Corporate diversity programmes typically follow predictable patterns. Companies publish representation statistics, launch employee resource groups, and issue statements affirming commitment to inclusion. Then little changes. Employees from underrepresented groups remain marginalised in actual decision-making, whilst diversity becomes primarily a communications exercise.
Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications giant employing 94,000 people across 175 countries, claims something different. “Inclusion is about how we show up every day, not just the policies we put in place,” says Priyanka Anand, vice president and head of HR for Southeast Asia, Oceania and India. The company maintains that inclusion drives business performance, not merely corporate reputation.
Whether Ericsson has genuinely cracked inclusion’s implementation challenge or simply articulated it more eloquently than competitors is difficult to verify externally. But the company’s approach—emphasising behavioural change over policy frameworks and measurement beyond demographics—offers insights into how large multinationals attempt cultural transformation.
The inclusion gap
Most organisations struggle to translate diversity aspirations into daily practice. Frameworks exist, training happens, yet workplace culture often remains unchanged. The challenge lies not in acknowledging inclusion’s importance but in embedding it into actual behaviour—how meetings run, decisions get made, and careers progress.
“For us at Ericsson, inclusion is about what we do every day and not just what is written in a policy,”
Priyanka Anand, vice president and head of HR for Southeast Asia, Oceania and India, Ericsson
Ericsson operates in an industry where technical expertise traditionally mattered more than interpersonal dynamics. Engineers solved problems; hierarchies remained clear; performance metrics focused on deliverables. This culture, whilst effective for certain outcomes, can marginalise voices that don’t conform to established patterns.
“For us at Ericsson, inclusion is about what we do every day and not just what is written in a policy,” Anand says. She recounts how a Southeast Asian engineer—reserved in meetings but insightful in private conversations—began contributing more openly after a team leader completed inclusive leadership training. The leader deliberately created space for this individual during discussions, eventually leading to the engineer heading a critical project.
It’s a compelling anecdote, though sceptics might question whether one success story demonstrates systematic change or simply highlights what good management always entailed. The real test lies in whether such behaviours spread beyond individual leaders to become organisational norms.
From principle to practice
Ericsson has developed multiple mechanisms attempting to bridge inclusion’s policy-practice gap. The company runs immersive learning experiences where leaders practise inclusive behaviours in simulated scenarios. These differ from traditional diversity training—which often focuses on awareness—by emphasising practical skills like recognising bias in real time and adjusting meeting dynamics.
The Leadership Core Curriculum incorporates inclusion modules, whilst “Upskilling for an Inclusive Future” targets specific behavioural changes. Ericsson also conducts “skip-level conversations” where employees discuss concerns with leaders two levels above their direct managers, theoretically bypassing immediate hierarchies that might suppress feedback.
These initiatives sound comprehensive, though their actual effectiveness remains unclear. Do immersive learning experiences genuinely change behaviour, or do participants simply demonstrate desired responses during training before reverting to established patterns? Ericsson doesn’t provide concrete data on behavioural shifts beyond claiming “high engagement scores” and “low attrition” in India.
More substantively, the company has expanded its inclusion lens beyond gender to encompass cognitive diversity, neurodiversity, and various identity dimensions. A Neurodiversity & Allies Employee Resource Group creates space for different thinking and processing styles—potentially valuable in technical organisations where diverse cognitive approaches can yield innovation.
Structural changes
Perhaps more tangible are Ericsson’s structural interventions. The company has extended benefits to cover same-sex and live-in partners, adopted children, and IVF treatments. These policy changes signal genuine commitment beyond rhetoric, though they also reflect broader corporate trends in progressive markets.
Ericsson’s Career Hub, Talent Marketplace, and AI-driven workforce planning tools aim to democratise development opportunities. The MOAI Campus Graduate Programme (ASCENT) specifically targets women graduates, providing structured pathways into technical roles.
Such initiatives address legitimate barriers to inclusion—lack of visible career paths, limited access to opportunities, insufficient support systems. Whether they succeed depends on execution consistency. Many companies launch similar programmes that fade after initial enthusiasm or become captured by the already-advantaged.
