Diversity Plan

Questions to consider when developing the diversity plan for your organization:

1. What is the organizational plan for the next three to five years?
2. What culture and values does the organization desire?
3. What are the future human resource requirements needed to meet the organization's goals in the strategic plan?
4. What are the critical issues related to building the organization's 21st century's workforce? (Mathews, 1998).

• "Diversity plans are still a key tool for making lasting changes that will improve college learning for all students" (Humphreys, 2000).
• ". . . the plan should be evaluated to assess if progress is leading to anticipated goals. This would include methods of ongoing evaluation related to responsibilities, timeline, and other aspects of the process of carrying out the plan, as well as final evaluation of projects as a whole. It is worth emphasizing that in order to ensure the success of a comprehensive plan; there must be a constant cycle of developing, implementing and evaluating (Dumas-Hines, Cochran, & Williams, 2001).
  Organizations should clarify the diversity program goals, as well as link every diversity initiative to the organization's bottom line (Frase-Blunt, 2003).
• Meeting diversity challenges requires a strategic human resource plan that includes a number of different strategies to enhance diversity and promote the productivity and effectiveness of the twenty-first century workforce (Mathews, 1998).
  "Personnel practices are linked to organizational diversity goals" (Mathews, 1998).
• Management of the diversity initiative and its location in the organization structure affects the effectiveness of diversity as a tool (Mathews, 1998).
• Diversity management initiatives operate best when positioned in the highest levels of the organization and when they are reported to the CEO (Mathews, 1998).
• Effective diversity initiatives tend to be tailored for specific organizations and therefore may not readily transfer to other workplaces (Overmyer Day, 1995).
• Managers need to begin by establishing the reasons for a diversity initiative and setting clear expectations. "This will help distinguish between programs designed to comply with affirmative-action regulations and those designed to manage or value differences" (Overmyer Day, 1995).
• At the individual and group levels, managers should extend diversity goals and behavior beyond recruitment and hiring, to encompass employee development, promotion, and day-to-day management (Overmyer Day, 1995).
• "Setting clear, specific goals is very important. These goals are often numerical, including representation at various levels over time. Many companies develop a multi-year plan with annual milestones for each specific business area" (Salomon & Schork, 2003).
• During the implementation of a diversity plan or diversity initiatives, the strategy must be communicated loudly, widely, and unapologetically (Salomon & Schork, 2003).
• A goal of the plan should be to discuss and determine ways in which white men can become full diversity partners with women and people of color and to gain an understanding of what is at stake for organizations that do not understand and embrace diversity as a core business practice (Bartrum, 2003).
• Any organizational changes effected must consider carefully the unique needs, wants, values of the employees who currently contribute to the organization, the applicants who may consider joining it, the consumers or clients who may consider purchasing it goods and services, and the community it serves. Analyzing these issues can lead the organization to creative and inclusive solutions that allow effective service to a customer or citizen base, as well as the fullest use of a workforce and leadership team that will become increasingly diverse (Coleman, 1994).
• To enhance the probability of success, the process should be founded on a vision for diversity that is shared by executives, managers, supervisors, and front-line employees. All players must understand how their personal contributions to work goals will influence the success of the organization. Goals for diversity must be tied inextricably to the business and operating goals of the organization (Coleman, 1994).
• To create the greatest possibility for success in the diversity effort, the organization must develop and follow closely a carefully crafted strategic plan. The strategic diversity plan needs a clear tactical implementation process that lays out specifically what is to be done, by whom, and when in order to achieve each increment of result desired (Coleman, 1994).
  This strategic plan for diversity should involve a wide range of employees -- top executives through front-line employees -- in each stage of the process to achieve maximum ownership. This approach lays the foundation for the full awareness, support, and accountability of each individual in the workplace and will result in the desired behavioral and performance goals (Coleman, 1994).

The planning process for strategic diversity should include the following elements:

1. Top-level commitment and involvement to achieve a vision for corporate success that integrates diversity into the organization's business objectives. This integrated vision must address recruiting and selection, hiring and promotion, training and development, employee benefits, compensation and rewards, succession planning, and affirmative action.
2. Diverse task groups charged with assessing organizational culture to identify elements that support or interfere with achieving diversity or business objectives.
3. Tailored awareness training that helps all employees understand the need for developing behaviors that reflect the stated commitment to effective communication and to respecting and valuing different contributions in order to achieve specified outcomes.
4. Leadership training to help all supervisors, managers, and leaders to acquire critical skills for facilitating diverse interaction and work processes and to take full advantage of differences while minimizing disruptive conflict.
5. Critical benchmarks by which to measure success in meeting diversity and related business goals.
6. Strategies for rewarding or correcting performance and behaviors, so that the organization can stay on course with the strategic diversity plan (Coleman, 1994).

