Практики вовлечения персонала в ИТ компаниях России

Inclusion is an extremely pressing topic today, as, according to various reports of the consulting experts, the workforce is becoming more and more heterogeneous. People of all ages, abilities, genders, nationalities and so on are increasing their presence among the employees of a wide range of companies, and IT companies are no exception. As they stand on the frontier of the innovation, these companies are likely to welcome new practices and implement them, as in the world of innovation there is always a race to gain competitive advantage. This thesis focuses on inclusion of female professionals, however, the overall understanding of diversity and inclusion is very broad and practices can be adapted to various vulnerable groups in the workplace, so different aspects of diversity will be mentiones as well, considering that they often overlap with inclusion of female professionals.
The terms “diversity” and “inclusion” often go together. Diversity is considered by many authors a tool for improving companies’ performance, because creativity, innovativeness, positive corporate atmosphere often benefit from inclusion practices implemented in companies. While it is understood not only by scholars, but also by many practicing managers in the field, it is still a source of problems for the employees, as the practices are not accepted by everyone or implemented in a false way (or, sometimes, not implemented at all). (Uribe-Bohorquez, Martinez-Ferrero, Garcia-Sanchez Isabel-Maria 2019). Various components of the practices are not aligned in an appropriate way, decreasing the efficiency of the said practices. There are other factors, which hinder the development of the inclusion practices, which will be further considered in this thesis. Among them, lack of credibility, “competition” between the targeted groups and strong local context influence can be mentioned.
As we talk about local context, it is vital to say that Russian companies, unlike their foreign competitors, rarely have certain special inclusion practices, as it is virtually impossible to find any information about such practices in open sources and employees are often reluctant to disclose information about organizational practices in their companies. It is surely influenced by the overall view of the inclusion and the traditional disposition of the workforce on the Russian market. Still, the companies are certain to benefit from the implementation of such practices.
There are some opposing views on the issue, such as understanding inclusion as a tool to improve a company’s performance (Hunt, Prince, Dixon-Fyle, Yee 2018) and an opposing opinion that inclusion and diversity may sometimes be harmful (Williams, O’Reilly 1998). Existing beliefs in the “fake” diversity used to cover the real problems with the human resource management in companies are gaining momentum among the employees of many companies,
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even though they are not voiced aloud a lot. It would be a good idea to consider this side of the question as well, regarding the actual benefits of inclusion and whether it has a direct effect on the performance of companies.
The goal of this research is to identify the existing understanding of diversity and inclusion in the IT industry, find the problems of the field and provide possible solutions. Therefore, the problem of research encompasses existing inclusion issues in organizational culture of the Russian IT companies and currently non-existant or not properly working inclusion practices. The purpose of this thesis is to provide theoretical and practical information of diversity and inclusion in IT companies in Russia, as this topic is not researched enough, which provides us with the following research gap and research questions.
As for the research gap, while diversity and inclusion practices have already been considered a pressing issue in Western countries, the issue in Russia is not researched enough today, especially for the tech sector, although, being internationally oriented and innovative- minded, such enterprises need diversity and inclusion the most. At the same time, from the practical perspective, companies need certain recommendations to follow to implement inclusion practices. There are few works considering the inclusion practices in Russia, and no works were found with the research in the IT companies’ field and advice to such companies.
The research questions for the following study would be:
• What inclusion and diversity problems exist in Russian IT companies?
• What practices should be recommended to the IT companies in order to promote
workplace inclusion?
The objectives of the research are to study the existing theoretical information and market
analysis on topic of inclusion and collect information from the respondents to identify problems in the field and offer solutions. As a result of research, a list of problems stated by the respondents and analyzed by the author would be provided, as well as practical recommendations on topic of inclusion practices and their correct implementation.