Interview
Reliance Jio Infocomm
Jio
Over the last two years, Jio has earned several prestigious recognitions for its work in fostering Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at workplace, including the 2023 People First Award for Leading Practices in Diversity & Inclusion. These recognitions are testament to Jio's commitment to benchmark-setting employer practices in DE&I. We spoke to the winning team at Jio to share with us their inclusion journey and take us through some of the best practices they have been implementing.
Q:What makes Jio's DE&I practices stand out?
A:While most DE&I practices are common across different organizations, DE&I at Jio is a strategic imperative, which rests on 3 pillars:
1) Business Case
2) Legal Compliance
3) Social Responsibility.
These pillars provide directional inputs for building an inclusive organizational culture and aligning the DE&I practices with measurable outcome and business impact.
1) Business Case
2) Legal Compliance
3) Social Responsibility.
These pillars provide directional inputs for building an inclusive organizational culture and aligning the DE&I practices with measurable outcome and business impact.
Q:Can you give some specific examples of initiatives at Jio through which Jio is fostering Diversity, Equity &Inclusion?
A:We have a battery of initiatives. Some key ones are:
Brand Alignment: Jio was born with "digital inclusion" as its core business philosophy – Digital Inclusion of all Indians, particularly, the technologically and economically disadvantaged sections of our society, which remained digitally dark even after two decades of telecom revolution in India. This philosophy of DE&I is well captured in Jio's multi-coloured brand identity, which represents India's diverse multiculturality. So, DE&I is in the DNA of Jio.
Diversity Hiring Polices: Jio Points, our last mile customer touchpoints, are spread in every nook and corner India. The Indian milieu comprises socio-cultural, socio-economic, and linguistic diversity of epic proportions. To serve our customers in such a diverse environment, Jio has an enabling policy called persons of soil hiring. This initiative has helped us build workforce heterogeneity by hiring talent from the local communities in which we operate, thereby, taking care of the geographical, demographical, socio-cultural, and socio-economic diversity of our business environment. Similarly, we have policies for hiring PwD and LGBT+ candidates.
Jio Fiber Shakti: It's a Diversity Hiring and Development Program for Women Home Sales Officers in the JioFiber Business – a first-of-its-kind program of hiring women in frontline D2C sales role.
Jio Customer Associate (JCA): The Jio Customer Associate program is a women-only, gig employment and aspirational program to connect women from diverse backgrounds, who may be living in any part of the country, to get associated with Jio. The program provides them an opportunity to work from the comfort of their homes and as per timings convenient to them.
Enabling technologies: Jio's recruitment platform has a patented skill-based pre-assessment to help overcome hiring bias. To help employees cope up with our digital-native work culture, we offer Jio Buds – a digital assimilation program for new hires, and a GPS-enabled, automated reimbursement solution for local conveyance.
Linguistic Diversity: Jio develops and delivers training interventions in 11 different languages to cater to the needs of our linguistically diverse employees who use their mother tongue for day-to-day business operations and customer interactions.
Customized Holidays: To address India's multicultural diversity and to promote the right to religious freedom, Jio's Holiday Calendar is customized for each State/UT with option of 3-days of Optional Paid Holidays, which employees can avail on any festival of their choice.
Brand Alignment: Jio was born with "digital inclusion" as its core business philosophy – Digital Inclusion of all Indians, particularly, the technologically and economically disadvantaged sections of our society, which remained digitally dark even after two decades of telecom revolution in India. This philosophy of DE&I is well captured in Jio's multi-coloured brand identity, which represents India's diverse multiculturality. So, DE&I is in the DNA of Jio.
Diversity Hiring Polices: Jio Points, our last mile customer touchpoints, are spread in every nook and corner India. The Indian milieu comprises socio-cultural, socio-economic, and linguistic diversity of epic proportions. To serve our customers in such a diverse environment, Jio has an enabling policy called persons of soil hiring. This initiative has helped us build workforce heterogeneity by hiring talent from the local communities in which we operate, thereby, taking care of the geographical, demographical, socio-cultural, and socio-economic diversity of our business environment. Similarly, we have policies for hiring PwD and LGBT+ candidates.
Jio Fiber Shakti: It's a Diversity Hiring and Development Program for Women Home Sales Officers in the JioFiber Business – a first-of-its-kind program of hiring women in frontline D2C sales role.
Jio Customer Associate (JCA): The Jio Customer Associate program is a women-only, gig employment and aspirational program to connect women from diverse backgrounds, who may be living in any part of the country, to get associated with Jio. The program provides them an opportunity to work from the comfort of their homes and as per timings convenient to them.
Enabling technologies: Jio's recruitment platform has a patented skill-based pre-assessment to help overcome hiring bias. To help employees cope up with our digital-native work culture, we offer Jio Buds – a digital assimilation program for new hires, and a GPS-enabled, automated reimbursement solution for local conveyance.
Linguistic Diversity: Jio develops and delivers training interventions in 11 different languages to cater to the needs of our linguistically diverse employees who use their mother tongue for day-to-day business operations and customer interactions.
Customized Holidays: To address India's multicultural diversity and to promote the right to religious freedom, Jio's Holiday Calendar is customized for each State/UT with option of 3-days of Optional Paid Holidays, which employees can avail on any festival of their choice.
Q:What has been the driving force behind the success of Jio's DE&I agenda in such a short span of time?
A:Being a young organization, we started working on DE&I agenda just a few years ago. Today, we foster D&I at all levels and in all possible forms. This success can be attributed to a Board-level commitment to promote DE&I at Jio. We started by formulating a formal charter, which acts as the bedrock and playbook for everything we do in DE&I.
Q:How do you align your senior leadership on the DE&I agenda?
A:We have 10 Tenets of Institutional Leadership Capital at Reliance. All employees, particularly leaders, are expected demonstrate these 10 tenets in their day-to-day work life. These 10 tenets help us align the senior leaders with our DE&I agenda. For example, initiatives such as hiring from local communities, promoting linguistic diversity, celebrating diverse holidays, etc. are aligned to the leadership capitals called, People Capital, Empathy Capital, and Community Engagement Capital. Similarly, digital inclusion to all segments of society, program for assimilation new hires into a digital-first environment, technology for overcoming hiring bias, etc. are aligned to the Technology & Innovation Capital.
Q:What has been your ley learning over their years?
A:If we entrust our diversity hires with critical responsibilities, instead of them just being a feel-good D&I metric, they can outperform and contribute to business growth in terms of topline as well as bottom-line. This again flows from the Trust Capital we have at Reliance.