In earlier articles we reported on two new U.S. Supreme Court affirmative action decisions with implications for workplace diversity programs. Cultivating and maintaining a diverse workforce is a complex and ongoing process, and it’s not always easy to know how to proceed. This two-part series will address why organizations adopt diversity programs, ways to get started, tips you can use to ensure your program is implemented properly, and legal pitfalls to sidestep. We’ll begin by examining the reasons a diversity program may be important to your workplace and how to get started.
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Why Diversity?
According to experts, workplace diversity is important for a number of reasons:
- Facilitates compliance with laws. Discriminating against individuals based on race, sex, and other protected characteristics is illegal. Having a deliberate plan to make your workplace more inclusive can help insulate your organization from discrimination allegations. Also, organizations that employ 50 or more people and have government contracts of $50,000 or more must have a diversity plan to comply with the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs’ affirmative action requirements.
- Increases employee satisfaction. Companies that understand the needs of different groups of people are more likely to attract and retain a broad range of talented employees.
- Reflects customer needs. From a bottom-line standpoint, diversity may help your business, particularly if you have a diverse customer base. Menlo Park diversity coach Esther Heller recounts the story of an all-white, all-male sales team that was turned away by a prospective customer and told to “come back when you look more like us.” Tracy Brown, president of Dallas-based Diversity Trends, adds that market share, customer loyalty, and community relationships are all boosted by diversity.
- Provides broader perspectives. Heller says that a diverse workforce can enable you to achieve more creative solutions, a wider perspective, and a larger market.
Where to Start
Here’s a look at some crucial first steps to help you get a diversity program up and running:
- Gather and analyze information. Begin by honestly assessing the status quo. Rhoma Young, principal of Oakland-based HR consulting firm Rhoma Young & Associates, suggests looking at your current workforce demographics. The clustering of women or certain ethnic groups around particular jobs or salaries, says Young, is a clear indication you have some issues. Perhaps your hiring practices don’t reflect hiring pool demographics, or maybe hiring is sufficiently diverse but people don’t move up through all levels of your organization.
Either or both of these situations can spell legal trouble. Job applicants and current employees can use your hiring and promotion statistics to prove a pattern of discrimination, which is much easier to show if women and people of color tend to have entry-level jobs or are missing from your workforce entirely. Even if you don’t intentionally discriminate, you could have a huge problem on your hands if your numbers are skewed in favor of a particular group.
Questionnaires, interviews, surveys, and focus groups are all useful ways to gather information. You’ll need data on the racial, ethnic, age, and gender composition of your workforce, employee and management views on diversity issues, and your policies and practices, such as how you pay, manage, hire, train, and promote. Consider asking your current minority staff what attracted them to you or other employers and what turned them off to other employers.
- Get top managers to buy in. Once you know where you stand, a decision to make changes must come from the highest levels of your company. If upper management isn’t committed, the changes may not work.
- Develop a plan. Identify the program’s objective and purpose. Are you addressing compliance concerns, responding to lawsuits, or perhaps implementing a broad strategic mission? Once you’ve identified your objective, be sure to establish goals and timetables, but not quotas, to help measure progress. Keep in mind, too, that diversity should be integrated into a total business plan, not treated as something separate. Companies need to decide how to manage, make decisions, and communicate in a way that fosters diversity.
- Avoid quotas. The Supreme Court’s recent affirmative action decisions made clear that setting aside slots for people of a certain race or gender is unacceptable. Regardless of how unbalanced your hiring or promotion practices may have been in the past, it’s not legal to fix the problem by setting number targets or deciding in advance to fill a vacancy with, say, an African-American candidate. Also, don’t let diversity initiatives trump established seniority and promotion policies. Such practices could leave you vulnerable to reverse discrimination claims.