cultures and most importantly different people. Founded by Sunaina Vij, an interculturalist, linguist, and diversity and inclusion strategist based in India, The Bridge offers a gamut of professional services, which equip individuals and organisations with skills to understand the challenges of managing people, in both domestic and international markets. With a focus on modern day cutting-edge skills such as Cultural Intelligence, Cross-cultural communication, Team building, Collaboration, Managing unconscious bias and Building inclusive work space, The Bridge provides tools and support for succeeding in today’s diverse and interconnected work space. While these structured services are the functional vanguards of our philosophy, our ultimate aim is to encourage deep cross-cultural understanding, promote diversity and values such as tolerance, openness and empathy to the point where the people of the world will know each other as one – and bridges will no longer be required.