Preventing a Diversity & Inclusion Recession in Your Organization
How can I worry about inclusion in the middle of a downsizing economy?
The down economy has prompted a lot of concern about the fate of diversity and inclusion efforts. As my colleague Audra Bohannon asked recently "when budgets are cut and training slows down, will policies and practices be allowed to loosen under the guise of 'higher priorities?'"
A recent study by SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) seems to suggest that is indeed the case, finding that 39% of their respondents reported a cut in spending not directly related to the core business, such as anti-harassment and diversity training."
The key question here is whether companies consider diversity and inclusion efforts to be "related to the core business." Barbara Frankel points out in DiversityInc that in their Top 50 Companies for Diversity 2008 Survey, all the companies with the highest rankings see diversity and inclusion as a business necessity—one piece of an overall strategy needed to survive and prosper now and in the future.
These Top 50 Diversity companies consider it critical to treat employees in a way that incents them to use their discretionary effort on behalf of the business. They want to insure that every customer contact is with an employee who feels supported enough to care about representing the company well. They expect to draw on a broad range of perspective and experience for new ideas and superior products and services.
So what's a company to do when their dollars are limited but the need to focus on diversity and inclusion is as great as ever? Here are a few ideas that require minimal investment of time or dollars but will reap a big pay-off:
Talk to your employees. Now more than ever, use your communications with employees to remind them why they are important to you and the company. Towers Perrin's latest engagement study (May 27, 2009) reinforces this need for high-touch involvement from leaders—employees want to know how their efforts support the long-term objectives of the business. The effort can buy you an enormous amount of loyalty, perseverance and creativity.
Take advantage of the need to do things differently to tap a broader group for their ideas and involvement. Push past your stereotypes about who has something to contribute; ask for new ideas and new ways of doing business from all parts of the company. To the extent that you involve everyone—not just a few trusted "go-to" people to take on the challenge of something new, the business will be better off.
Don't let up on your commitments to put together diverse teams. As you make decisions about layoffs, restructuring, and new assignments, continue to consider ways in which diverse backgrounds and experience will pay off for the company.
Continue to monitor how you can support teams to work together productively. The restructuring going on inside many organizations means that people from different backgrounds and with different skill sets are being required to work together in new ways. Don't just assume that teams will "work it out". Take the time early on to help teams coalesce.
What's important in all of these recommendations is that they are baked into what managers and leaders do on a day-to-day basis—not something requiring big budgets. They are strategies used by managers who see diversity and inclusion as "core to the business."
As a professional in the field of Training and development, as well as a past K-12 educator it baffles me that even today 40+ years after the 63 and 64 Civil rights Amendments that any time of our development day has to be spent teaching different people, from different walks of life how to play nice.
People's acceptance to culture varies based on where the person is geographically situated on our planet. However, in America where a man of color has risen the top, issues, belief, and power people practices still are quite evident. What is more interesting is that such behaviors are not exclusive to people of color.
Governmental regulation and policy have to some point curtailed many behaviors but the reality is, we still have a long way to go. In a recent project conducted at my organization, it was determined that the ethnic balance and cultural sensitivity that is apparent and obvious, was not the by-product of organizational initiative but rather then by-product of the demographic presence of many people from many different walks of life. To be fair, it must also be said that such inclusion was not and was not rejected by the system's leadership, but I must also step back and say "What if it were?"
If I had the opportunity, I would very much like to see what happens if Affirmative Action had finally come to an end. The other part of inclusion has to do with how far we have come as a country. To these ends, I truly feel that although the playing field is still not even, people of color and woman have empowered themselves through experience and education to a point that such legislation is now hindering these segments total success. At this point in time, inclusion should be a natural cultural process and not a forced process. To these ends, I say learn more, be true to who you are, and keep reaching for the top of the mountain.
