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Chapter 7 is Best Practices on Employee Diversity.
In this particular chapter, there'll be 7 benchmark items, in terms of best practices
and business ethics.
Benchmark Item Number 25 - A specific person, such as a diversity officer,
is accountable for diversity issues.
So the United States, as well as the entire world, is being more diversified and more
complex.
And because of the diversity, people do have biases and the biases are often in favor of
their particular race, their own gender, their own religion.
And within your organization, you want to make sure that everybody feels welcome, that
all employees, no matter what their race, religion, gender, feels welcomed in the organization.
And you want to make sure that all customers and suppliers, no matter what their race,
religion or gender happens to be, feel welcomed by the organization.
Because you really want to create a welcoming organization and a welcoming community within
your organization.
It's one thing to say that in this organization, everybody is responsible for diversity.
But unfortunately, sometimes, when everybody is responsible, no body is ultimately responsible
and then things do not get done.
So you want to make sure, even if everybody is responsible, that people can say "Mary
or Tom is ultimately responsible to make sure that we have a diverse workplace and that
things go smoothly on diversity factors."
Benchmark Number 26 - Our employees reflect the gender, ethnic,
racial, and religious diversity of qualified job applicants in the community.
So every organization is located in a different community.
If you're organization is located in an all white community, you expect to have all white
employees.
If you're organization is in an African American community, you'd expect to have all African
American employees.
That would be very, very natural to occur.
If you're organization is in a diverse community, you should expect to have diversity within
the organization.
So you want to make sure that the profile of the organization matches the profile of
your community, based upon skills, education and other factors that are relevant to the
job.
And this is essential to make sure you avoid lawsuits in terms of discrimination.
Benchmark Item Number 27 - Managers support our diversity initiatives.
There's nothing more disheartening to be working on a diversity workshop, to leave the workshop
and to hear a manager say "don't waste your time in doing those workshops anymore."
That just kills the entire importance of the diversity workshop.
So you want to make sure are brought into diversity training ahead of time, not after
the matter, and to get them bought into it, the managers need to see that, once again,
like ethics training, there's a bottom line impact to this.
Companies and organizations that manages diversity and excel in this area, they excel in terms
of profitability and revenue.
Mismanaging diversity results in a lot of costs that is a drain on the organization.
And you want to be clear that the managers are aware of that, that they see that this
is essential for creating a high level, high performance organization.
Benchmark Item Number 28 - Flexible work schedules and cafeteria-style
benefit plans meet the needs of our diverse workforce.
People of different religions have different religious holidays.
People of different stages of life have different needs.
If you're a young family, and you have young children, you might need to take time off
to take care of the kids when they get sick.
Otherwise, you're sick child goes to daycare and all those kids get sick.
When you're age in life, you need to take care of your aging parents.
So you might need flexible time off to take care of your aging parents.
So you want to make sure that you have a flexible benefit plan as well as flexible work hours
so that people can feel as though that they're being respected for who they are and their
particular life situation.
Benchmark Item Number 29 - Our promotion, performance appraisal and downsizing
criteria do not discriminate against diverse employee groups.
We've improved a lot in the United States over time in terms of racial hirings and gender
hirings.
But sometimes you hear about these glass ceilings.
So you've done a good job in outreach with job applicants, you've done a nice job in
hiring, but sometimes you hear a woman saying "there are no women in upper level managers,
only men are there."
Or you'll hear African Americans say that "there's no African Americans in upper level
management."
In situations like that, there may be this invisible glass ceiling.
This doesn't mean your organization is racist.
It may be a bias you're just not aware of.
So you want to do an analysis and make sure that the profile of your upper level managers
also reflect the profile in your community as well as the profile within your organization.
And you want to see if there are obstacles in the way for some people, some race, some
genders, some religions to make it to the top of you organization.
Because you want to make sure that very competent people make it to the top and there are highly
competent people in all races, ethnicities, and genders and religions.
In terms of downsizing, theres a problem that occurs in some organizations.
Let's say, historically, the organization was primarily white male.
Then they reached out throughout the organization and you hired women and you hired African
Americans.
And now it's time to downsize because of changes in the market.
It's not your fault.
This is... markets go in cycles.
If you use seniority as you're only criteria for layoffs, then you're going to create damage
for all the good accomplishments you've made in terms of Affirmative Action and other outreach
programs.
Because when you do seniority, the people with seniority will be the white males and
the people lacking seniority will be the women or the African Americans that were recently
hired.
You want to make sure that there's a merit criteria in terms of your layoffs and that
you keep the most meritorious and best performers in your organization and the ones that are
dismissed are the ones that are not performing well.
It shouldn't be due to race or gender or even with longevity.
Longevity matters and you do want to reward loyal employees, but you want to make sure
that when you do your layoffs your not shooting yourself in the foot by destroying all the
good work you've done in reaching out and employing people of diverse backgrounds.
Benchmark Item Number 30 - Diversity training workshops address self-awareness,
employee difference and employee commonalities.
I'm a white male, so I have this natural bias toward white men because I hang out with white
men.
I see the world from the view of a white male's vantage point.
I want to be aware of that bias.
I'm not saying this is bad that I'm this way, this is just the way I've evolved sociologically
and it's a very natural way to evolve.
But it does create damage for the organization if I allow these natural biases I have to
get in the way of doing the best and promoting the best people.
So I want to make sure that I've got my biases, I'm aware of them and I take them into consider
that I don't want them to get in the way of making the decisions that are best for the
organization.
All employees are different and we are different according to, say, our gender, our race, and
our religion.
It's important to highlight these differences.
It's an organization, some organizations will do workshops where everybody from India will
talk about what it was like growing up in India or what's it like growing up in an Indian
family or they'll have meals that day that are all foods from India.
So that's fantastic!
You're making clear that we do have these differences and your respecting and your honoring
these differences.
However, you're also want to show that, as human beings, we have a lot in common.
So you just don't want to mention our differences.
You want to be clear that we are different, but you also want to end the workshop by saying
what we have in common.
And what we all have in common is that we all work for the same organization.
Or what we all have in common is that we're all human beings.
So you want to end with that sense of commonality, otherwise people we're differences and that
sometimes will create alienation at work.
So you want to say, yes, we respect our differences, and yes, we respect how we also common.
Benchmark Item Number 31 - Achieving diversity goals are part of a manager's
performance evaluation.
And this is the last benchmark for chapter 7 on employee diversity.
If employee diversity really matters, it ought to be part of the performance evaluation of
managers.
You set the goals for diversity and then you evaluate - did we accomplish these goals?
If the manager did, you praise the manager and then you say great job.
If the manager came up short, find out why the manager came up short and then develop
strategies to transform that weakness into a strength.
Managers and all human beings will pay attention to what's being measured.
So if diversity matters, we want to make sure we measure the outcomes of our diversity efforts.