Equal Employment Opportunity and Workforce Diversity

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Equal Employment Opportunity and Workforce
Diversity
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Strategic Issues Proactive vs. Reactive
Responses

• Resistance perspective diversity is threatening
• Discrimination and fairness perspective
  diversity as a legal problem to solve
• Access and legitimacy perspective diversity as
  business necessity
• Learning perspective diversity brings about new
  learning and innovation

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Strategic Issues Breadth and Depth of Approaches

• Across all HR functions, such as selection,
  training, compensation, promotion
• Up and down all levels of organization
• Across all business functions and units of
  organization

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Strategic Issues Implementation

• Episodic initiatives are isolated, disjointed,
  and separate from core organizational activities
• Freestanding sporadic programs to deal with
  particular pressures
• Systemic initiatives are linked to strategic
  plans, existing systems, and integrated with core
  activities

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Other Issues to Consider

• Management philosophy
• Organizational culture
• Industry dynamics
• Labor market availability and employee power
• Union philosophy actions
• Efficiency, equity, voice considerations

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Equal Employment Law

• Federal and state law
• Court system
• Federal statutes vs. constitutional rights
• Intent of laws solve social inequities
• Not all sources of discrimination are banned by
  equal employment law

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Regulatory Model
Laws and Executive Orders
Regulatory Agencies
Social Problems
Regulatory Actions
Management Responses
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Major EEO Laws

• Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) and Civil
  Rights Law of 1991
• Pregnancy Discrimination Act
• Age Discrimination in Employment Act (1967)
• American with Disabilities Act (1990)
• Family and Medical Leave Act (1993)

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What is Illegal Discrimination?
Basic Definition Using standards not related
to the job or applying different standards to
people who have protected class characteristics
in recruiting, selecting, training, evaluating,
compensating or promoting individuals
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Two Types of Discrimination

• Disparate Treatment
• People are overtly treated differently from
  others because of sex, race, age, disability,
  religion, etc.
• Example Refusal to hire Muslims for security
  guard positions

• Disparate Impact
• Employment practice that results in differential
  impact on (under-representation of) different
  classes of people
• Example Requiring a college degree

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What is Legal Discrimination?

• Discrimination based on business necessity
  (practice necessary for the safe and efficient
  operation of business)
• BFOQs characteristic justified as reasonably
  necessary to the normal operations of the
  business
• Validated job requirements research that shows
  relationships between decision making procedures
  and job requirements

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EEO Complaint Processing

• Enforcement and adjudicating agencies EEOC,
  OFCCP, DOL, DOJ, and state and local enforcement
  agencies
• Filing and managing complaints (see handout)
• Decision rules shifting burden of proof and
  Uniform Guidelines

Charge Statistics for 1992-2003
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Affirmative Action

• Set of specific actions taken to actively seek
  out, hire, and promote underrepresented groups
• Written document with utilization analyses, goals
  and timetables, action steps
• Types Required of federal contractors
  court-ordered or consent decreed and voluntary

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Acceptable AA Programs

• Conspicuous imbalance of minority members in
  organization
• Do not trammel the rights of (completely block)
  major group members
• Do not require the discharge of majority group
  members
• Voluntary
• Quotas are temporary and will end when balance is
  achieved

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Current Issues in AA

• Civil Rights Act of 1991 has made race (sex)
  norming illegal, which has direct impact on AA
  programs
• States passing laws making AA in state government
  illegal (CA)
• Must show that increasing diversity is valid and
  desirable goal of organization
• Must not use narrow definition of diversity
  (University of Michigan Plan)

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What is meant by diversity?

• Racial
• Ethnic
• Gender
• Disability
• Religious

• Age
• Family stage
• Cross-national
• Sexual orientation
• Socio-economic status

all the ways we are different -- Pillsbury
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Why do we need to focus on workforce diversity?

