diversity - academydr online on Diigo

03 Apr 08

YouTube - Diversity: not whether, but how!

Short introduction to HRM approach to diverisity and linking to organizational efffectiveness

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diversity diversity_business_case diversity_intiatives

19 Mar 08

The investigation involved a detailed examination
of large firms with well-deserved reputations for their long-standing commitment
to building a diverse workforce and managing diversity effectively.
At a time when charges of racial harassment are way up, and racial
discrimination class-action lawsuits are enjoying a renaissance, diversity
programs are flourishing. Organizations appoint diversity officers. They hire
diversity consultants, coaches, and trainers. They adopt diversity scorecards,
benchmarks, and best practices, and send executives to diversity conferences and
leadership academies. But despite the astonishing number of products and
services--ranging from the worthy to the banal--one item is in very short
supply: hard metrics for measuring performance results or the return on
diversity spending.
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- 20 large corporations wit
- the number of job-discrimination charges filed with
  the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including race-based charges, hit a
  seven-year high in 2002.
- The recent increase in charges can be linked to the
  recession--work-related lawsuits typically rise during economic downturns--but
  there was no evidence of improved compliance before the recession hit.
- Wal-Mart, ranked number one
  on Fortune’s prestigious "America’s Most Admired Companies" list for
  2003, is facing the largest sex-discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history, with as
  many as 500,000 plaintiffs.
- Xerox launched its first workplace equality efforts almost 40 years ago. The
  company draws 30 percent of its workforce from racial minorities and wins
  numerous awards for its diversity program. Yet it still faces multiple
  discrimination lawsuits. The number of racial-harassment cases involving hangman’s
  nooses has exploded in recent years, according to the EEOC, with incidents
  reported at dozens of leading companies, including Home Depot, Lockheed Martin,
  Boeing, Texaco, and Northwest Airlines.
- "Meaningful discussions and
  analyses do not occur because companies are concerned about legal issues and
  because people simply want to believe that diversity works," Kochan says.
- struggled to
  find companies willing to participate in its diversity study. "
- "There are estimates that companies spend $8 billion on diversity training
  annually," he adds. "Much of this is wasted because it is spent on programs
  for awareness and valuing diversity that do not give people the skills they
  need."
- Instead, group members and leaders must be trained to deal with
  group process issues, with a focus on communicating and problem-solving in
  diverse teams.
- Human resources executives often
  don’t demand documented results from outside consultants or in-house diversity
  staff because "it’s easier to create activities and get credit for doing
  something than it is to create metrics and measures and hold people accountable,"
  he says.
- Some companies measure diversity results with recruitment, promotion, or
  turnover rates, but few look beyond simple head counts to measure the full
  financial or performance impact of their programs.
- "There is a connection between
  diversity and financial success, but typical profit-and-loss systems don’t
  capture the benefits that diversity creates," says Laura Liswood, senior
  adviser to Goldman Sachs on diversity issues and a senior scholar at the
  University of Maryland’s Academy of Leadership. "A lot of the benefits are
  not quantifiable, but it’s also true that we have not devoted the same level
  of resources to attempts to quantify diversity results."
- "The
  needed data cannot, in most cases, be culled from existing human resources data,"
  he says. "To create the needed data and analysis, human resources executives
  must run experiments within their organizations. They must invest in efforts to
  train departments in group processes, and then follow their performance over
  time, comparing the performance of groups that have been trained with that of
  groups that have not, using hard performance measurements based on the goals of
  the unit." These measurements might be time-to-market, error rates, sales
  growth, or any number of other productivity measures.
- "Human resources metrics in general don’t have
  the same analytical power as other business metrics,"
- The business case for diversity that dominates industry claims and corporate
  goals focuses on three related objectives: to allow organizations to tap talent
  pools and incorporate new ideas and perspectives from employees of different
  backgrounds; to expand market share; and to ensure legal compliance.
- Trivialization also occurs as the number of groups covered by diversity
  initiatives expands to include every conceivable cultural minority, far beyond
  historically underrepresented or oppressed groups. "There are practitioners in
  this business who push a very broad definition of diversity because they are
  trying to appeal to a larger audience to secure their own fate," Hyter says.
- Patricia Pope, CEO of Pope & Associates, a diversity-management firm in
  Cincinnati, adds that "there’s been this desire to get away from race and
  gender issues because they are so uncomfortable. It’s often easier for
  companies to tackle other differences, such as diversity of thought or diversity
  of birth order."
- Several studies, including Kochan’s, have found that companies generally
  are more successful in managing diversity with respect to gender issues than
  racial and ethnic issues. The empirical studies indicate that racial and ethnic
  diversity may, in fact, have a negative impact on business performance unless
  specific forms of analysis, training, and monitoring are in place. If left
  unattended or mismanaged, diversity is likely to produce miscommunication,
  unresolved conflict, higher turnover, and lower performance.
- Hyter says that some of
  his clients are "becoming much more aggressive about measuring the return on
  their investment in diversity training and consulting." He also believes that
  in-house staffing for corporate diversity programs is changing. "You can tell
  by the number of people with P&L responsibilities who are being tapped to
  manage diversity efforts, as opposed to people with just human resources
  backgrounds."
- Kochan says. "Diversity can
  enhance business performance, but only if the proper training is in place and
  the climate and culture support it. If companies can’t do this, they will lose
  the opportunity that diversity represents. There could be backward movement, and
  the negative consequences of diversity could predominate."
- The industry’s singular focus on success stories, and corporate reluctance
  to track and report results, makes it difficult to determine if diversity programs have fulfilled
  their objectives.
- may succeed in
  "building a pipeline of people with all kinds of demographic characteristics"
  but then fail at dealing with different behaviors.
- Building diversity programs on bedrock instead of sand begins with
  recognizing "that there is virtually no evidence to support the simple
  assertion that diversity is inevitably good or bad for business," Kochan says.
- "Unable to link HR practices to business performance, HR practitioners will
  be limited in what they can learn about how to manage diversity effectively, and
  their claims for diversity as a strategic imperative warranting financial
  investment will be weakened accordingly," Kochan says.

