Highlights from

1
Highlights from A Business Case for Diversity
from Dr. Jeffrey Gandz, University of Western
Ontario (Fall 2001)http//www.equalopportunity.on
.ca
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CONTENTS

• Overview
• Workplace Diversity Today
• Benefits from Diversity
• Achieving Diversity

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Overview

• The business case for Diversity will be different
  for each organisation.
• Diversity can help organisations
• identify and capitalise on opportunities to
  improve products and services
• Attract, Retain, Motivate, and Utilise Human
  Resources effectively
• Improve the Quality of Decision-Making
• Reap benefits of being perceived as a socially
  conscious and progressive organisation.

4
Workplace Diversity Today

• Lets take a look at Diversity 2 decades ago
  versus Diversity Today.
• Before, organisations aimed to reach Diversity
  through Employment Equity Legislation.
• United-States ? Affirmative Action
• Canada ? Employment Equity
• Today the new concept of Diversity focuses not
  just on tolerating those who are different but
  celebrating those differences.

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Workplace Diversity Today

• The new concept of Diversity rejects the concept
  of quotas, mandated targets, and legislation of
  the past while it does not diminish their
  historical contribution.
• Diversity in the future will be driven by
  Competition, Demography, Immigration,
  Improvements in Technology (Communication) and
  Globalisation.

6
Benefits from Diversity

• A) Anticipating and Responding to Customer Needs
• Increasingly diverse workforces are required to
  understand and respond to the needs and
  aspirations of increasingly diverse customers.
• In Canada only, visible minorities possess 76
  billion worth of purchasing power.
• In 2001, visible minorities will have reached
• 48 of the consumer market in Toronto,
• 39 in Vancouver, and
• 20 in Montreal

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Benefits from Diversity

• The responsiveness to customer needs occurs at
  3 levels
• The Strategic level
• The Design level
• The Service/ Point-of-Contact level
• It is also important to note that organisations
  may serve not only local markets but also
  customers who are located in the home country
  or abroad.
• Thus a Web or E-Commerce presence may be equally
  important and effective.

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Benefits from Diversity

• B) Supplier Relationships
• Also know as Supply-Chain Management.
• This is one key area where organisations can gain
  a Competitive Advantage.
• While customers are often the primary focus of
  diversity competitiveness, it is no less
  important for a firm to maintain excellent
  relationships with suppliers.
• e.g. Ben Jerrys using a Mexican Supplier for
  its supply of Coffee Beans.

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Benefits from Diversity

• C) Focus on Employees
• In an era of critical skills shortages (i.e.
  Brain Drain) organisations are finding that they
  must attract, motivate, and utilise their human
  assets effectively if they are to be competitive.
• David Williams (president of Loblaws
  supermarkets) states
• My competitors can duplicate our technology,
  systems and equipment. What they cannot
  duplicate are our people.

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Benefits from Diversity

• D) Globalisation
• Management and Leadership teams which lack
  diversity, cannot possibly comprehend and respond
  to the issues that organisations must deal with
  in a multi-cultural world.
• As business is done more and more through
  partnerships, joint-ventures, and strategic
  alliances, so an ability to relate to other
  cultures becomes a key organisational
  requirement.

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Benefits from Diversity

• D) Globalisation
• You cannot run a global company on a set of
  solely U.S.-based values.
• People need to be sensitive to different Cultural
  Values and Business Practices.
• Having a more Diverse Workforce makes a business
  more profitable due to the many advantages.

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Achieving Diversity

• There are 2 aspects to achieving diversity
• The first is getting there moving from a
  non-diverse workforce to a diverse one.
• The second is managing diversity, ensuring that
  the benefits are realised while the costs are
  minimised.
• Achieving diversity does nothing for an
  organisation unless that diversity is managed
  effectively.
• It is not a natural thing for people of different
  cultural backgrounds, religious and moral
  upbringings, cognitive styles, or even genders,
  to communicate effectively, appreciate what
  shapes each others viewpoints, debate with each
  other without giving offense, or otherwise
  getting along together.

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Achieving Diversity

• Equality in the context of managing diversity
  means treating each persons needs with an equal
  amount of respect and attention.
• The teamwork research done over the years
  indicates that diverse teams are capable of
  developing higher quality solutions to tasks or
  problems.
• Why do you think this is the case?

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Achieving Diversity

• Each company can develop their own approach which
  suits their business needs and realities. But
  there are recurring themes to achieving
  diversity
• Leading from the Top
• The Importance of Words
• The Importance of Public Commitment
• Walking the Walk