Award of Excellence HARMAN Innovation: HARMAN Women’s Network Introduced: 2014 Program Leader: Dinesh Paliwal, CEO
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n 2007, when Dinesh Paliwal joined HARMAN as its new CEO, he soon recognized that a lack of diversity among senior management was limiting the company’s ability to innovate and grow. Paliwal first assembled an extremely diverse board and leadership team. Next, he set about finding ways to increase employee diversity and develop an inclusive work environment, which he believed would stimulate creativity and result in innovative solutions for HARMAN’s customers. Paliwal established a Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) talent strategy, focused on developing female talent in a culture of respect and inclusiveness and increasing investment in diversity-related communications and community relations efforts. HARMAN also collaborated with the 1,000 Dreams Fund to create “#NewFaceofTech,” an online campaign to spotlight and financially support young women interested in careers in STEM fields.
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In 2014, HARMAN CEO Dinesh Paliwal established the HARMAN Women’s Network (HWN), an initiative focused on attracting and developing top female talent. The program provides a variety of tools and forums, including its Listen Up! speaker series, local speaking events that feature influential HARMAN leaders, and skillbuilding programs. A recent HWN initiative celebrated International Women’s Day across nearly 20 HARMAN sites, emphasizing the importance of accelerating inclusion in the workplace. Activities included Listen Up! presentations focused on women in leadership, self-defense classes, and donations to local women’s refuge centers. HWN has played an important role in attracting and retaining successful female talent across the company. Today, women hold leadership positions in Finance, Legal, Communications, Strategy, Talent, Tax, Intellectual Property, and other departments. Because of HARMAN’s robust
D&I talent strategy and the efforts of HWN, women now represent 34 percent of the company’s workforce. HARMAN has also rolled out Unconscious Bias sessions presented by HR, talent management leads, and the HARMAN University team. In FY18, the company aims to expand its D&I curriculum from bias awareness to workplace inclusion. By establishing a formal D&I talent strategy, HARMAN diversified its leadership team and global workforce, attracting individuals from various cultural and professional backgrounds, and fostering a climate of inclusiveness that nurtures innovative thinking. Integrating Diversity & Inclusion into the company’s DNA has had a significant impact on HARMAN’s success, doubling its revenue, driving exponential growth in emerging economies and becoming a leader in connected car technologies with a $24 billion automotive backlog. PDJ