Diversity & Inclusion in Shipping industry -Qualitative & Quantitative Analysis of Impact

(a). Business Issue(s)
Shipping is a male-dominated industry and female employees contribute a very small population of this niche industry both at sea and ashore. xxxx is a pioneer when it comes to driving inclusion and diversity but still the statistics do not portray a diversified work environment. The statistics at present are – number of females in the organization is in between the range of 15% to 30% across job levels 3 to 9. As per studies conducted, better gender diversity has proven to increase organization’s productivity and in driving innovation, thereby, having a positive impact on company’s financial performance.

The questions that we expect to answer through this research study are – 1)Why is gender D&I important for the company and this industry? And 2)Does a good gender representation in teams improves overall engagement levels which is directly correlated with team’s productivity.

Research Objectives
-Understand the relevance of D&I in the firm.
-Identification of dependent, independent, moderating and control variables for research study.
-Understand D&I impact on a functional unit’s engagement through engagement scores analysis.
-Dissemination of findings and recommendations based on research study.

Qualitative reserach

Primary research method includes questionnaire, interviews and focus groups. Other than these, we will also do secondary research that will involve doing literature reviews, data collection from company and competitors’ website and if needed, data from government sites.
Questionnaire
The survey questionnaire will not be gender specific and the idea would be to get thoughts of women and their peers alike on diversity and inclusion. This would help me to gather the data for thought alignment and identify the gap, if any. Once survey is completed, the analysis will be conducted region wise to interpret if geographical location is a factor to consider during diversity and inclusion drive.

Interviews
From a larger sample, I will choose a sub-sample (top managers of various units and JL6 & above employees) for a video call or face-to-face Q&A session. This will be to understand how diversity can benefit their respective functions, current gap in their team’s performance and how diversity can play a role in improving that aspect.

Questionnaires:
Data set: Can be sent to all study participants across geographies.
Questionnaire to be non-gender specific & responses to be recorded on Likert scale.
Questionnaire structure focus – Working environment, Work life balance and Communication
Focused on identifying the perception of D&I, impact on engagement and challenges faced by employees

Interviews:
1:1 meetings (video call or face-to-face Q&A session) with JL5 & above team leaders.
Focussed on understanding the impact of diversity on their functional teams and challenges faced in implementation of D&I policies.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
Formulation of hypothesis:
Ha: Gender D&I has positive impact on firm’s engagement levels and productivity.
Hb: Gender D&I has moderate impact on firm’s engagement levels and productivity.
Hc: Gender D&I has no impact on firm’s engagement levels and productivity.

Linear regression variables analysis:
Dependent variable: Engagement scores over a period of five years
Independent variables: Gender representation % (functional teams, Team Leads/Top managers, JL 4 and JL 3 employees)
Moderating variable: Gender equality
Control variables: Functional team size and type, employee engagement programs, education levels, global firm acquisitions, income, geographical locations.

Descriptive statistics:
For trend analysis and y-o-y comparisons of team demographics and engagement scores.