Practices for Managing Diversity

10.4 Suggestions for Managing Diversity

What can organizations do to manage diversity more effectively? In this section, we review research findings and the best practices from different companies to create a list of suggestions for organizations.

Build a Culture of Respect for Diversity

In the most successful companies, diversity management is not the responsibility of the human resources department. Starting from top management and including the lowest levels in the hierarchy, each person must understand the importance of respecting others. If this respect is not part of an organization’s culture, no amount of diversity training or other programs are likely to be effective. In fact, in the most successful companies, diversity is viewed as everyone’s responsibility. Rogers Communications Inc. partners with Career Bridge to provide work to internationally educated professionals. Accenture Inc. has a global Persons with Disabilities Champions program, which is focused on workplace accommodations. Finally, British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority encourages managers to hire skilled newcomers, providing a career advancement plan (Jermyn, 2018).

L’Oréal – a leading cosmetics company, also has a commitment to gender equality, with 69% of its workforce made up of women. L’Oréal achieves this by having a detailed diversity-and-inclusion strategy that the company implements at locations around the world, resulting in positive changes in its communities and elevating women into leadership positions across the company.

Lenovo, a global PC provider, has built its company on the concept that “different is better,” championing and weaving diversity into the fabric of its business. Lenovo has scored 100% on the Corporate Equality Index, a benchmarking report on corporate policies and practices regarding LGBTQIA equality, in both 2017 and 2019. The report evaluates LGBTQIA-related policies and practices, such as non-discrimination, workplace protections, domestic partner benefits and transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits.

The lesson to take from Lenovo is that the inclusion of progressive and inclusive policies and benefits helps you attract talent and makes more employees feel supported at work.

Companies with a strong culture, where people have a sense of shared values, is rewarded with loyalty and team performance. This enables employees with vastly different demographics and backgrounds to feel a sense of belonging (Chatman et al., 1998; Fisher, 2004).

Make Managers Accountable for Diversity

People are more likely to pay attention to aspects of performance that are measured. In successful companies, diversity metrics are carefully tracked. For example, in PepsiCo, during the tenure of former CEO Steve Reinemund, half of all new hires had to be either women or minorities. Bonuses of managers partly depended on whether they had met their diversity-related goals (Yang, 2006).

Ajay Banga, former CEO of Mastercard for 12 years, who led the company through a strategic, technological and cultural transformation said: “My passion for diversity comes from the fact that I myself am diverse. There have been a hundred times when I have felt different from other people in the room or in the business. I have a turban and a full beard, and I run a global company—that’s not common.”

Mr. Banga in this excerpt from his talk at Stanford University has a simple solution for diversity. “We must surround ourselves with people who don’t look the same and have had different experiences. It is the best way to ensure we don’t fall victim to the same blind spots again and again and again,” he said.
During his tenure as CEO, Mr. Banga ensured through his business leaders that men and women at Mastercard , at the same hierarchical level, were paid the same. This was not the case before he joined the company.

When managers are evaluated and rewarded based on how effective they are in diversity management, they are more likely to show commitment to diversity that in turn affects the diversity climate in the rest of the organization.

Diversity Training Programs

Many companies provide employees and managers with training programs related to diversity. However, not all diversity programs are equally successful. If the program is not enforced and modeled by leadership, employees will lack the motivation to buy-in. If employees sense there is no commitment and accountability from senior leaders, it will impact the motivation and enthusiasm needed to implement a successful Diversity program.

A Diversity program cannot succeed in the absence of adequate representation of diverse groups of people. One key hindrance is the perception of diversity as anything other than meaning the inclusion of people of distinct ages, genders, ethnicities, social classes, income levels, and different cultural backgrounds.

You may expect that more successful programs are those that occur in companies where a culture of diversity exists. A study of over 700 companies found that programs with a higher perceived success rate were those that occurred in companies where top management believed in the importance of diversity, where there were explicit rewards for increasing diversity in the company, and where managers were required to attend the diversity training programs (Rynes & Rosen, 1995).

Review Recruitment Practices

Companies may want to increase diversity by targeting a pool that is more diverse. There are many minority professional groups such as The Aboriginal Women’s Professional Association (AWPA) which provides “Aboriginal women from all over Canada the opportunity to gather and meet other Aboriginal women and to learn from each other” (Charity Village, 2019). By building relationships with these occupational groups, organizations may attract a more diverse group of candidates to choose from. The auditing company Ernst & Young Global Ltd. increases diversity of job candidates by mentoring undergraduate students (Nussenbaum, 2003). Companies may also benefit from reviewing their employment advertising to ensure that diversity is important at all levels of the company (Avery, 2003).
Today’s job seekers have numerous tools available—from Glassdoor to LinkedIn—to evaluate a company before they ever apply for a job. Focusing on Diversity in the company’s branding efforts is key to a diversity recruiting strategy. A strong employer brand will help you attract qualified candidates who want to work for the company.