How to Implement a Diversity Initiative

In a book called Implementing Diversity, renowned diversity expert Marilyn Loden shares the strategies and tactics used by organizations committed to implementing diversity from the top down.

We recommend that you consult this resource if your company is thinking about, or currently implementing, a diversity initiative.

One way to start is to take this Startup Implementation Assessment, in the form of a "Yes/No" Checklist:

Startup Implementation Assessment - (for individuals working in organizations that are just starting to implement a valuing diversity initiative.)

Within your Organization…

Is the discussion of valuing diversity being driven by bottom-line objectives?

Do executives recognize the need for culture change in order to succeed with diversity?

Has industry benchmarking of diversity efforts in other organizations been done?

Has a highly diverse start-up team responsible for strategy development and implementation planning being formed?

If so, is the team's size between 8 and 12 individuals?

Has the start-up team received extensive diversity awareness training?

Does the start-up team include individuals with organization development and change management experience?

If not, is an experienced organization change consultant working with this group?

Has the start-up team participated in team building?

Does the start-up team have a diversity definition, vision, and written strategic plan to guide its work?

Does the start-up team ongoing access to senior management regarding diversity implementation?

Has a cultural assessment been completed? If not, is one now being planned?

Is there an adequate multiyear budget to support a comprehensive valuing diversity initiative?

Have senior managers and key influencers with a strong interest in valuing diversity been identified and/or cultivated?

Has an ongoing stewardship role been defined for members of this important subgroup?

Have all senior managers participated in diversity leadership training?

Were all the steps outlined in this assessment taken prior to design and delivery of employee diversity awareness training?

If you answered "no" to more than two of the statements in this assessment, your organization's diversity initiative might be getting off to a less-than-optimal start.

If your organization currently has a Diversity Initiative in place, take this Ongoing Implementation Assessment, in the form of a "Yes/No" Checklist:

Ongoing Implementation Assessment

Within your Organization --
Is there growing resistance to valuing diversity efforts?

Is valuing diversity confused with affirmative action?

Do people use phrases like "diverse person" and "diversity hire" when referring only to women and/or people of color?

Do many white men feel excluded from the valuing diversity effort?

Is prejudice reduction or diversity awareness training mandatory for employees?

Is turnover higher for particular groups based on differences such as age, gender, race, and sexual orientation?

Are managers who do not demonstrate that they value diversity promoted and rewarded?

Is the strategic business case for valuing diversity unclear to many employees?

Is awareness training available for managers but not for employees?

Is awareness training the only visible corporate initiative aimed at valuing diversity?

Are actual EO profile and promotion statistics unpublished and unavailable to most employees?

Does the HR Department have primary responsibility for implementing diversity?

Are external consultants used exclusively to facilitate diversity awareness training?

Do employee networks/affinity groups appear isolated, competitive, or divisive?

Do most managers fail to see diversity as having an impact on productivity, profitability, and service?

Based upon employee profile demographics, is your organization less than truly diverse at all levels?

Do particular groups of employees believe that there is still a glass ceiling?

Do senior executives show little interest in and active support for the value of diversity?

If you answered yes to more than two of the above statements, it may be time to reassess the effectiveness of your company's ongiong diveristy implementation efforts.

Additionally, here are some Implementation Principles that have led to success:

Implementation Principle #1 (Diversity Includes everyone)
To avoid widescale opposition, diversity must be defined in a broad and inclusive way. The definition must make it obvious to employees that everyone is included and therefore everyone's diversity is valued.

The six Core Dimensions of Diversity are age, ethnicity, gender, mental/physical abilities and characteristics, race, sexual orientation. Secondary dimensions include communication style, education, family status, military experience, organization role and level, religion, first language, geographic location, income, work experience, and work style.

Implementation Principle #2
In order to value diversity, institutions must first assure that they are truly diverse at every level -- not just when it comes to the secondary dimensions, but diverse in terms of the primary dimensions of diversity as well.

Implementation Principle #3
Leveraging diversity requires a fundamental shift in assumptions about the organization culture as well as changes in the basic systems and practices used to support customers and employees.

Implementation Principle #4
Change management principles can be the single most important tool in diversity implementation when artfully applied.

The book also discusses Barriers to Implementation and How to Accelerate Change. We hope you enjoy reading Implementing Diversity, and find the book to be a valuable resource.

