Managing Diversity

• As increasing numbers of women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and other racial and ethnic minority groups enter the workforce, organizations must confront cultural differences as the norm in organizational life (Fine, 1995).
• The changing composition of the workforce is creating new challenges for the management of work, workers, and the workplace (Jamieson & O'Mara, 1991).
• Managing diversity is defined as creating and maintaining an environment in which each person is respected because of his or her differences, and where all can contribute and be rewarded based on their results (Coleman, 1994).
• Managing diversity requires managing in a way that harnesses the best in each person. Organizations practicing diversity effectively value each person as an individual. They appreciate, respect and enjoy each person's uniqueness and make differences the norm. At the very least managing diversity means respecting culture, age, gender and lifestyle differences in the workplace, so that everyone benefits (Mathews, 1998).
• In managing diversity, the organization must address the relationship between individual and work-team behavior and performance success. The organization also must address its ability to create and maintain an environment that empowers employees and associates to better serve its racially, socially, and ethnically diverse customer base (Coleman, 1994).
  Managing diversity is a process that creates opportunities to attract and retain the best and the brightest talent, which allows the organization to maintain its competitiveness (Coleman, 1994).
• Organizations that maintain and value diversity are less likely to make business blunders caused by not understanding their markets, customers, or clients (Hayles & Russell, 1997).

The six step process to define and manage a diversity strategy:

1. Form a diverse team and establish as a diversity council.
2. Assess current work environment.
3. Determine stakeholders most important to your business.
4. Develop a picture of what success looks like.
5. Establish long-term goals and initial objectives.
6. Monitor progress, communicate, and adjust as needed (Bye, 2002).

• Some may think that managing diversity is simply teaching appropriate behaviors to use when interacting with people of specific races, national origins, mental or physical abilities, sexual orientations, or lifestyles. Managing diversity goes beyond learning to act out a prescribed behavior. For some organizations or work teams, it will mean a basic change in the way people communicate, interact, process information, make decisions, and serve customers (Coleman, 1994).
• Managing diversity means a long-term commitment to continuous assessment and change, not a quick-fix (Coleman, 1994).
• Managing diversity is a way for us to understand and appreciate ourselves better so we can understand the factors and situations that motivate our personal beliefs, values, and behaviors. This allows us to accept, then respect, others who may have different beliefs, values, lifestyles, and ways of doing things at work (Coleman, 1994).
• The process of managing diversity is an operating philosophy that urges us to look critically at our organization, assess the needs of our employees and clients, and determine whether our skill mix and our behavior mix are providing our services in a way that meets or exceeds our clients' expectations (Coleman, 1994).
• To be most successful, the managing diversity strategy should focus on individual as well as organizational change (Coleman, 1994).
• Managing diversity is a comprehensive process that assesses an organization and its way of doing business. It considers the organization's competition, its customers, and its goals for business and performance success (Coleman, 1994).

Basic principles include:

• The firm commitment of upper management to creating and maintaining diversity in the workplace
• Employee recognition of the impact of individual contributions
• Understanding of how personal rewards are tied to organizational success
• Relating the respecting of differences to improved productivity and morale, as well as to reduced cost of doing business; and
  Changing of offensive behaviors (Coleman, 1994).
• When dissonant behavior is identified, immediate action must be taken to resolve the conflict before it affects the entire organization (Coleman, 1994).

