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Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is an important and ongoing strategy of any HR plan. Ensuring that your company supports hiring, engaging, and retaining diverse workers with varied backgrounds will set your company up for long-term success and an increased bottom line. This topic offers the latest strategies for talent management, key insights from diversity leaders, case studies on D&I in the workplace, and more.
Diversity consultant and founder of QUEST Diversity Initiatives LLC Natalie Holder-Winfield, wants to make something clear: “When I say ‘diverse,’ I don’t mean it as a stand-in or as another word for ‘minority.’ When I refer to a diverse workforce, I really do mean people of all different ideas, thoughts, cultures, backgrounds, and sexual orientation […]
We recently ran across a May 2008 posting from the now-defunct New York Times “Shifting Careers” blog. The topic is still relevant today — exactly a year later. Author Marci Alboher interviewed Natalie Holder-Winfield, an employment lawyer turned diversity consultant, about her book, Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce. Alboher wrote that the book “is […]
Marcial Avila worked for Jostens, Inc., a yearbook publisher, in its Topeka, Kansas, facility from 1995 until September 2003. His duties included counting yearbooks, packing them into boxes, and printing and affixing shipping labels. He is a legal resident of the United States but was born in Mexico and spoke Spanish as his primary language. […]
In 1978, a joint congressional resolution established Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week. The first 10 days of May were chosen to coincide with two important milestones in Asian/Pacific American history: the arrival in the United States of the first Japanese immigrants (May 7, 1843) and contributions of Chinese workers to the building of the transcontinental railroad, […]
Now is not the time to kill your diversity program. According to new research from George Mason University, workplace discrimination actually increases in an economic downturn. A recent study by Eden King, an assistant professor of psychology at the Fairfax, Virginia, college, found that competition for fewer jobs and resources often forces minority groups to […]
Managers often hire people who mirror them behaviorally; when they don’t, they tend to get frustrated and criticize the employee because of his or her work style. Performance-based concerns are valid, but if the employee is “getting the job done,” it’s a different matter. Diverse work styles and thought processes, say experts, can offer a […]
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced that workplace discrimination charge filings increased 15 percent last year to an unprecedented level of 95,402. While the agency stated that it didn’t know if this was a trend, it was an indication of a persistent problem. All of the main categories of charge filings with the […]
The Second Appellate Division of the California Court of Appeal recently upheld a jury verdict exceeding $1.1 million against the Pasadena Fire Department for subjecting a firefighter to a fitness-for-duty examination and retiring him, failing to provide a reasonable accommodation for his perceived disability, and failing to engage in an interactive process. Firefighter Loses Racial […]
At 20 percent of the population, people with disabilities are America’s largest minority group. “They carry a second distinction of being America’s most invisible population,” says Wayne McMillan, president and CEO of Bobby Dodd Institute (BDI), an Atlanta-based nonprofit providing career services and job training for the disabled. “Instead of an uproar,” he says, “their […]
Just having a diversity program won’t instantly solve all your problems. “Diversity is not simply a means to an end, but rather, an ongoing journey that evolves over time,” says Jennifer Melton, an EEO/diversity management consultant for F&H Solutions Group, an affiliate of Ford & Harrison LLP. “The idea that the implementation of these initiatives […]