Issues that Global Companies are Tackling

(1) The War For Global Talent

The war for talent never ends. Middle managers in China? Good luck finding them, let alone keeping them. Assembly line workers in Central Europe? They're well-educated and hard-working: Trouble is, every company wants them. The cubicle warriors of Bangalore? They get the job done - if they stick around. For corporations, managing this widely scattered, talented, restive, multicultural workforce has never been harder.

The biggest issues for them are: Where do you put them? How do you retain them? How do you develop them? How do you move work to them or them to work? Teams must survey countries for costs, available talent, educational pipelines, languages spoken, proximity to markets, and political stability.

One of the major challenges in this step is the difficulty of communicating by email or even videoconferencing when programmers have never met one another. Strangers don't readily share knowledge. A big problem is trust. It works better if you can go out to dinner with somebody and have a beer. But employers can't put people on planes to visit each other all of the time.

BilingualCity.com is helping companies bridge this “trust” and “collaboration” gap with social networking tools. This new site will allow employees and employers to create profiles and post photos, list interests, comment about the company events or happenings in their lives, plus highlight professional skills. On this portal, employers can also search for skills and expertise via a resume bank. The BilingualCity.com social networking platform will be live in 2008.


(2) L’Oreal Plays games with their Recruits

L’Oreal has created an online recruiting game which draws multinational participation. Students can make decisions on everything from retail strategy to research and development spending. Winners fly to Paris for free to meet the L’Oreal staff.


(3) Understand your Staff and Offer meaningful Perks

For Nokia, their new Transylvania factory will have free food, gym, playing fields, etc. You must learn about the perks that matter to your employees. Global hiring means getting a handle on how different cultures view salaries, taxes, and benefits. Do they want to be paid in dollars or local currency? You have to know enough about the culture of your employees to create a workplace where the skilled workers want to stick around. Examples of perks that matter are: for Mexico City workers, the city is very polluted, so employers offer an extra week off and an expense-paid trip to the coast. Having Mother’s Day off is also a very important perk for Mexican nationals. In Russia, access to credit is scarce, so company subsidized mortgages are huge bonuses. French companies provide access to company-owned ski chalets at bargain prices. In India, they value taking care of their parents, so companies subsidize the cost of the elder care. Has your company considered offering prayer time or additional floating Holidays for religious employees? In the global marketplace, astute managers ask whether pay or location is more important to far-flung employees. In India, young workers often want to stay close to their parents…so companies should locate in smaller cities and offer benefits to extended family members.

On BilingualCity.com, our video and collaboration tools (which are under development in 2008) will allow employers to learn more about different cultures, so they can understand what motivates them.


(4) Shortage of H1B Visas.

Microsoft's Bill Gates even went to the Senate about the shortage of H1B Visas to request more, arguing that it doesn't make sense to educate these talented people in our schools and then say we don't value their skills. Canada is generous with work visas for the highly skilled, so Microsoft opened a plant 130 miles North of Redmond in that country. Employees cross the border to collaborate and meet face to face.

(5) I am not Black, I am African

Is your company making employees feel invisible and undervalued? You must understand their unique cultural heritage to appreciate what they have to offer. African employees often speak at least 5 languages and that is overlooked. They comment that they are the victims of American racism, even though they are not “Black,” but rather African. Additionally, the Chinese view the American version of “networking” as using people. Perhaps that is why they are not participating in after-hours networking events. These are all factors that weigh in to employee engagement, motivation, and ultimately loyalty and performance.

Do Immigrants Take more than they Give? Immigrants as Scapegoats.

"The backlash against illegal immigrants has deeper roots than the economic impact of immigration, writes John B. Judis in the New Republic. It reflects a broader anxiety over the health of the U.S. and the impact of globalization.

In states such as Iowa and South Carolina, voters' concerns do reflect a sudden and recent rise in the immigrant population. But strong anti-immigrant backlashes are also occurring in states where immigrants are scarce. In New Hampshire, exit polls from the primary showed that 25% of Republican and independent voters considered immigration the most important issue the country faces. Yet the state ranks 42nd when it comes to the number of illegal immigrants living there, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and only 2.2% of New Hampshire residents are Hispanic.

In such states, Mr. Juds writes, immigrants have become the scapegoats for the economic anxieties brought by globalization. Those who feel the strongest about immigration are generally workers from the lower middle class without technical qualifications -- those whose livelihoods are most at risk from outsourcing. A poll last year found the statement 'immigrants take more from our country than they give' garnered the most support among men between the ages of 30 and 39 without a college degree.