Don't Make Texaco's $175 Million Mistake | workforce.com

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diversity diversity_intiatives diversity_lawsuits

In fact, Texaco's cash settlement of more than $140 million, combined with additional concessions valued by plaintiffs' lawyers at $35 million-is the largest settlement ever in a racial-discrimination case.
With the hiring problem mostly solved, the next round of lawsuits is being based on the failure of companies to promote and compensate those employees at the same level as white males.
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- But as the 1996 A.T. Kearney survey revealed, 74 percent of companies with diversity efforts attribute them to business, societal and/or political pressures—not basic ethical values. Given that, one of the primary business reasons to pursue diversity sensitivity is increasing the company's ability to attract and retain customers.
- We realized that diversity efforts can increase employee satisfaction," Cromwell says, "and the Harvard Business School has been able to demonstrate a strong link between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and shareholder value.
- The report found that the annualized return for the 100 companies which rated lowest in EEO issues averaged 7.9 percent, compared to 18.3 percent for the 100 companies that rated highest in their equal employment opportunities.
- Up to this point, most diversity work has been focused solely on diversity-awareness training, she says. This raises the awareness of individual employees but does nothing to change the culture itself.
- Diversity consultant Elsie Cross of Elsie Y. Cross Associates in Philadelphia agrees, adding that much of the training done to date has been superficial. "You can't take people who've grown up in a prejudiced society and get rid of their beliefs and attitudes in a half-day training session," she says. Not only that, but in seeking to address every kind of difference imaginable, including age, religion, management level and even the particular concerns of white males, much of the training has become watered down. While this may make the training more palatable to some, Cross says it takes the focus off the very real oppression that still exists for women and minorities.
- This is because training done in the absence of any formal support for change can increase divisiveness in the workplace. Why? Not only because it raises awareness of tense issues, but also because it can increase the expectations of women and minorities, and increase fear and resistance among white men.
- "Most organizations that have invested in diversity training haven't received a proper return on their investment," Cox says. Just look at Texaco: the company had initiated a diversity effort a year before the secret tape was made, and senior executives had attended at least one awareness session.
- companies must begin to think of training as a component of their diversity strategy, not the strategy itself. Hyater-Adams believes companies must now concentrate on the second stage of diversity work that she calls "integration and application." This stage not only seeks to address what training ignored, such as management hypocrisy, but also seeks to make diversity work a business strategy. The goal, according to diversity experts, is to create a workplace in which white males, women and minorities are fully integrated and have equal access to power, promotions and opportunities.
- At US WEST, for example, managers must demonstrate their personal commitment to diversity through direct involvement on committees, task forces or community groups-they can't pass the task off to a subordinate-and they must show how their commitment is changing the demographic profile of workers in their unit, division or community. Furthermore, a portion of their compensation is tied to the achievement of diversity goals.
- Performing regular diagnostics, in the form of focus groups and employee evaluations, can help HR executives uncover these issues. "Companies must [analyze] the data by different populations," says Cromwell. If they don't, issues that affect certain employee populations-the lack of informal mentoring for minorities, for example-may not be noticeable when combined with other employees' responses.
- Diagnostic work helps diversity professionals understand what issues to tackle first.
- Finally, make sure you conduct regular evaluations. Companies must always be taking the pulse of employees to make sure that no diversity issue is overlooked. "What most companies need today is better information on minority issues," says Robertson. This includes statistics on the workforce profile, on major lawsuits or employee complaints of discrimination, and performance data about individual managers. This information must be shared with upper-level executives on a regular basis along with all the other profit-and-loss data they receive. If Texaco's executives had been receiving this information regularly, Robertson suggests they might never have been the target of a discrimination suit, or the ensuing negative publicity.
- But if company leaders begin to approach diversity like any other major business initiative—be it safety, reengineering or self-managed teams—they'll be in a better position to institutionalize diversity and truly encourage and embrace the different perspectives of each employee.
- In the final analysis, perhaps the best way to look at this issue is the way Cross describes it: "Diversity isn't the problem, it's the ideal." It's certainly an ideal worth striving to attain—and a financial driver we can no longer ignore.

