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In times of digitalisation, we can wonder about its impact on diversity management : what are the risks and the opportunities ? Does digitalisation guarantee diversity? What is the link between these two megatrends and how can we manage the dynamics and effects of digitalisation and diversity management? These are the questions Michael Stuber, ‘the Global D&I Engineer’, addressed with his keynote speech during the 2018 Luxembourg Diversity Day at the 8th official signing session of the Diversity Charter since its launch in 2012.

In his presentation, Michael Stuber covered a number of new perspectives on Diversity & Inclusion as it relates to digitalisation: The digital world cannot be future-proofed without diversity of staff or clients, an open-minded corporate culture and inclusive behaviours and processes. Implementing a diversity management strategy- taking in account digitalisation- involves organisational, cultural and leadership change through which companies will reap business benefits in many other areas as well. Indeed, D&I can contribute to bridging generational, cultural or competence gaps, it plays a role to foster the employee experience and can be used as cultural change enabler in a context where openness is more and more needed (e.g. relating to global virtual teams, new processes and tools etc.). However, D&I does not happen automatically: While automation can increase the objectivity of evaluations and statistical analyses and can help to identify deeper layers of inequalities, artificial intelligence is still reproducing unconscious bias and stereotypical patterns from the past, just as software perpetuates its developer’s biases. In order to address these digital D&I challenges, organisations need to adopt a tailored approach to D&I while recognizing its business potential and mainstreaming it. Old patterns need to be questioned and organisations to be disruptive to face the many challenges ahead of D&I. 

Michael Stuber provides on the largest European online resources for D&I, where more than 1,800 articles can be found on almost any aspect of the topic, the business case and implementation: here.