Assessing BlackRock's Global Diversity and Inclusion Initiative Report

This report analyzes BlackRock's Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Initiative, examining its benefits, challenges, and problems faced, such as cultural issues in Japan and India, and the lack of best practices. It assesses the value of D&I to BlackRock, highlighting the importance of a diverse workforce for innovation and decision-making. The report identifies key problems, including the need to balance global needs and the absence of robust hiring and training programs. It recommends solutions such as awareness campaigns, training sessions, and improved hiring processes to foster a more inclusive culture. The report emphasizes the need for a unified global vision to ensure the company's values are upheld across all regions. The report provides valuable recommendations to improve D&I within BlackRock and foster a more inclusive culture.

Running head: HUMAN CAPITAL
Global Human Capital

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Executive Summary
The purpose of this report is to analyse Diversity and Inclusion Initiative of BlackRock Inc.
and identifying the solutions to the problems it has faced. It has been believed that having a
Diversity and Inclusion culture within BlackRock has supported in its growth because people
from diversified area provide better ideas for the productivity of the organization if given
inclusive right to present their opinions and views. Diversity cannot provide better results if
inclusion is not adopted within the organization therefore BlackRock Inc. has established this
initiative. However, the company also experienced some problems in implementing this
initiative like cultural problems in Japan and India, absence of practices and behaviour, and
challenge in balancing the needs of different country. Therefore, the report has suggested
some of the solutions that is to organize awareness campaign in regions restricting women
education and employment and sponsoring the female education for their development,
organizing different training sessions for the managers and having a proper hiring process in
place. In the end, to have a common vision and motive globally where it operates the business
in order to have a culture that does not compromise with its rules and conducts for any
reason.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................1
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Overview of Blackrock...........................................................................................................3
Evaluate Blackrock’s Diversity and Inclusion Initiative........................................................3
Benefits and challenges of a Diverse and Inclusive Culture..................................................4
Benefits of a Diverse and Inclusive Culture.......................................................................4
Challenges of a Diverse and Inclusive Culture...................................................................5
Assessing the value of Diversity and Inclusion to BlackRock...............................................6
An identification of the problems...........................................................................................7
Cultural Problems in Japan and India.................................................................................7
Lack of best in class practices and behavior.......................................................................7
To balance the needs of any one country or region............................................................8
An identification of solutions to those problems....................................................................8
Cultural Problems in Japan and India.................................................................................8
Lack of best in class practices and behavior.......................................................................9
Summary of the Solution......................................................................................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................................11
References................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
The aim of this report is to present a paper highlighting the major problems that BlackRock
Inc. is dealing with under the Diversity and Inclusion Initiative. In order to identify the
problem, the report is presenting the detailed overview of the Diversity and Inclusion
Initiative and analysing all the aspects of this initiative. In the end, the file is providing the
solution for the identified problems for the company and reasonable recommendations along
with the cost of implementing those recommendations for the company.
Overview of Blackrock
Blackrock, Inc. is the leading investment management corporation of America with
headquarter in New York City. The company was established in the year 1988 as a fixed
institutional asset manager and risk management company and today BlackRock is the largest
asset managers across the world with over with $6.84 trillion of assets under its management
as per the 2019 reports. This company operates business at global level with 720 offices in 30
nations along with clients in 100 nations (Bloomberg 2020). As per the huge sheer size and
high power of the financial activities and assets, BlackRock is known to be the largest
shadow bank in the world.
Evaluate Blackrock’s Diversity and Inclusion Initiative
The philosophy behind working as One BlackRock is to meet the organization commitment
to inclusion and diversity. The company has given the major priority on creating a diverse
workforce and foster a cooperative culture that is based on integrity, respect, and trust. The
company understands that diversity works on strengthening their position and an inclusive
culture is important for delivering the better results for its customers. They believe that all the
employees perform an essential role in the organization (Blackrock 2020). Diversity helps the
business in bringing more unique insights and perspectives from each of the employees. All
of them are involved in learning from each other for developing, growing, and making an

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impact. Along with this, the motive of this initiative is to treat every person the they like to be
treated. According to the views of Robert, associate of the corporate strategy, believe that
without inclusion diversity has no role, therefore the focus of the company is to develop an
inclusive environment for every employee, by involving all the spectrum of diversity.
Having a diversified workforce cannot provide better and improved results for the
organization until unless it does not believe in the concept of inclusion. Diversity focuses on
diverse populations, whereas inclusion is all about all the members in the team feel
belongingness regardless of sexual orientation, religion, race, and whether the entire
workforce is provided with fair and equal treatment (Tan 2020).
Benefits and challenges of a Diverse and Inclusive Culture
Benefits of a Diverse and Inclusive Culture
The major benefit of having a diverse and inclusive culture at BlackRock is that it helps in
providing more and better ideas from all the employees who work for the company such that
they can deliver better solutions to the clients. Diversified employees with intellectual skills
working on the company’s system can provide better and effective ideas that cannot just save
the time on working different data but also saves lot of money that it invests in paying the
salary to an employee (Manganora 2019).
A diverse and inclusive culture helps in increasing the belongingness feeling among the
employees of the company which increases their loyalty and increases their productivity.
Here inclusive culture also helps employees in developing their skills and expressing their
feelings related to the work and the environment within the organization. Along with this, the
loyalty of the employees is beneficial for the organization as it increases the productivity of
the employee which contribute in the growth of the business (Blackrock 2019).
The diverse and inclusion initiative introduced within BlackRock Company is very beneficial
because it provides a familiar feel like home atmosphere to the employees which increases

