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Diversity—Everybody wants it, but how do you get it?
Wouldn’t it be swell if you could just go to “Talent ‘R’ Us” and say, “I’d like three bilingual associates with five years’ call-center experience and a knack for customer service”? Ah, diversity—everybody wants it, but how do you get it?
In order to achieve diversity, first, you have to know what it is. Is it creating opportunities in your organization for minorities and women? Yes, diversity is that, and a whole lot more. For example, a successful diversity initiative gave a leading greeting card company a creative staff—made up mostly of women with significant ethnic, religious and generational diversity—that looked like the consumers who bought their cards. However, there was one segment of the market the greeting card company simply could not reach: men! As multicultural as the creative staff seemed, the company lacked the diversity it needed—in this case, men—to create product that satisfied its customer base. True diversity is defined by the unique perspectives your employees bring and the positive effect these perspectives have on the bottom line. These perspectives can be influenced by an employee’s:
… and more! The foundation of diversity is that we’re all different, and it’s those differences of backgrounds, styles ideas, and beliefs that can take your company from good to great.
Here’s another example of a unique perspective dramatically impacting the bottom line: Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, is partially deaf and charged his development team with the task of creating a device that could play music at loud volumes without distortion. The result: the iPod, 28 million of which have been sold to date! People, like Steve Jobs, whose disabilities have given them a unique way of looking at the world, make up this nation’s largest minority. How many brilliant ideas like the iPod have gone undiscovered because companies fail to see diversity as more than race and gender?
R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., author of the highly recommended Beyond Race and Gender: Unleashing the Power of Your Total Workforce by Managing Diversity, says it best:
“A significant inhibiting factor [to diversity] is the prevailing definition of diversity. By limiting the term to minorities and women, and ignoring diversity’s other dimensions, this definition blocks understanding… ”
“ …Effective implementation requires broadening the concept to include multiple dimensions.”
Okay, now that we’ve acknowledged diversity is as multifaceted as it is profitable, how do you get it? Well, first of all, diversity isn’t like Six Sigma certification where someone comes to your company for an afternoon and grants you a Black Belt in having the optimal mix of diverse people in your company. Don’t think of diversity as something you acquire; think of diversity as a state of inclusion that evolves within your organization.
Let’s look at the way diversity evolves in an organization. It’s generally agreed among diversity practitioners that there are 4 major transitions involved in the evolution of diversity. Let’s call them the 4 Cs of diversity.
Four Cs of Diversity
Compliance Diversity: In this stage, your company complies with the current local, state and federal laws. You’re meeting the letter of the law, you’re likely to include your EOE status in recruitment advertising and keep abreast of Affirmative Action initiatives.
A quick history of affirmative action:
With that sort of historical baggage, it’s no wonder many companies still think of diversity in terms of race and gender! The problem with mere compliance is that it is too passive an approach to have a meaningful effect on your company’s bottom line. You’re not doing anything to attract A-level talent. If this is where you are, you probably won’t face the negative publicity of a discrimination suit, but you won’t come up with any revolutionary ideas like the iPod, either.
Let’s look at a more active approach.
Cosmetic Diversity: We call the next stage of diversity Cosmetic because it is change you can see. In this stage, your company begins communicating internally that your organization values diversity. You may, for example, acknowledge Black History Month or Women’s History Month, participate in Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, and so forth.
But, just like the allure of rouge and lipstick, cosmetic diversity is only skin deep. It lacks the upward mobility necessary to truly affect the kind of change that makes a difference. For example, a Hispanic employee may appreciate that your company acknowledges Hispanic Cultural Awareness Week by featuring traditional dishes from Latin America in the company cafeteria, and while this nod to a different culture may increase the overall feeling of inclusiveness, it does nothing to move that employee’s career forward.
So the next phase of diversity should be active and upwardly mobile.
Culture of Diversity: This stage is both the most challenging and the most rewarding. It is active because it involves the transformation of your corporate culture. The kind of change your company undergoes in this stage, however, is lasting because you have support from your company’s leadership. As you embrace diversity in a way that involves a deeper understanding of inclusion, your company begins setting measurable goals and holding management accountable for reaching those goals. This creates the opportunities that facilitate upward mobility for diverse candidates and employees. Because most strategic diversity goals include recruitment and retention, this phase is also when your company begins communicating your external diversity message to potential candidates.
The final phase of diversity is really the beginning of true inclusiveness.
Comprehensive Diversity: At this stage, Diversity’s corporate infrastructure is in place and its impact on the bottom line is quantifiable. More importantly, diversity—in the guise of an inclusive and innovative workplace—has become one of your employer of choice attributes, allowing you to market yourself as a great people place and attract A-level talent.
Piece o’ cake, right? Of course not; but anything worth having takes energy, effort and commitment. And the rewards of creating an inclusive work environment, like serving your customer base more effectively, attracting top level talent and leveraging the multiplicity of ideas, backgrounds and experience in your workforce, will positively impact your company in a way that goes far beyond the bottom line.
Contact NAS today and we’ll assist you in reaching your targeted candidates with meaningful creative that convincingly conveys your commitment to inclusion and makes known your value of people for their unique perspectives and contributions.
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