• Demographic changes
• Changing legal definitions and laws
• Employment problems of certain groups
• Global expansion of business

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The U.S. Population (2000 Census)
Gender Males 49 Females 51
Racial Background White 69.1 Hispanic
12.5 Black 12.3 Asian 3.6 American
Indian/Alaska Native .9 Hawaiian/Pacific
Islander .1
Age Under 30 42 30 over 58
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Changing legal definitions and laws

• Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1991
• Age Discrimination in Employment Act

• American with Disabilities Act
• Family and Medical Leave Act

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Employment Problems

• Productivity losses from family care-giving needs
  is estimated at 11 billion per year
• High unemployment among young blacks (35 vs. 15
  for whites)
• 40 of GLBT employees report hostile treatment at
  work
• 75 of disabled persons who want to work are not
  working (2 ½ times more likely to be unemployed)
• 50 of the available American Indian workforce is
  unemployed
• Low wage employees have extreme difficulty in
  work-family balance

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Global expansion of business

• Transnational HR management issues
• Cross cultural value differences
• Deployment of people
• Knowledge and information dissemination
• Identifying and developing talent globally

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Differences between Affirmative Action and
Diversity Management

• Affirmative Action
• Focus on recruitment and hiring goals
• Equality and fairness are motivations
• Encourages assimilation

• Diversity Management
• Focus on bottom line results
• Increased business success is motivation
• Encourages valuing differences

Affirmative Action gets the new fuel into the
tank, while diversity management gets women,
minorities, disabled, etc.in the drivers seat
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Arguments for and against Diversity Management

• What are the advantages of focusing on diversity
  management?
• What are some of the problems associated with a
  focus on diversity management?

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Social Information Processing Competencies
Conscious Incompetence Conscious Competence
Unconscious Incompetence
Unconscious Competence
Blissful ignorance -- Naïve or not knowing what
you dont know
Natural ability to deal with diversity
Sophisticated rationalization
Actively trying to Overcome biases
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Developing the Business Case for Diversity
Management

• Develop specific business objectives related to
  diversity issues
• Identify the actions required for each objective
• Conduct cost/benefit analyses
• Develop tracking mechanisms to assess progress
  and financial impact (process and outcome
  measures)
• Robinson Dechant (1997)

http//www.diversitybusiness.com/Resources/DivList
s/2004/
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Other Factors that Aid Diversity Management

• Top management philosophy and support
• Human resource programs and organizational
  culture changes
• Communication and buy in among employees
• Link with mission, strategic goals, and plans

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Change Strategies to Increase Diversity

• Kossek, Markel, McHugh (2003) investigated the
  results of increasing diversity through hiring
  over time
• Research questions
• Do work groups with higher demographic shifts
  tend to have more positive climates?
• Does increasing the number of senior women and
  minorities at the department level increase
  positive climate (i.e., consensus and valence)?

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Consider Work-Life Issues

• Families Work Institute (2002) report
• 78 of married wage earners are in dual career
  couples
• Roles of fathers have expanded, although women
  still do most household work and child care
• 55 of those who use communication technology
  such as cell phones, pagers, and email found
  these helpful in managing work-family issues
• Work-life supports have increased somewhat but
  not greatly in the last decade
• Employees with families report high levels of
  interference between jobs and family lives (45)

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What does the research on work-life programs show?

• Perry-Smith Blum (2000) investigated the
  relationship between work-family human resource
  bundles and organizational performance
• Nord, Fox, Phoenix, Viano (2002) examined
  employees reactions to work-life programs in two
  firms

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Effective work-life programs

• Clarification of what is important in terms of
  business priorities and personal needs and
  interests to ensure equity and efficiency
• Continuous experimentation of changing work
  processes that enhance performance while also
  enriching personal life
• Better communication of policies and procedures
  to prevent negative consequences

Working Woman Magazine Best List
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Consider how companies meet global challenges

• Encourage a-spatial careers (spend working
  lives in multiple cultures)
• Awareness building assignments (3-12 month
  assignments)
• SWAT Teams (short term deployment of experts to
  solve problems)
• Virtual solutions and global human resource
  information systems