Hang Up Your Roller Skates –
It’s Diversity Month Now...
At KMA we’ll take any opportunity we can to talk about cultural diversity. There is no better time than October, which has been dubbed “Diversity Awareness Month” by many businesses and universities.
We know declaring a month to recognize a cause or interest is a popular thing to do. In fact October is also “Cook Book” and “National Roller Skating Month.” While those are intriguing topics, KMA is in the Diversity business and we plan to use October to share some important information with you.
KMA will be in New Orleans October 11-13 for the SHRM (The Society for Human Resources Management) Diversity and Inclusion Conference at booth 311, and we hope to see you there.
But even if you can’t make it to the Big Easy, we want to draw your attention to some resources that make the case for the importance of diversity-training programs for both managers and employees.
We’ve included writings by KMA experts as well as outside sources. We’ll start by recommending SHRM’s report on “Global Diversity and Inclusion.” It gives a good overview on the many areas that are impacted by diversity including: expanding your talent pool, increasing supplier diversity, employee productivity, and improving the bottomline.
EXPANDING YOUR TALENT POOL
– by Jean Mavrelis and Thomas Kochman for SHRM.org, August 2009.
“East Asians, Latinos, and other folks who have been raised with strong traditional values (including white ethnics who grew up in hierarchical families) are generally reluctant to toot their own horn during job interviews.
... Read more
“Ms. Nooyi (Chairwoman of PepsiCo) belongs to an emergent breed of hybrid leaders. They don’t fit the traditional templates of leader as general or coach, tycoon or populist. ... Read more
INCREASING EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY
– by Jean Mavrelis and Thomas Kochman for SHRM.org, August 2009.
“Unfortunately, in our litigious society organizations tend to “deny, deny, deny” rather than to admit they made an error... This puts the real issue–the different treatment–on the back burner.” ... Read more
“IBM is leveraging diversity through affinity channels as a mechanism to encourage innovation at every level. When Systems Management Specialist Pam Nesbitt filed her first patent in 2003, she became acutely aware of how few women at IBM were patenting their work...Sure that she could change this trend, Nesbitt contacted 20 female co-workers who were in technical roles and founded IBM's Women Inventor's Community. The group, which was formed in late 2006, now has more than 1,000 women worldwide. Collectively, these women have submitted nearly 900 patent disclosures internally and have been granted almost 300 patents.” ... Read more
INCREASING SUPPLIER DIVERSITY
by Jean Mavrelis for SHRM.org, June 2010.
“Diverse suppliers offer a different perspective on how things can and should get done, especially when it comes to reaching out to people from their own community. For example, when the editor of the San Jose Mercury News asked everyone on staff to identify diverse sources to interview ... Read more
by Kenton Clarke President & CEO DiversityBusiness.com
“Leadership must remember how many small businesses that are overlooked and negatively affected by their continuance of keeping a blind eye while larger businesses reap the rewards. These same businesses purchase your ... Read more
IMPROVING THE BOTTOMLINE
“The business case for diversity also embraces much more than just the commercial imperative of mirroring and consequently understanding a customer base. For enlightened and ambitious employers it also means a recognition that, in the “war for talent”, focusing recruitment and retention policies on a narrow group is short-sighted and self-defeating. According to Amany Attia of Lehman Brothers, “Leadership is not gender -based- a sentiment that is echoed by Merrill Lynch's Chantal Hegy, who says, “Talented people are talented people, whatever their gender, race or culture.”
... Read more
