By Lisa Lopez Snyder, Contributing Writer

From the water cooler to the boardroom, from the call center to the market, is diversity a part of your workplace?

For employers, this can be an immeasurable question, as diversity takes on a myriad of forms. A company might carry out recruitment, retention and advancement initiatives that attract and support people who differ in terms of their racial, ethnic, gender, physical ability and generational backgrounds. Another organization may communicate with individuals across all these aspects through mentoring programs and by supporting new leaders making their way up the organizational ladder.

A company may also carry out strategies that help resolve conflicts among staff members who struggle with a project because of differing cultural or generational perspectives.

So what does an employer need to do to take the first step?

Where to start?
Knowing where your organization should start means determining where you stand, says Susan Lill, founder of and certified diversity trainer with Align HR Services.

The first step for a company is to conduct an assessment, which may include employee surveys or hiring a consultant to walk through the company’s practices and policies.

An assessment will show that companies generally fall into one of four types in terms of their level of diversity readiness, Lill says:
--We-don’t-know-what-we-don’t-know
--Compliant-plus
--Committed
--All the above, plus community outreach.


The We-don’t-know-what-we-don’t-know company may be new to diversity. Managers may have decided to have a diversity initiative, but may not have written affirmative action plans or trained staff on diversity.

The Compliant-plus company meets all its Equal Employment Opportunity requirements, says Lill, and may or may not have a written affirmative action plan. “The company may have had some diversity training, or some internal activities around diversity such as cultural events.”

The Committed company generally has top leadership saying it’s important for people to articulate the case for diversity, Lill adds, and with an approach that goes beyond just recruitment in terms of age, gender, race and ethnicity. This company values diversity in terms of how it can create success for the work force, she said. Managers have been trained and leaders have likely incorporated diversity into their core values and practices.

The All the above, plus community outreach company has incorporated diversity as part of its business operations. This may include purchasing goods and services from minority- and women-owned vendors and setting up internships with underrepresented students from high schools and historically black colleges. “They might even track those efforts,” Lill says.

Creating a supportive environment
Knowing which category your company fits into will help determine the next steps, Lill says. The process is one that requires an organization to look inward as well as outward and recognize diversity as a corporate asset. That means developing an environment that supports employees and recognizes and respects their differences.

For companies like BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, which has built a diverse work force over the last eight years, it was a matter of institutionalizing diversity as part of its corporate objectives.

For example, when the company was recruiting bilingual staff who spoke English and Spanish for their call centers, it found that building a relationship with the local Latino community was important in order to hire and market to the Latino community.

“We were approaching our recruiting efforts the way we had done traditionally,” says Gayel Wigfall, diversity consultant with BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina. “And because there wasn’t that personal connection within the Spanish-speaking community, we weren’t getting the responses that we anticipated. We had become accustomed to our brand being very recognizable to the population.”

The company then reached out to local Hispanic groups, such as the S.C. Hispanic Leadership Council and the S.C. Hispanic/Latino Health Coalition. It also held focus group sessions with existing bilingual staff to learn what they enjoyed about working at BlueCross BlueShield for both a marketing and recruitment perspective.

“That was our first foray into affinity groups,” Wigfall says, “and it helped us understand that there is a difference between being bilingual and bicultural.”