Volume V- Issue 9,
October 2006
Published by
Llumina Press
Diversity Management: Understanding and Appreciating Differences
Bahaudin G. Mujtaba, Nova Southeastern University
The term diversity is often a scary and obscure word for many in today’s Workplace. While some are fearful of this term “diversity,” others do not know what to make of it. Well, one need not be scared or fearful of diversity as it is a part of each person, team and organization. We can begin by simply defining the term diversity and relating it to ourselves and those around us at home as well as in the workplace.
"Diversity" means “difference” or “variety.” So the term “diverse workforce” refers to a workforce where the workers have a variety of different characteristics including but not limited to gender, disability, culture, ethnicity, religion, experience, body size, skills, etc. By becoming aware of today’s diversity and its impact on managers, one can learn effective ways of dealing with these issues appropriately. The content of this article is based on the book entitled Workforce Diversity Management, which "Workforce Diversity Management" is designed to help current and prospective managers become aware of some of the major changes in today’s workforce. The book is also designed to give workers and managers some of the skills needed to maximize productivity and gain a competitive advantage.
Diversity is a fact of life and present in every organization; it is there regardless of whether it is wanted or not. This author spent many years trying to understand diversity, teach about it and eventually write about it in my book entitled Workforce Diversity Management: Challenges, Competencies and Strategies. Consequently, the diversity challenges in this article is a brief summary of what the book covers, explains and provides some skills for effectively managing it.
"Diversity" and cultural competency requires continuously learning about one’s own and others’ values, beliefs and cultures. Of course, learning is one of the most basic human needs and takes place from birth to death. Some things are learned consciously, while others are learned by osmosis during the process of socialization. Some things are learned because of what is said by others or heard from others, while other things are learned from observation of actions toward people or cultures even when nothing is said. Yet, there are things a person will never know and things that people want to know. Learning to work harmoniously with others is within most people’s ability and a necessity that managers and professional workers cannot afford to ignore.
While much of what we as human beings know is already within us, at times, our behaviors toward other individuals who are different from ourselves tend to be contrary to these intrinsic beliefs and knowledge. This is due to societal conditioning that human beings receive during their socialization process as young children, and which are further reinforced over one’s adult years, thereby creating a vicious cycle reinforcing the same stereotypes. That is until one or two “heroic” or transformational leaders, with help from thousands of others, are able to stop it. As can be seen, understanding diversity and diversity education becomes much more important than ever before in today’s cross-cultural world of business. Companies focus and invest in diversity initiatives for various reasons, with the changing face of the workforce being one of the most compelling. During the past two decades and the coming few decades, women, minorities and immigrants have been a part of—and will continue to make up—a growing portion of new workers. Not only has this trend changed the face of the workforce, but also the faces of customers, suppliers, shareholders, regulators, and competitors.
Companies that are expecting their employees to help them increase or maintain quality products, services, productivity, flexibility, and innovation must understand and fulfill the needs and desires of their people. The needs and desires of most people have changed or shifted dramatically over the past few generations. What used to motivate people to get up in the morning and rush to work may not work anymore. Such dramatic changes in the workforce require dramatic adjustments in management and leadership styles throughout an organization.
In today’s competitive global market place or market space, it is essential to gain the necessary skills in cross-cultural communication, negotiations, and in dealing with diverse individuals from different cultures. Nationally, many U.S. firms are attempting to increase their percentage of women and minority workers to better serve their diverse customers. Since the retention and upward mobility rates for most professional women, immigrants and minorities have been somewhat challenging, many firms find disparate representation of these groups within their organizations. Corporate leaders have come to the conclusion that simply focusing on Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws are not enough to retain a diverse and competitive workforce. Therefore, many corporate leaders are personally championing diversity initiatives and training programs to strategically enhance their competitive advantage in today’s global market place.
Many organizations are beginning, or continuing, their diversity training programs to maximize the well-being of their human resources. Most workers, who are each firm’s human resources asset, have received conditioning from a society whose members do not always treat each other with respect; and such disrespectful thoughts and behaviors often carry over to the workplace. Diversity education and training programs focus on creating an inclusive work environment where all individuals, as per their capabilities, can become as successful as they would like to be. Creating and maintaining such positive, supportive and fair employment practices allow all workers regardless of their race, sexual orientation, gender, age, disability, culture, religion, and other such characteristics to contribute to their fullest potential. In addition, a good understanding of diversity-related issues can better equip managers with an arsenal of useful skills that allow for timely and appropriate interventions when disagreements arise and friction escalates within the diverse workforce. Understanding and proactively managing diversity can be a strategic approach to avoiding a costly litigation and negative publicity that seem to be a corollary of most discrimination lawsuits. Also, organizations that do conduct diversity training with their managers and workers tend to save money through reduced recruitment costs, turnover rates, court costs, as well as from the disgruntled-employee sabotage and shrinkage.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “We are faced with the fierce urgency of now…This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos or community.” So, it is each employee’s responsibility to speak and stand up for inclusivity and fairness regardless of whether or not there are biases in one’s peripheral view. It is best to remember that measuring individual guilt or innocence might be useful in legal situations, but may not be a valid yardstick for measuring the presence or absence of racism in a department, firm, community or society. As a matter-of-fact, racism, sexism, ageism, and other such discriminatory attitudes are often perpetuated by individuals who have no such intent in the first place. Overall, workers and managers should focus on diversity because it is the right thing to do morally, socially, economically, financially, personally, and professionally. One should also remember that racism or discrimination, both overt and covert, causes low employee commitment, a decrease in employee and customer retention, low morale, shrinkage, social loafing, bad corporate image, dissension, animosity, negative synergy, and a lack of competitive spirit or culture. While some of the intangible results might be difficult to quantify and measure, they can put a company out of business.
