Role of Diversity Climate on Employee Satisfaction and Intent to Leave in Indian IT Personnel

Workforce diversity is one of the cornerstones of Indian Information Technology (IT) sector’s success as companies need to leverage the skills and talent of a diverse pool of employees. Diversity initiatives and programs in organizations are essentially implemented in order to improve the overall organizational diversity climate. Studies undertaken on diversity climate have revealed that a healthy organizational diversity mostly has a positive effect on individual and organizational variables. The present study determines the relationship of perceived organizational diversity climate with overall employee satisfaction, and intent to leave of employees working in the Indian IT sector. It also attempts to answer whether employees perceiving low and high organizational diversity climate differ in regard to their satisfaction level and intent to leave. The results based on a web based survey of 500 Indian IT professionals reveal that organizational diversity climate is positively correlated to employee satisfaction and negatively correlated to employee’s intent to leave. The analysis also shows that employees who perceive high level of diversity climate have better satisfaction level and lesser intent to leave than those who perceive a lower level of organizational diversity climate.