Novartis, a Swiss Multinational Pharmaceutical company, was ranked 16th among the top 50 companies in Diversity Management in 2010. In the same year, a lawsuit was filed against Novartis when the women employees realized that they were discriminated in terms of wages, promotion etc. The jury decided that Novartis was indeed involved in gender discrimination and hence asked the company to pay $3.3 million to the women employees who suffered due to this discrimination.This lawsuit proved to be the impetus for change in the system. In the next three years, the companys diversity management rankings were 21, 13 and 6. In 2014, Novartis was ranked #1 in terms of Diversity Management by DiversityInc. This transformation can be attributed to two main factors which are the deeply committed leadership and hardwork. Thus, Novartis became the case study for the rapid progress and significance of Diversity ManagementSome of the initiatives of Novartis include Flexible working model wherein different choices such as pert time work, work from home, job sharing etc. are provided to employees. This helps the employees to maintain their work life balance. Diversability is another initiative taken specifically for disabled members in the organization. This interactive forum brings to light the concerns of the associates about their disabilities, customers and patients. The motto is not to focus on disability but to focus on abilities.Now, Novartis uses diversity as a tool to understand the market and create a network with the drug patients. Novartis has more than 15 employee resource groups where more than 40% of the workforce is registered atleast in one of the groups. The aim of these groups ultimately link to the business goals as they aid in providing valuable market insights.Novartis is a part of the steering committee in International Labour Organization which advocates for the inclusion of disabled people into the regular workforce. ILO is the strategic cooperation partner of Novartis for the people with disabilities. Novartis had developed a disciplined executive program emphasizing on Human Capital results. The executive leadership teams annual performance management goals included 20% weightage towards objectives that have specific diversity initiatives. By 2014, through these initiatives, more than 50% of the senior level management was held by women.The top management clearly understood that Diversity is a given whereas Inclusion is a choice. Hence the emphasis was equally given to inclusion as well. The initiatives related to Diversity & Inclusion focused on four areas which are cultural diversity, gender and generation diversity, individual abilities and working styles.Thus, Novartis was able to turn around the image in a span of less than four years to become a leader in the field of Diversity Management thereby setting an example for other organizations. Questions1. Why was diversity management essential for Novartis?2. How did the various initiatives taken by Novartis help in enhancing diversity management?References1. http://www.novartis.ch/cs/www.novartis.ch-v3/downloads/citizenship/Diversity-and-Inclusion/novartis-ch-d-and-i-english-pdf-v12.pdf2. http://www.diversityinc.com/diversity-events/2014-top-company-diversity-management-progress-novartis-pharmaceuticals-corporation/