Accountability.

Allen, Dawson, Wheatley and White (13) argues that diversity management programs cannot be successful without holding the managers accountable for implementing its goals through performance management and rewards system. In order to enhance accountability an organization could consider making managers’ performance ratings and compensation dependent on their success in achieving diversity-related goals. Such a move motivates the employees to become personally involved in achieving the diversity goals of the organization. This strategy has become used by the federal government whereby the appraisal criteria of the senior executives depends on how they contribute to the agency’s EEO program. This strategy has motivated the senior executives in the federal government to undertake initiatives such as implementing EEO requirements, and developing zero tolerance for discrimination.

In order to encourage accountability the organization could take some deliberate measures. The first measure is to establish executive-level diversity councils chaired and composed of senior line managers. Each manager should be responsible of ensuring diversity initiatives are fulfilled in his or her line of authority. In addition, managers should be held accountable for developing a work force that mirrors the demographic make-up of the available internal and external labor market.

Participation of the minority-owned based suppliers

Although diversity programs mainly target the minority employees, minority-owned businesses should also be brought on board. Supplier-diversity programs communicate to the community that the organization is committed to pursuing diversity. This initiative is more likely to become successful if the organization establishes a policy aimed at encouraging the participation of minority suppliers.

Evaluation

Although in the last decades organization have embraced diversity management through initiatives such as education, training, communication training, career planning, performance and accountability, cultural-change, employee involvement, they still lag behind when it comes to evaluation programs. Evaluation of the diversity programs is imperative in order to ascertain whether the program has been successful or not. In addition, the evaluation helps to measure the nature of return on investment compared to the costs involved in diversity activities.

Quantitative and qualitative tools are used to evaluate the effectiveness of diversity initiatives. A simple way would be to use employee surveys in order to determine their perceptions. The data collected can then be used to gauge the progress made from the point when the organization began the diversity initiative. Surveys could be used to measure outcomes such as turnover rates, and retention.

Another tool that could be utilized is the 360-degree feedback process. This tool allows management to obtain information related to diversity issues, from the employees. The information collected is then utilized by the top management to improve the diversity program. Another prominent method is the focus group. Just like the 360-degree process, focus groups are used to gather information from the employees about the progress of the diversity program. Other popular tools include benchmarking, employee feedback, informal group feedback, employee attitude surveys, peer reviews, diversity-specific surveys and customer feedback. Unlike the other tools, customer feedback aims to determine whether the needs of the customers are being met by the company’s products and services.

Although evaluation is an important activity, it is important to note that some components of diversity initiatives are hard to assess. The first component is the impact of the program on the profitability of the organization. It is hard to assess this component because the bottom line performance of an organization is influenced by many factors which makes it is hard to isolate specific diversity initiatives that caused an increase in profitability. Secondly, it is difficult to assess the return-on-investments of diversity initiatives. Finally, it is also hard to hard to evaluate behavior changes, employee attitudes and internal readiness.

Although evaluation is an important part of the implementation of diversity in an organization it is disheartening to note that companies have not appreciated the use of metrics to measure the effectiveness of diversity initiatives. Several reasons have been advanced to explain why companies have not established evaluation mechanisms. Firstly, organizations prefer not to spend money on the evaluation exercise. Secondly, organizations fear that the data collection may reveal systematic data, hence exposing the organization to legal challenge. Finally, there is a strong feeling that diversity management is associated with positive outcomes and so organizations that have well-defined diversity initiatives find it unnecessary to carry out an evaluation.

Although organizations may not be willing to commit more resources on evaluating the success of the diversity program, such an attitude may actually lead to wastage of resources. There are several steps that an organization should observe while conducting the evaluation exercise. The first step is to form an evaluation team. The team should be composed of members with measurement expertise and a member of internal legal counsel. The team should operate under the leadership of a senior manager. The senior manager should help the team to identify meaningful metrics. After forming the team, the next step is to identify metrics. Some of the metrics that could prove helpful are: measuring the current demographic profile of the organization, workflow statistics, and employee opinion data. To measure the changes in the organization culture, Arthur (497) suggests that organization should use innovate data collection methods. The final step is to carry out the evaluation. During the evaluation process, an analysis of the issues that are unique to the majority group members should be noted. These issues should then be addressed in order to gain support from majority group members.

References

Arthur, M. (2003). Share price reactions to work-family initiatives: an institutional

perspective. Academy of Management Journal, 46, 497–505.

Barker, S., and Hartel, H. Intercultural service encounter: An exploratory study of customer experiences, Cross-cultural Management: An Int. J. 11 .1(2004): 3-14.

Bassett-Jones, N. The paradox of diversity management, creativity and

innovation. Creativity and Innovation Management, 14(2005): 169-175.

Benschop, Y. . Pride, prejudice, and performance: Relations between HRM, diversity

and performance. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 12(2011): 1166–81

Campbell, J.D. Changing a cultural icon: The academic library as a virtual

destination. Educause Review, 41(2006): 16-30.

Chang, S., and Tharenou, P. Competencies needed for managing a multicultural

workgroup. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 42 (2004): 57-74.

Chow, I.H.S., and Crawford, R.B. Gender, ethnic diversity, and career

advancement in the workplace: The social identity perspective. SAM Advanced

Management Journal, 69(2004): 22-32.

Greenholtz, J. Assessing cross-cultural competence in transnational education:

The Intercultural Development Inventory. Higher Education in Europe, 25(2000): 411-416.