The company’s Women of Ericsson network provides forums for dialogue and policy recommendations, theoretically ensuring inclusion evolves with employee input. This participatory approach sounds progressive, though the actual influence such groups wield versus their function as feedback mechanisms varies considerably across organisations.
The measurement challenge
Quantifying inclusion poses fundamental difficulties. Traditional metrics—representation percentages, programme participation rates—capture inputs rather than outcomes. Whether employees actually feel included, contribute fully, and advance equitably proves far harder to measure.
Ericsson uses its VOICE Survey to assess whether employees feel safe speaking up, respected by teammates, and included in interactions. This experience-based measurement represents more sophisticated thinking than simple demographic tracking.
“Inclusion comes to life in everyday actions,” Anand notes. “It’s the behaviours and cultural shifts that show inclusion is real and meaningful, not just something we track on a page.”
This sounds reasonable, though it also makes verification difficult. Without concrete metrics on career progression rates across different groups, project leadership diversity, or pay equity transparency, claims about inclusion remain largely unverifiable from outside.
The company points to high engagement and low attrition in India as evidence of success. These are positive indicators, but they could reflect multiple factors—competitive compensation, interesting work, limited alternative employers—rather than specifically inclusion initiatives.
Global consistency, local adaptation
Operating across 175 countries, Ericsson faces the challenge of maintaining consistent values whilst respecting local contexts. “What makes someone feel included in one place may not work somewhere else,” Anand acknowledges.
This tension between universal principles and local adaptation defines all multinational inclusion efforts. Policies effective in Scandinavian contexts may prove inappropriate or even counterproductive elsewhere. The company claims to balance global standards with regional sensitivity, though specific examples of such adaptation aren’t provided.
More intriguingly, Ericsson is focusing on what it calls “AI inclusion”—ensuring recruitment, performance evaluation, and learning systems incorporate inclusive design. As algorithms increasingly influence career trajectories, embedding fairness into these systems becomes critical. Whether Ericsson has genuinely solved AI bias or simply recognised the challenge remains unclear.
The hybrid equity question
Remote work has created new inclusion challenges around visibility and access. Employees working from home risk marginalisation compared to office-based colleagues who benefit from informal interactions and spontaneous opportunities.
Ericsson claims to address “hybrid equity”—ensuring fairness across physical and digital workplaces. The company’s NextGen Advisory Board connects young employees directly with senior leadership, theoretically providing visibility regardless of location.
Such initiatives signal awareness of hybrid work’s inclusion implications. Whether they genuinely create equity or primarily benefit already-confident employees comfortable advocating for themselves is difficult to assess.
Implementation versus aspiration
Ericsson’s inclusion approach demonstrates sophisticated thinking about cultural transformation’s practical challenges. The emphasis on behavioural change over policy frameworks, experience-based measurement, and structural interventions like expanded benefits all suggest genuine commitment.
Whether this translates into measurably better outcomes for underrepresented groups remains unclear. The company doesn’t provide detailed data on career progression rates, leadership diversity at various levels, or pay equity across different employee segments.
More fundamentally, inclusion’s deepest challenges resist quick solutions. Changing ingrained organisational cultures, dismantling subtle bias in decision-making, and ensuring equitable opportunity distribution require sustained effort over years. Many well-intentioned programmes falter when initial enthusiasm fades or economic pressures demand cost-cutting.
Anand’s assertion that “real impact happens when everyone owns inclusion every day” captures both inclusion’s promise and its difficulty. Cultural transformation requires collective commitment, yet measuring individual accountability for cultural outcomes proves notoriously challenging.
For now, Ericsson demonstrates that large multinationals can articulate comprehensive inclusion strategies addressing practical implementation challenges. Whether such strategies genuinely create more equitable, innovative workplaces—or primarily represent sophisticated communications about enduring problems—will become clear only through sustained execution and transparent reporting over years.