• All of the areas listed above need to be evaluated regularly (Coleman, 1994).
• The challenge of over-arching diversity plans is to ensure that once resources are aligned with the goals, there is a translation from plan to practice, and that progress is monitored on a regular basis (McTighe Musil et. al., 1999).
• "If an institution frames its mission as educating all of its students to live and thrive in a pluralist society, diversity is more likely to be integrated into the rest of the strategic planning. It is therefore a wise strategy to try to align diversity program goals with overall institutional goals" (McTighe Musil et. al., 1999, p. 34).
• "In formulating an institutional diversity plan, clearly stated long-term and short-term goals emerging from campus dialogue across many locations are important. As the plan is being implemented, it is equally important to adjust or abandon any strategy that does not work" (McTighe Musil et. al., 1999, p. 34).
• "Colleges experience in diversity planning find that initiatives have more impact when they are structured to incorporate multiple, simultaneous approaches that build momentum and eventually create a new campus ethos for diversity" (McTighe Musil et. al., 1999, p. 34).
• "Effective diversity initiatives engaged constituents from many different locations on campus to help plan, implement, evaluate, and do follow-up . . . Projects that relied exclusively on a tight, small core of planners who did not reach out to others had less impact" (McTighe Musil et. al., 1999, p. 37).
• Successful minority faculty recruitment and retention programs must be founded on college-wide goals and commitment (Owens, Reis & Hall, 1994).
• Develop multi-year plans for long-term, sustainable collaborative projects that promote positive and supportive relationships between students and individuals from majority, underrepresented, and international groups (Virginia Tech University Diversity Plan, 2000).
• After outlining what needs to be accomplished, the university and its sub-units must determine who will be assigned the responsibility of organizing these efforts and how they will be done (Dumas-Hines, Cochran, & Williams, 2001).
• A written diversity plan should be developed which allows the duties to be shared, while still providing contact and leadership roles to specific personnel or offices. This plan could then be disseminated to all university members (Dumas-Hines, Cochran, & Williams, 2001).
• Faculty and students should be incorporated in the diversity plan implementation to increase sources of recruitment and to involve them in retention activities (Dumas-Hines, Cochran, & Williams, 2001).
• Whoever leads or directs the implementation of the diversity plan should be given the power to accomplish those steps identified within it in order to promote a campus climate that reflects cultural diversity (Dumas-Hines, Cochran, & Williams, 2001).
• The diversity plan should be endorsed and supported by everyone it includes at all levels of the institution (Dumas-Hines, Cochran, & Williams, 2001).
• "When one reads through diversity plans from many colleges and universities, one is struck by how much they still focus on structural diversity -i.e., the representation of different racial/ethnic groups on campus-and how little they address student learning goals or issues of intellectual diversity" (Humphreys, 2000).
• Diversity plans "provide tools for holding individuals in a variety of leadership positions accountable for addressing issues of diversity. They also provide vehicles to help those on campus who feel marginalized to voice their concerns. Finally, they provide a platform on which individuals on campus can build stronger diversity initiatives that go beyond just numbers" (Humphreys, 2000).
• The process of developing university diversity plans has become much more inclusive in recent years. "Campuses now are investing up to a year or more in bringing together various constituencies-including administrators, students, faculty leaders, residence life experts, alumni, and even community members-to provide input into the drafting of recommendations" (Humphreys, 2000).
• There has been a development of diversity leadership institutes which involve large numbers of faculty and staff who meet weekly over a nine-month period to develop different ways of doing their jobs so that diversity issues are more "systematically and organically integrated into the day-to-day business of campus life" (Humphreys, 2000).
• The recruitment of a more diverse faculty has been elevated as a concern in diversity plans because of the relative lack of progress in this area on many campuses (Humphreys, 2000).
• A new feature of diversity plans is the emphasis on partnerships with constituencies outside the campus, including alumni, business and community leaders, and local governmental agencies (Humphreys, 2000).
• "The Madison Plan and the Michigan Mandate are two examples of comprehensive diversity plans put in place in the 1980s. They provide vision statements, set broad goals, and make recommendations for change in a variety of areas. Madison Plan 2008 covers areas such as leadership and accountability, pre-college preparation, student retention, financial aid, campus climate, faculty and staff recruitment and retention, and community and alumni cooperation. The Michigan Mandate, launched in 1987 and led by the university's former president addressed areas such as faculty and staff recruitment and development, student recruitment, achievement, and outreach, and improving the environment for diversity" (Humphreys, 2000).
• "North Seattle Community College, for instance, passed a diversity plan in 1992 that addressed such issues as staff and faculty professional development, faculty research, student and faculty recruitment, support services for students of color, and campus climate" (Humphreys, 2000).
• "Because of its growing importance, companies are integrating diversity management into how they conduct business rather than having stand-alone programs" (Brayboy, 2003).

 "It is important to adapt your diversity plan because:
 

• You will make progress
• The needs of your organization will change
• The expectations of your primary internal and external stakeholders will change (Bye, 2002).

"Four common elements in diversity initiatives are:
 

• Training
• Communications
• Employee involvement through task forces
• Individual development by mentoring" (Winterle, 1992).