The corporate world is full of cases where managers have overtly (intentionally) and covertly (secretly behind the scenes) been discriminating against individuals because of their age, culture, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, body size, disability, etc. For example, within the last few decades, Home Depot paid $104 million to settle a gender lawsuit; Coca Cola had to pay $192.5 million for racial discrimination; Denny’s paid $54.4 million for their racial discrimination case; Cracker Barrel paid $2 million for settling their race discrimination case; the Boeing Corporation paid $7.5 million for their racial discrimination case; Mitsubishi settled their sexual harassment class action lawsuit at a cost worth as high as $30 million; Ford agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle their racial and sexual harassment lawsuit; Lockheed Martin agreed to pay $13 million and rehire 450 people in one of the largest age discrimination cases ever filed; and Texaco agreed to pay $200,000 each for two plaintiffs, $100,00 each for four others, $60,000 each for 1,340 remaining individuals in their race discrimination class action lawsuit. There are many other examples of large firms that have settled discrimination cases at high costs to their shareholders during the past decade. So, managers and professional workers have an obligation to be proactive as opposed to reactive when it comes to the true meaning of diversity which, at a minimum, is about tolerance, respect, understanding, and exploration of fair choices and alternatives. Managers and professionals should proactively work on always being in control of their heads (or thought process, knowledge acquisition and knowledge generation), hearts (or feelings, emotions, and “hot buttons”) and habits (or behaviors and actions). In other words, everyone must work on managing his or her perceptions, words, non-verbal body language, behaviors, and take appropriate actions when noticing that an inappropriate comment or behavior is taking place in the work environment.
The term diversity describes the many unique internal and external qualities and characteristics that make a person similar to or different from others. Some of these characteristics might be apparent on the first look, such as skin color, hair color, body size, and general appearance. Other important characteristics, such as ethnicity, disability, religion, financial status, age, values, cultural background, and sexual orientation, may not be apparent based on a first look or a first impression. Diversity also encompasses the multitude of experiences, aptitudes and attitudes available in today’s workforce. All these distinct dimensions of diversity tend to impact individuals differently. For example, the dimension of gender in a specific society might impact males very differently than females. In this case, males may receive favorable unearned privileges on their way to higher management ranks; whereas females may face the “glass ceiling” despite their superior experience and qualifications. Another reality is that many individuals in society are conditioned to make decisions about other people based on certain characteristics (being above the waterline on the iceberg) that are less important to the person’s character, and characteristics over which they have little to no control. For example, with the exception of surgery or rapid weight loss, most people do not change their color of eyes, gender, height, and body size every few years. However, people do have more control over many of the more important characteristics such as their values, personal beliefs, professions, financial status, marital status, etc. So, in order to make better decisions, one must get to know others’ values, hobbies, abilities, interests, profession, and desires.
Differences have existed both in the society and the workforce today and will continue to increase at a growing rate. There is a moral responsibility for each individual to become aware of these differences and respect each person as a unique human being. Valuing diversity and thereby becoming a diversity champion requires each person to tolerate differences, respect differences, understand differences, and to examine or explore those differences in order to maximize the productivity of the workforce and gain organizational competitiveness. Valuing diversity isn’t just an idea that sounds good and promotes positive publicity for the firm. Valuing diversity and each person’s genuine commitment to its thorough implementation are critical to one’s success as an individual and to the company’s survival. In order to be successful, workers and managers need to become culturally competent. To learn more about diversity, see the book entitled Workforce Diversity Management: Challenges, Competencies and Strategies which comprehensively cover this topic and the skills that workers need to be effective colleagues and team players.
The late civil right’s leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned that someday people would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin, not by their gender, not by their ethnic backgrounds, and not by their disabilities. He also envisioned that all individuals would sit down together at the tables of brotherhood and sisterhood. Those tables are in the classrooms, conference rooms, boardrooms, cafeterias, restaurants, and manufacturing floors. Our responsibility and challenge are to not only take our seats at these tables, but to sit there with an open mind and unclenched fists. Ken Keyes, American writer and philosopher who founded Keyes College wrote, “We are not responsible for the programming we received as children. As adults, we are 100% responsible for changing it.” While we could not do much about the conditioning we received as children, as adults we have the power to change those stereotypes and replace them with conscious and factual thoughts. This requires learning about diversity and making decisions based on facts rather than previous stereotypes or conditioning.
References:
Mujtaba, B. G. (2007). Workpalce Diversity Management: Challenges, Competencies and Strategies. ISBN: 1-59526-548-1. Llumina Press; website: http://www.llumina.com/store/workforcediversitymanagement.htm - (phone: 866-229-9244 or: 954-726-0902).
Mujtaba, B. G. (2006). Cross Cultural Change Management. ISBN: 1-59526-568-6. Llumina Press, Tamarac, Florida. Website: http://www.llumina.com/store/cccm.htm
Author Biography:
Dr. Bahaudin G. Mujtaba is a certified diversity trainer. Currently, he is also an Associate Professor of Management, Human Resources, and International Management at Nova Southeastern University’s H. Wayne Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. As a consultant, Bahaudin has worked with various firms in the areas of management, cross-cultural communication and diversity training for nearly twenty years. Bahaudin has been a guest speaker on conferences in many cities in the United States and around the world.
Contact Information:
Dr. Bahaudin G. Mujtaba
Office Phone: (954) 262-5045, OR (800) 338-4723 ext. 5045.
Email: mujtaba@nova.edu