18 Mar 08

KeyBank: Diversity Awareness

www.key.com/A-3.6.1.html - Preview

diversity diversity_intiatives

need for a diverse set of tal

Working at Key: Recognition and Awards

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diversity diversity_metrics

9th in supplier diversity and 31st overall, based on excellence in diversity management; CEO commitment; human capital; corporate communications; and supplier diversity. Key is one of two Ohio companies to make the list.

KeyBank: Key Values Diversity

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diversity diversity_statements

. An inclusive and collaborative environment helps our business and communities grow and prosper."

Mission Statement & Vision: The Coca-Cola Company

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diversity mission_vision

Coca-Cola - Corporate Responsibility - Workplace - Engagement

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diversity diversity_metrics inclusion

As a result of
survey findings, we increased our focus on operating effectiveness,
which includes efforts toward simplification and standardization;
reduced bureaucracy; and process effectiveness and efficiency. We
plan to repeat this survey in 2008 and beyond, to continue to learn
from employees.
In early 2007, we embarked upon an analysis of the relationship between
employee opinions/behaviors and organizational performance - specifically,
reputation among consumers, market share, and financial performance.
As expected, we found that employee opinions are significantly linked
with all of these factors.

Coca-Cola - Corporate Responsibility - Workplace - Diversity - Our Progress

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diversity diversity_metrics diversity_statements

96 percent of associates
agreed that the Company has established diversity as an important
component of its business strategy.
No. 4 on The 2007
DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® list
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- op 10 Companies for Recruitment & Retention (No. 5)
- op
  10 Companies for Asian-Americans (No. 6)
- comprehensive survey of diversity
  management that measures CEO commitment, human capital, corporate
  communications and supplier diversity.
- The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), has
  given The Coca-Cola Company a 100 percent rating for its workplace
  policies for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) associates.
- Company also ranked No. 17 on Hispanic Business magazine's
  "Diversity Elite 60."
- Essence magazine's
  2007 list of the top 25 employers for African-American women. Essence
  compiled this year's list by asking more than 60 business insiders
  -- headhunters, human resources representatives, research firms and
  nonprofit organizations -- to nominate companies with solid reputations
  for hiring, retaining, supporting and promoting African-American women.
- since
  the discrimination lawsuit settlement with the U.S. District Court
  for the Northern District of Georgia in November 2000.

Goldman Sachs Careers | Diversity

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diversity diversity_statements service_clients

IBM Valuing Diversity | Executive Corner | Global Workforce Diversity

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diversity diversity_statements social_responsibility

Global Workforce Diversity is a cornerstone of IBM's strategy to differentiate itself as one of the world's great companies.
Overall, IBM's intention is to create an environment that maximizes our employees' productivity and connection to the enterprise on a global scale.
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- That means we're extending beyond the traditional subjects of diversity — race, gender, genetics, religion, disability or sexual orientation — by aligning diversity with globalization
- An inclusive workplace makes for a creative environment;
- promote global workforce diversity as its key differentiator among all others.

IBM - Valuing diversity

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diversity social_responsibility

Whole Foods Market : Company : Declaration of Interdependence

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diversity social responsibility stakeholder

At the same time diversity and individual differences are recognized and honored.
Equal opportunity for employment, with promotion mostly from within the company.
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- There is a community of self interest among all of our stakeholders. We share together in our collective vision for the company. To that end we have a salary cap that limits the maximum cash compensation (wages plus profit incentive bonuses) paid to any Team Member in the calendar year to 19 times the company-wide annual average salary of all full-time Team Members.
- Creating and nurturing this community of stakeholders is critical to the long-term success of our company.