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their stability within the company and reduces the employee turnover ratio. People who
belongs from different culture and religion most of the time feel alone in different
organizations due to lack of facilities and importance given to them (Ng 2019). But, in
BlackRock all the culture people are cherished by the management as well as by other
employees of the company which motivates them to work effectively for the betterment of
the organization.
Challenges of a Diverse and Inclusive Culture
Apart from the benefits of the Diverse and Inclusion Culture at BlackRock, it also has some
challenges that can impact the organization negatively. One of the challenges that is
experienced under this initiative is to hire right person for the right job. Here, while focusing
on having a diversified workforce in the company, there are chances that the company feels
challenges in hiring a right person for the right place because of the lack of availability of
skilled and talented workforce in the market (Reynolds 2019).
In addition to this, another challenge that is experienced under this culture is the conflict of
interest. Under this, the conflict of interest is defined that an individual’s interest should not
overcome the organizational interest. Many times, there are chances that while focusing on
the diverse and inclusion culture where the importance is also given to the individual interest
too, the interest and objective of the organization is somewhere faded away (Big think edge
2018). Due to this, the organization fails in the market. Therefore, it is important to give
major importance to the organizational interest.
Furthermore, the major challenge that companies face while focusing on developing this
culture is over diversification. BlackRock focuses on developing a diverse culture with
diversified workforce that can work for the development and growth of the organization, but
it can be challenging to decide the ratio of diversified employees in the company because

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having different culture people in a single team can result in conflicts among them and can
impact the productivity of the organization.
Assessing the value of Diversity and Inclusion to BlackRock
At BlackRock, Inclusion and Diversity is valued because they take it as a skill that can be
improved by the leaders and managers and if they succeed in doing so they can avail a better
opportunity of involvement and output of the employees who are working for them and
available around them. The company is investing to create a culture where all the capable and
talented employees are treated equally and offered equal opportunities such that they can
provide better solutions to the clients to attain their objectives. Besides this, the company has
committed to increase 30% of its female senior representation by 2020 globally across the
globe. The company felt very proud in the year 2017 because it had 45% of the female in
their new hires globally and 47% ethnic minority in United States new hires (Huang 2018).
For serving the clients from diverse background, the company require a diverse as well as
inclusive form.
The company is giving major priority and attention to Inclusion and Diversity Initiative
because they understand its value and know that a diverse and inclusive staff can efficiently
interpret into innovation and improved decision making. Businesses that are not successful in
treating inclusion and diversity properly will not be able to grab the opportunity to
completely understand the business environment dynamics. Furthermore, I&D initiative is
very important for BlackRock because they treat it as an investment in their sustainability
investing platform (Blackrock 2016). The company is searching for increased interest from
its clients and working on the solutions for providing support to the investors to get exposure
related to the companies that are leaders in promoting this principle in their operations.

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An identification of the problems
Cultural Problems in Japan and India
One of the major problems that BlackRock experienced while implementing the Diversity
and Inclusion Initiative within the organization was cultural problems in the Japan and Indian
region. In the Indian region, the Human Capital Committee health that is Sanjeev Malik faced
the cultural challenges related to women at workplace. When he arrived in the Gurugram
BlackRock’s office of India, he noticed that many of the female resume were discarded by
the managers and even by the recruiting agencies on the basis of their personal information
(Groysberg and Connolly 2015). One of the examples of this issue was, one woman specified
in her resume that she was pregnant due to which her resume got discarded without provided
any type of justification. These activities in India resulted in limited number of female
employees at BlackRock. Besides this, many of the talented female candidates were rejected
due to this practice. In order to eliminate this issue, Malik planned to develop a recruiting
metrics that can be reported and measured.
Furthermore, Malik also discovered that female employees are less likely to be hired for
specific shift at their workplace. While understanding the main reason behind this, they
identified that women do not prefer to work a later shift because it they reach home late then
their neighbors consider that they for a call center (Groysberg and Connolly 2015). Many of
the people of older generation link the employees of call center with the partying and
drinking which has resulted in making it a bad social stigma.
Lack of best in class practices and behavior
While expanding the Diversity and Inclusion Initiative the company was involved in different
mergers and acquisition. The biggest issue that company faced specifically in the BGI
transaction and integration, was that the BlackRock has developed very fast by the use of
acquisition and the demand of those expansion had overcome the foundations of what is

