Workforce Diversity at Roybit Solutions HR Case Study: Identifying Challenges and Implementing Strategic Solutions

Workforce Diversity at Roybit Solutions

Roybit is a leading IT and business services consultancy employing 10,000 people worldwide,  delivering consultancy and outsourcing services and technological business solutions.  Established in 1974 by three recent university graduates, it has risen to be one of Europe’s most innovative consultancies. It currently has activities in over 40 countries and places great stress on its ability to understand and respond to the needs of its clients or ‘partners’ in any market in any country.

Despite its size and origins in the UK, where its headquarters remains, Roybit has sought to position itself as ‘global in capability, local in application’, combining the best talent from around the world to deliver tailored solutions to clients’ problems. The company is still headed up by Noah Lennox, one of the founders of the company (the two other founders have long since left the company, one having had a falling out with Lennox, the other to pursue alternative business opportunities). A key focus of Lennox’s leadership – and arguably an integral part of the company’s success – has been to create a strong corporate culture centred around Roybit’s core values (innovation, integrity, respect, quality, value). The company stresses the importance of these corporate values when recruiting new members of staff. Europe and North America have been the main markets for Roybit in the past but  Lennox has recently unveiled ambitious plans for a stronger presence in both South America and the Far East. Integral to these expansion plans is the recruitment of a significantly increased number of graduate recruits on its graduate development programme.

Typically, Roybit has focused its graduate recruitment on redbrick universities, reflecting the long-held view that they are the best source of technical graduates. Most of their graduate in take typically comes from 20 universities, although occasionally, outstanding candidates from the newer universities are accepted on the graduate development programme. In line

With the emphasis on the importance placed on person-organisation fit and the focus in induction of inculcating core values, Roybit has tended to prefer to recruit ‘blank canvases’  who can be moulded into ‘Roybit people’.

Following feedback from clients that Roybit’s systems developers and designers can often lack the ability to convey complex ideas to non-experts, the company has begun to stress the importance of recruiting new employees on the basis of possessing both technical expertise  (which has tended to be the preeminent concern) and interpersonal/communication skills.  Drawing on this basis, Roybit has developed a competency framework to reflect the ‘ideal employee’ that provides the basis for HR decisions in the areas of recruitment, learning and development and performance management, which has been rolled out throughout the company. This framework had been based on assessing the characteristics and behaviours of corporate high-flyers.

At a recent meeting, however, one senior manager at a US client joked to Lennox that Roybit must have a corporate ‘cookie-cutter’ which they use to produce duplicate employees. This has concerned Lennox, and he instructed HR to explore the issue. Initial findings suggest a notable lack of diversity – particularly with regards to age and gender – among the grades of workers that are the visible face of Roybit, who spend considerable amounts of time at clients’  premises, often undertaking international assignments, and are responsible for designing technological solutions to client problems.

Question 1

(1) Why should the CEO consider this lack of diversity to be a problem for the organisation?

In your answer, you should consider the potential HR outcomes and wider business issues in managing diversity. (50 marks)

Question 2 

points

(2) What recommendations would you make to Roybit Solutions to help resolve this lack of diversity?

In your answers, you should consider a range of processes that enable organisations to manage diversity effectively. (50 marks)