It is no longer good enough, for companies to wear their diversity and equal employment opportunity statistics as badges of commitment to minorities and women, writes Ada Maduakoh, chief executive of ProDiverse, one of Britain's leading authorities on diversity and minority issues.
For the past 10 years, companies have tried to enforce diversity policies designed to institutionalise the recruitment, retention and promotion of minorities and women. For some, diversity initiatives were developed as a matter of common decency; others proclaimed that diversity made good business sense; but for many, a compliance requirement for lucrative government contracts was the overriding impetus.
Regardless of what initiated a company's equal opportunities policy, even equal opportunities staunchest critics can't deny its success in bringing substantial numbers of women, black and ethnic minority professionals into corporate UK. However, statistics aren't so encouraging when one looks at their progress up the corporate ladder.
Diversity policies get the new fuel into the tank, the new people through the front door. Something else will have to get them into the driver's seat. That something else consists of enabling people, in this case minorities and women, to perform to their potential. This is what we now call diversity. Not appreciating or leveraging diversity, not even necessarily understanding it. Just managing diversity in such a way as to get from a heterogeneous work force, the same productivity, commitment, quality, and profit that we got from the old homogeneous work force.
The new litmus test of the progressive organisations of the 21st century is reflected by not only how well companies recruit and attract minorities and women, but whether or not the company's corporate culture truly respects and promotes people who differ from the majority of managers and executives throughout corporate UK. Even so, leading diversity specialists know that you can't manage diversity without a diverse work force and you're going to need positive action to get from here to there.
Surprisingly, some companies are finding less resistance to implementing diversity training from managers than enforcing Equal Opportunities policies, now referred to as equalities. That's because many white managers never got beyond regarding equal opportunities (EO) as 'preferential treatment' for blacks and ethnic minorities and women. Although many companies still seem confused about the real difference between EO and diversity initiatives.
Diane Goodman in her book, The Strength of Diversity, describes diversity as social justice issue driven by Government and supported by international conventions and legislation aimed at combating racism and other forms of discrimination, embodied in and stemming from, the universal declaration of human rights. It generally focuses on target minority groups and is geared toward compliance. In contrast, promoting a diverse work force is inclusive and development-oriented that aims at the empowerment of all employees.
Managing diversity well means addressing, simultaneously, the needs of every segment of the employee population, including white males. When it is done properly, no individual will be advantaged or disadvantaged because of race, sex, creed, geographical origin or any other form of classification.
The purpose of ProDiverse's work is to help employees to recognise the importance of individual differences through self-development. By learning about others, we learn about ourselves. In 'the process, individuals become empowered to view differences as assets and to put these assets to work creatively within their organisations. This translates into productivity, profitability and competitive advantage.
Therefore, human resource professionals must replace this sense of entitlement with the clear understanding that white men, along with women and minorities, will continue to be rewarded and promoted on a basis of merit as well as how they integrate good diversity management skills within their own areas of authority.
These issues, plus what Michael Mallows , senior consultant at ProDiverse describes as "pure inertia," have limited the number of companies exploring how to improve opportunities for advancement among non-white workers.
''Many human resource managers just don't have the status or the ability to get top management excited about diversity issues," says Mallows. "Some companies believe that business as usual is just fine. The sceptics are saying, 'Why bother? Nothing is really going to change.' And most line managers are too concerned with the bottom line."
Diversity initiatives will only translate into more opportunity and real advancement for women, black and ethnic minority groups, if companies practice diversity as a way of life.