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considered to be the well-functioning organization with best behavior and practices
(Groysberg and Connolly 2015). The company do not have best in class programs that larges
organizations generally have like robust hiring procedure, training programs for the senior
and junior managers, etc. However, still company performed well with their consistent values
that supported them in overcoming all these challenges.
To balance the needs of any one country or region
As it is known that BlackRock operates in around 30 countries with different culture and
values, which makes it challenging for the company to effectively implement its Diversity
and Inclusion Initiative across the globe (Blackrock 2019). It is considered to be the greater
challenge for the company to balance the needs of one region or country along with
maintaining the overall motive of oneness of the company. As the business become stronger
and makes stronger its local characteristics, it has to confirm that it does not make any type of
silos among the nations (Groysberg and Connolly 2015). It needs to ensured that when a
company calls itself inclusive then it becomes important to share the information globally and
that a Vice President of Tokyo represents the company is not different to the way Vice
President in San Francisco represents the company.
An identification of solutions to those problems.
Cultural Problems in Japan and India
The solution that needs to be considered by the BlackRock Company to overcome this
problem is work on educating the society not just in these two countries but also across the
world. Because somewhere in every nation there is a situation where a female child is
restricted to work in specific shifts or even are not allowed to work. Organizing different
types of awareness campaign in different countries will help in inviting more female workers
to join the company. Through these campaigns company can also represent itself to be an
organization that gives priority to the safety of its women employee such that it can hire more

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female workers for different shifts. In addition to this, to resolve this issue and encourage
women employment, company can sponsor the education of women in countries like India
and Japan. By doing so it will not just send a positive message in the society but it will also
improve its image in the society as a responsible organization. Adopting this solution to
resolve the above identified issue will cost company a bit. The amount that needs to be
invested by the company is around USD 6,301 (Thakur , Prinja and Jeet 2016, 791-795).
Lack of best in class practices and behavior
The best solution to this problem is to organize different training sessions by experienced top
executives or trainers for the junior as well as senior managers such that they can learn more
about how to improve their performance in the company of their own and also of their
employees. Having a proper training program session will help them in developing their skills
and timely updating their knowledge that can help them in their career development. In
addition to this, the company also needs to strong and robust hiring procedure as it can
increase the chance of hiring talented and best candidate for specific job position in the
company. Having this solution in place will help the company in enhancing its performance
as well as the performance of its employees. The average cost that the company needs to
invest in training its manager per employee is $ 1,296.
To balance the needs of any one country or region
The challenge that company experience is to balance the need of any region or country while
maintaining the motive of oneness is very difficult to resolve. This is because every region
and country have different demands and values that needs to be fulfilled by the business
which is very tough. Therefore, in order to overcome this challenge, the company needs to
decide on working on a single motive and vision in all the countries where it operates it
business. By having a single vision and rules the company will then only able to operate
successfully. Because having different rules and vision for different country can result in

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creating ciaos and even it fails in meeting its organizational objective. For example, the
motive of the company is to offer equal opportunity to female in the society. This motive
needs to be followed globally by the company in order to meet it. Besides this, the company
also needs to offer equal employment opportunity to female workers such that they can meet
their goal of female empowerment.
Summary of the Solution
It has been identified that BlackRock Inc. which is considered to be one of the leading asset
management company experienced number of problems in implementing the Diversity and
Inclusion Initiative globally where it operates. It has been noticed that if company needs to
overcome the cultural challenges, then it needs to work on educating the society related to
female employment. This will not just eliminate the negative thoughts that have been created
in the society related to women working in certain shifts but will also help company in
contributing its share in the development of the society. Besides this, the solution for the
problem that company face related to the lack of best practices and behavior in the company
related to training of junior and senior managers and hiring procedure is that it must organize
training sessions for its managers. The company should also have a proper hiring procedure
in place such that it can get the chance to hire right person for right place. This will help
company in having a skilled staff in the system that will contribute in increasing the
productivity of the organization. In addition to this, the solution for balancing the needs of
different country and region is to have a universal vision and motive. In order to meet this
universal motive at global level, the company needs to identify different ways and strategies
according to the values of different countries. This will help company in meeting its motive
by not harming the emotions and values of different culture and region.

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Conclusion
The above report has provided the detailed analysis of the BlackRock Inc. and its Diversity
and Inclusion Initiative. The analysis has identified that BlackRock Inc. is the leading
company of asset management which has framed this D&I initiative and applied it in its
global operations. The philosophy of this initiative is to develop a culture where diversified
employees are hired of different culture and language and they must give the right to speak
and present their ideas openly under the inclusion criteria. The company is successfully
following this initiative due to which it is smoothly operating its business in different
countries. But there are some issues identified in the case study which revealed that company
has experienced some problems in implementing this initiative in the business. The issues
that are identified are cultural problems, lack of in-class practices and behavior, and
challenge in balancing the need of different country and region. These problems can be
overcome by the solutions provided above that is to organize awareness campaign to
encourage female employees to work in certain shifts and sponsoring the education and
training of women. Besides this, the company is also recommended to have in class practices
such as training session for junior and senior managers and proper hiring procedure to have
talented workforce. In the end, in order to balance the need of different country the company
is recommended to have a universal motive in place.