Gitanjali Gems began hiring people with disabilities to aid this underserved population in India. But they quickly discovered it was also a business strategy that helped boost the company’s bottom line.
What began as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative for an Indian gem and jewelry business has turned into a wise business decision that has made a positive impact on its bottom line; all thanks to investing in employment and career training for people with disabilities.
The success story of Gitanjali Gems was chronicled by Harvard Business Review bloggers Prasad Kaipa and Meera Shenoy in their September 10 post, “Workers with Disabilities Solved this Company’s Talent Crisis.” Part of an international diamond and jewelry conglomerate worth $1 billion, the productivity of Gitanjali Gems suffered from a lack of trained labor to work in its Hyderabad location. Although the city boasts the country’s fourth largest population, at 6.8 million, people with the diamond-cutting, polishing, and jewelry-making skills were not readily available in that region of southern India.
Employee turnover was presenting a further challenge. The company was losing money on training employees to perform the intricate manual labor tasks required to produce a quality product. As Kaipa and Shenoy note, employee engagement is very low in India. Many of the the young people Gitanjali Gems trained did not possess the needed level of concentration to do the job and would drop out soon after starting.
Hiring people with disabilities to work in the Hyderabad operation started as an effort to help some of the region’s underserved population. India has more than 60 million people with disabilities, compared to just over 50 million here in the United States, and one can find many recent articles in outlets like the Times of India and the Hindustan Times that illustrate the perceptual challenges these individuals have to overcome on a daily basis. The bloggers quote a statement from Gitanjali’s chairman, Mehul Choksi, upon winning India’s best employer award in 2009 for its initiative to hire people with disabilities as saying, “we have responsibility to the society at large and are proud to commit in helping.”
But in the three years since Gitanjali Gems began hiring and training people with disabilities, they have noticed major improvements in productivity in the Hyderabad operation. One company official notes that the monthly productivity award is often won by one these individuals, saying, “they are eager to prove that their disability is not a deterrent to performance.”
Employee attrition has also dropped. As Gitanjali plans to double its number of employees over the next two years, it anticipates increasing the percentage of people with disabilities within its labor force to rise from 12% to 20% because of the positive experience. The company’s vice president of human resources, Madhusudhan Reddy, says people with disabilities now work as cashiers, store managers, and oversee quality control in addition to the manual labor tasks which began the initiative. Reddy tells the bloggers:
Most employers suffer from preconceived notions about disabled, so they see only weaknesses. They are differently abled not disabled — once you frame them that way, you see their strengths and might be willing to give them an opportunity.
Both Kaipa and Shenoy work in organizations that strive to advance inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. They actively engage commenters at the bottom of the post, elaborating on how work makes life matter for people with disabilities and encouraging people to share the success story of Gitanjali Gems. Post your own thoughts or examples in the comments section below.
Image by Mester Jagels (Jasper van’t Veen).