Along with the economic grievances, the movement against immigrants also reflects 'a loss of confidence in the cohesion and resilience of the American nation,' Mr. Judis says. Polls show a rising number of people think the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction and that sense of decline makes the backlash against immigrants even stronger. The fear is that immigrants will undermine national unity just when it is needed most. Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo frequently cites those fears in his campaign for tougher immigration laws, saying immigration is 'the issue of our culture itself, and whether we will survive.'" The New Republic - Feb. 13 (Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2008)

What are your thoughts on this article?

Riding a Bicycle can Help you Understand Latino Culture

He traveled nearly 12,000 miles across mountains to Great Lakes, New England to Florida and back again. University of Minnesota Professor Louis Mendoza joins us today from Minneapolis.

Hello to you, Louis. You started out in California in July -- hello.

PROF. LOUIS MENDOZA, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Hi. How are you doing?

LEMON: It's hard (LAUGHTER)...

MENDOZA: Thanks very much for having me here, Don.

LEMON: Great to have you. Thanks. Why July? Why didn't you wait until it was cooler, at least, in the rest of the country?

MENDOZA: Well, I'm from Texas so I was used to the hot weather and I figured I just needed to get a start.

LEMON: So you were ready.

MENDOZA: And I didn't want to deal with too much cold weather.

LEMON: Yes. Folks are going to wonder why you did this. I think it was a sabbatical and you were just going to do something interesting.

Actually, what, was it to lose weight and then this sort of turned into a life-altering adventure for you?

MENDOZA: Absolutely. I wanted to exercise. But more importantly, I wanted to get off the beaten path. And I decided going 35 miles a day versus 35 miles an hour would force me to get off that path and go through the small towns and talk to people, to get food, water, lodging. And I met a really interesting array of people. And I wanted to also travel the natural environment to experience the weather, the climate, the terrain that has really been a part of our migration experience in the United States.

LEMON: OK. So as we look at some of these pictures -- and we're not going to explain all of them, because I think they sort of speak for themselves. But you wanted to experience -- and I think this is your quote -- you said "the Latinization of America?"

MENDOZA: The Latinoization, yes.

LEMON: Latinoization of America?

MENDOZA: Yes.

LEMON: What does that mean and what did you see if you mean the Latinoization, you saw people in jobs or some controversial (ph) saying jobs that Americans don't necessarily want to do. Explain to us what you saw along this journey as we look at these pictures.

MENDOZA: Well, for the last few years, we've been going through an ongoing process of demographic change in this country, with an upsurge in immigration from Latin America. And part of this is the process of cultural change that comes with it, certainly the process of the new geography of Latino immigration. Because we're no longer just confined to Southwest, Northeast and the Southern part of the country. We're all over the place now and I think it's important to understand that.

LEMON: Yes. MENDOZA: And so what I learned firsthand was how this new geography of Latino immigration has really helped save small town America. The economy of small town America, which has experienced low growth -- low population growth. And people have decided not to -- to no longer work in the industry of their parents, so they've left town. And there was an active effort to seek newcomers to come in and help those industries survive. And so I saw a grand appreciation for those efforts...

LEMON: OK.

MENDOZA: ... and a lot of people getting along despite the fact that you hear so many stories, this anti-Latino, anti-immigrant legislation in small places, there were hundreds and hundreds of places where people are actually getting along quite well.

LEMON: OK. You know, I was looking at -- just doing some of the research here today and also last week when I found out you were going to be on. It's saying by 2050, the Census Bureau estimates Hispanics will comprise nearly 25 percent of the U.S. population. And those big states -- New Mexico, California, Texas, Nevada and Florida -- as we move into tomorrow, with the GOP candidates, what were folks telling you -- especially since this is an election year -- about what they'd like to see from the candidates? And are they taking advantage of this new sort of power that they have with voting?

MENDOZA: Well, I think the electoral power of Latinos is still -- still emerging. And it's still a force -- it's a force to be reckoned w. And I do think the candidates recognize that. But many Latinos across the country are very profoundly disappointed that Congress and our politician have not been able to find -- provide national leadership on this issue, to create sort of a just and humane and fair immigration policy. So I think it's a burning issue, but it's important to keep in mind that many issues concerning the Latino community -- education, health care...

LEMON: Yes.

MENDOZA: ... of course...

LEMON: And, one, immigration. I mean that has been a huge topic, not just this year -- it's heating up now -- but for the last couple of years. What are finding or what did you find that people in these communities, these towns that you went through, what were they saying about it? How do they feel about it...

