Friday, October 26, 2007

What’s Hot and What’s Not
- the Diversity Trend Lines

By Linda S. Wallace

When human resource professionals gather at a diversity conference, it is a little like a swap meet where ideas are traded and challenges are explored.

The men and women on the frontlines of the movement to manage diversity and develop worker potential engaged in many crucial conversations Oct.18-20 during the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) Workplace Diversity Conference titled: Leading, Changing, Transforming.

Feel good workshops are out. Opportunities for individual learning and growth are in. Shame-on-you speeches are out. Trusting cultures that welcome honest and open dialogues are in. Workshops that preach love, peace and happiness are fading from the scene. Training sessions focused on building organizational capabilities and competencies are in.

Throughout the conference, there were numerous references to diversity fatigue. Many workers – both from the majority and minority groups - are diversity weary, a symptom of their frustrations. Many visionaries here are trying to respond to the backlash by viewing diversity issues through a wider lens.

Rarely does one hear talk of fixing or changing people, as there was years ago when I first started covering these issues. That’s out. Instead, consultants such as Global Lead’s Jessica Gilbert say that diversity is a journey during which companies must meet workers where they are and create growth and learning opportunities. Her colleague, David Tulin, says people don’t resist change, rather they resist being changed.

Limiting diversity programs solely to racial and gender hiring initiatives is out. Leading companies today view diversity in many ways: diversity of function, diversity of thought, diversity of expectations, and diversity of ideas. Instead of using diversity programs to solve problems, they are using them to build talent, increase productivity and create trusting teams.

White men are no longer seen as the main diversity problem. In today’s climate of inclusiveness, there is in fact talk of white men emerging as the diversity’s champions. Stay tuned to future columns for more details.

At the conference, leaders focused on the future while reflecting on what went wrong in the past. R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr., a widely respected consultant, told participants that diversity advocates who feel everybody should think as they do are part of the problem. He suggests that there is not one single way to view or define diversity, or one approach that will work for all. Rather, inclusive workforces are a byproduct of learning cultures, effective communicators, innovative strategies and more.

Programs that preach that people are all the same or tell how to handle cultural groups are waning. Instead, the focus today is providing knowledge to assist workers and prepare them for global sales opportunities. Companies seek to create flexible cultures that respond well to cultural ambiguities and successfully draw out the talents of diverse workers.

One dimensional diversity programs of the past were not keeping pace with today’s competitive challenges. Rising in their place are initiatives with tentacles that support corporate goals, productivity, revenue growth and business intelligence. These initiatives seek to help frontline managers solve challenges such as recruitment and retention, talent development, staff morale, interdepartmental conflicts and collaboration, and communication breakdowns.

Diversity today is a more fluid concept because it has so many different definitions. It is a challenge; a problem; a market opportunity; a threat; a potential for lawsuits, and a loss of cultural control, depending on the particular view of an individual or company.

In other words, corporate attitudes and language dramatically affect the outcomes of diversity initiatives. As Henry Ford once noted: “If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can’t, you’re right.”

Whether managers are building automobiles, or building workforces, Ford is right.