Guidelines for responsible behavior:

• All employees must recognize the impact of their behavior and performance on achievement of the organization's business and diversity goals.
• Employees must know the answer to the questions "What is in it for me?" and "Why should I contribute to making diversity successful?"
• There must be work team and organizational commitment to defined personal work team, and organizational success and rewards.
• A more productive work environment must be created through targeted training for all; improved organizational rules, procedures, and practices that integrate diversity goals and business objectives; and improved formal and informal communication processes.
• Behavior must change that is acknowledged to be demeaning or offensive, including racial slurs, race and gender jokes, and sexually suggestive comments or gestures, in order to improve respect and build trust.
  Formally defined rules, procedures, and reward systems should be tied to the desired performance and behavior goals (Coleman, 1994).
• Successfully managed diversity in the workplace is tied to reduced turnover, better management of training costs, improved morale, better-managed employee relations costs, greater productivity, and the reduction of other employee-related costs (Coleman, 1994).
• "Flex-management is an important tool to effectively manage a diverse workforce. Flexibility in work hours, rewards, accommodating family responsibilities, adapting to individual differences and matching individual competencies with job requirements is required to meet the varying needs of contemporary employees. Managers are key to ensuring the success of flex-management and put the flexibility in flex-management. Through their management practices they provide the pliancy that defines flex-management. Developing career paths for the new workforce, job-sharing, and subsidizing day-care are successful flex-management strategies" (Mathews, 1998).
• "Flex-management is a philosophy of core values that views people as assets to value, develop and maintain. Executives who integrate flex-management into their corporate culture tune into their employees' needs and balance diverse individual desires with organizational objectives. These core values provide the freedom for managers to customize compensation and benefit programs and build flexibility into performance planning, evaluation, recruiting, job design and training" (Mathews, 1998).
• "When initiating flex-management it is important to decide who will guide and manage the change. The options range from an individual to various groups coordinated by a steering committee. Many organizations use task forces, change teams or internal and external consultants to help with the change to flex-management" (Mathews, 1998).

Flex-Management (Mathews, 1998)

• Organizations must recognize that managing diversity is a long-term process--and not a one-shot deal--that starts with a thorough review of policies and practices that may be discriminatory. This includes looking at everything, from recruitment and retention practices to mentoring programs and merit increases, to make sure all segments of the workforce are included and encouraged to do their best. The most sophisticated programs set specific goals and make meeting them part of their workers' performance reviews. Some even link bonuses to an employee's success in managing diversity (Caudron & Hayes, 1997).

Managing diversity is much more than a program. "It requires a total realignment of the organization and all of its members to value diversity. Good practice in valuing diversity suggests five on-going processes:

1. Building awareness
2. Increasing knowledge of how diversity affects values, beliefs, world views and everyday experiences;
   Building interpersonal, cultural, communication and leadership skills/behaviors to remove barriers to effective work relationships in diverse environments
3. Rethinking and redesigning organizational systems and programs to enhance and embrace diversity; and
4. Weaving diversity into the strategic center of how to company does all its business" (Caudron & Hayes, 1997).

• Diversity management is driven by business. It is about building stimulating and productive work environments that will capitalize on people's potential while recognizing and respecting their differences. It is a survival strategy that helps organizations achieve competitive advantage by not only becoming the employer of choice for an increasingly diverse workforce, but also by appealing to a wide range of customers (Melkonian, 1995).
• "Managing diversity involves changing mind sets. It requires managers and employees to shift their thinking and assumptions; that involves ongoing education" (Mathews, 1998).
• "Broadly defined, the term diversity management refers to the systematic and planned commitment by organizations to recruit, retain, reward, and promote a heterogeneous mix of employees" (Ivancevich & Glibert, 2000).
• The challenge for managers is to be aware of assumptions and stereotypes about the competence of employees who are not members of the dominant culture. Sometimes group differences are reflected in varying communication styles, attitudes toward authority, work patterns, speech, and even dress. But supervisors and managers need to recognize that competence comes in many guises (Blank & Slipp, 1998).
• It is essential that all managers have a basic knowledge of diverse groups from the perspectives of the group members themselves. It is also important that managers understand and revise their own misconceptions and stereotypical thinking     in order to fully utilize the strengths of everyone in their diverse workforce (Blank & Slipp, 1998).
• The most important strategy for colleges and universities that would like to realize more racial diversity may be the recruitment of administrators, faculty, staff, and students who are progressive thinkers and who are deeply committed to racial diversity (Davis, 2002).