MENDOZA: Well, they were concerned that the -- it's been framed in very narrow terms as an us versus them. And they feel that there's this been this denial of Latinos longstanding presence in the United States, that precedes the presence of the country, and our role of helping build this country. So I think it's a profound disappointment that it's framed as Latinos against whites in this country and that sort of racialization and the consequence -- the sort of racial profiling that comes with the very harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric, that it's very damaging to relations in this country. LEMON: Oh. That's -- I wish we could elaborate more, but we don't have time today. That is actually very interesting that you say that.

You have -- your background is Hispanic, right? Your family is from where?

MENDOZA: Yes. My grandparents are from Mexico. I'm a second- generation immigrant.

LEMON: And I thought it was very interesting, though. You don't speak fluent Spanish.

MENDOZA: No. That's, again, a consequence of our former educational policies that didn't allow us to grow up speaking Spanish in the schools. And so my parents made the decision -- a very hard decision -- to not raise us bilingually...

LEMON: OK...

MENDOZA: ... although I have learned it since.

LEMON: OK, listen, I want you to keep in touch with me. I want you to -- you're going to watch the State of the Union tonight, I'm sure...

MENDOZA: Absolutely.

LEMON: ... and the topic of immigration may come up. And -- border I'd like to get you back and talk about all of these primaries and what have you...

MENDOZA: Sure.

LEMON: ... and get your perspective on that, since you've traveled across the country. Louis Mendoza, thank you very much. Good luck to you.

MENDOZA: Thank you, Don.

LEMON: And you lost 25 pounds. I want to tell everybody that.

MENDOZA: OK.

LEMON: So if you get on a bicycle, that could happen to you, too. Thank you very much for that.

MENDOZA: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Young Global Workers Want it All

Did you know that new global workers (particularly from emerging nations) are entering the workforce as the first generation in their nation's history to experience unbridled economic optimism? Unlike their parents who obtained advanced degrees but had to cling to more stable low-paying jobs, and stayed in those jobs for 30+ years, this new generation often hops from one great opportunity to another and they want it all, and want it now. Does this sound familiar?

The companies that employ this new generation of workers struggle with harnessing their energy while reigning in inflated expectations. To alleviate this tension, innovative global companies like InfoSys are setting up programs for spotting and nurturing innovation. One program that they have pioneered is called the Voice of Youth Council. Also, to avoid facing a shortage of competent managers and losing hungry recruits, other companies have devised in-house mini-MBA programs that offer on the job training consisting of testing, seminars, databases for sharing the tricks of the trade, email quizzes about the appropriate response to workplace problems, etc.

These efforts help identify and train those with leadership potential, and help motivate and retain a new generation of knowledge workers.

Ethnic Diversity was the key to the Rise of the Romans and Moguls. Is it the key to the rise of the United States?

Ethnic Diversity was the key to the Rise of the Romans and Moguls. Is it the key to the rise of the United States?

Amy Chua, Yale Law professor and author, suggests in her book Day of Empire that, ironically, the secret to becoming a world "hyperpower" is tolerance. She notes that it is important to not take a turn toward xenophobia and shut down the borders or root out certain groups, because history shows that that's always been the trigger of backlash and decline.

She was drawn to global issues because she, herself, is a product of globalization. Her own family is Chinese, but from the Phillipines. Her parents immigrated to America. Her mother was Catholic, two grandparents were Buddhist and Protestant, and her husband is Jewish.

For the extended interview, which appeared in the February 2008 issue of Smithsonian magazine, see www.Smithsonia.com/chua .

How do you feel about tolerance, with respect to immigration?

Louisville, KY - From Bourbon and Baseball Bats to Embracing the Bantu

"Louisville welcomes legal immigrants to bolster its shrinking workforce. The city calls them internationals, because the word immigrants is so stigmatized, even though they are here legally. They realize that communities that embrace diversity are going to be the most successful. There’s a practical reason for their openness: Like many other U.S. cities, Louisville faces an aging population and falling birth rates that are skrinking its workforce. Companies like UPS and GE say they need immigrants to keep thriving. It’s an economic imperative to attract immigrants at all levels from factory workers to software engineers. From Louisville's perspective, you can engage these folks or you can wait to deal with the liabilities. They are trying to aggressively ensure that they become assets, and it's not difficult because they have plenty of life skills. The only issue is that they have to learn from scratch basic things that we take for granted." Wall Street Journal.

The world is shrinking very quickly. Qatar and Dubai are investing in the London and New York Stock Exchanges. China is investing in the US and vice-versa. BilingualCity.com's goal is to provide a portal for people to connect with the resources they need to effectively play a role in this new multicultural world.

Have you experienced similar challenges in your city?