The impact of diversity is still greatly misunderstood, we fail to see how it might be leveraged for organizational effectiveness and success. We cannot ignore the reality that people of all ages, sexes, nationalities, and cultures are increasingly networked.
Managing diversity is not just a social, moral or conscience issue,
there is also profit justification from promoting diversity.
Diversity training must always show how to improve productivity and the
impact on the bottom-line. Consider all the failed marketing attempts,
destroyed relationships, conflicts, lost talent, and misunderstanding that
have resulted from not understanding or appreciating diversity.
Industry is realizing that successful businesses will anticipate and capitalize on the swiftly rising proportion of minority, immigrant, female and older workers. In addition, firms are beginning to capitalize on the talents of the disabled. Much of the growth of the Managing Diversity industry, however, is being fueled by the fear of lawsuits or mandatory 'diversity sensitivity training' doled out by judges.
How can you prove to an organization that they need diversity training?
What are the benefits of diversity?Show demographic forecasts (5, 10, 20 years out) showing population changes Relate these changes to the company's current and future customers Based on demographic forecasts, show who their workers will be in 5, 10, 15 years out Show (by examples) how other organizations have penetrated previously untapped or underrepresented markets Demonstrate how will the organization is poised to capitalizes on these new opportunities
1) Increased market share, revenue, income and profits through increased customersTypical ways to diversify the workforce2) More productive workers -
- You need to be able to communicate with your customers. It is easier to understand others of the same sex, nationality or cultural background.
- It reduces transaction costs (workers can anticipate the of customers)
3) Avoid costly legal battles – simplest way is to hire and promote more of whichever groups your are in danger of offending. However, this can cause a ‘backlash’ of discriminatory practice and result in increased discrimination lawsuits.
- Interacting with workers from diverse backgrounds provides cross-fertilization of idea (e.g. Fiat assembled a team of engineers from Argentina, Brazil, Poland, and Turkey all of whom had experience designing cars for poor roads)
- Draws upon the talents of ALL workers
- Helps initiate ‘best practices’ - identifies new and useful ideas from other cultures
Other costs – turnover, absenteeism, low morale and productivity are reduced.
REVERSE DISCRIMINATION
EEOC has guidelines that state companies cannot establish an affirmative action program to sanction the discriminatory treatment of ANY group of people (including white males). If there is substantial imbalance than you can correct it but make sure you have the OBJECTIVE statistics to prove it
Quotas: recruiting by the numbers could worsen the problem by:
channeling people into wrong jobs discriminating against others
Reverse career pathing- chart out how individuals got to
the top. Are the white males sealing deals on the golf course?
One woman at a San Francisco company said members of a certain demographic
group were racing past her in promotions. By devising a reverse career
path she found out that they all, unlike her, had attended Stanford University,
just like the top executives.
1) a talent drainEEOC2) reverse discrimination lawsuits -suits filed by men for wrongful discharge and failure to promote are rising
- (white) men don't like to hear they got to where the are based on gender (or color)
- many white males don't feel advantage
- don't stereotype that because one male at the company is sexist/racist that all are
- diversity training shouldn't be more discrimination (have mentoring programs for all, promote based on merit
BACKLASH
The Character of a Multicultural, Inclusive Organization