How can human resource managers capture, express, and advance the best spirit of diversity within their organizations, especially in the current context of downsizing and outsourcing? It is to this question that we now turn.
As the image of the workforce changes, so does the shape of the workplace.
Hierarchies are giving way to flattened structures; individual effort is giving way to teamwork; the once universal “he” is becoming gender-neutral; racial intol- erance is giving way to sensitivity; work habits are changing as information technology changes the way tasks are performed; and stereotypes about people with disabilities are being tested and found wanting. Team building becomes the norm rather than an innovation. The private lives of women and their pub- lic (workplace) lives are mixing as dependent care expands from being a fam- ily concern to also being the employer’s concern. Interactions between men and women at work are becoming channeled into acceptable paths now that sexual harassment is legally actionable.
Diversity contributes to increased creativity, provides a wider range of per- spectives, and guards against groupthink. It also brings new ideas and mean- ings and helps groups think “out of the box” when tackling problems. Graham Allison (1971) and Irving Janis (1972, 1982) demonstrated long ago that ho- mogeneous work teams employ problem definitions that far too frequently begin with perfect rationality yet end in perfect failure. Without the broadened
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peripheral vision that multiple viewpoints bring to a problem, homogeneous groups begin with a more limited scan of circumstances surrounding a prob- lem. This results in errors in the early stages of the decision-making process that magnify at each phase, from problem definition to arraying alternatives to de- signing solutions. Heterogeneous groups start from a more varied set of as- sumptions. From a process standpoint, diverse groups require a longer start-up time as members grow comfortable working with one another; in the end, how- ever, they produce better decisions because of the broader range of perspectives from which they start.
A diverse workforce results in an expanded appreciation for human capacity and individual differences; it also brings HR challenges. As much as employers would like the workplace to be “a peaceable kingdom” (Levine, 2003), it rarely is. Old-timers on the job have significant adjustments to make as newcomers look less and less like them. As agencies downsize and jobs become fewer, re- sentments build as employees who have been traditionally advantaged find themselves competing for jobs that in prior days would have come to them al- most as entitlements. As women are promoted over men, as African Americans are promoted over whites, as Asians are promoted over Hispanics, jealousies increase and tensions rise. As disabled workers claim the right to reasonable ac- commodations, employers find themselves spending more time focusing on human resource issues than they had anticipated. These are but a few of the workplace challenges that are accompanying increased diversity.
One way to examine the issue is to learn whether discrimination complaints have increased or decreased. Table 7.7 shows the results of a survey of federal workers. Respondents were asked whether they had been discriminated against, and their responses show that worker perceptions of discrimination have re- 156 HANDBOOK OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN GOVERNMENT
Table 7.7. Percentage of Federal Workers Who Say They Were Denied a Job, Promotion, or Other Job Benefit Because of Unlawful Discrimination.
Basis of Discrimination 1992 1996 2000
Race or national origin 12 15 12
Sex 12 13 11
Age 10 11 11
Handicap 3 2 3
Religion 2 2 2
Marital status 3 3 2
Political affiliation 2 3 1
Source:Adapted from U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, 2003, p. 28.
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mained fairly level for more than a decade. These numbers represent a glass that is either half full or half empty. On the one hand, they show that in the midst of increasing diversity in the workplace, there has not been a sharp in- crease in discrimination complaints. On the other hand, the numbers also re- veal that there are enduring tensions that have not receded, despite increasing appreciation for diversity.
The Integration of Differences
Increased diversity is not without drawbacks. Like a carefully guarded fort, the workplace opens its doors to the “other” ever so slowly. Advantage in a com- petitive environment is a zero-sum game. When there is one promotion to be had and one person lands it, the other does not. Affirmative action has come under fire in recent years as women and minorities have gained advantage, causing those whose advantage has diminished to cry foul. Accustomed to their advantaged status, traditional workers who lose to “others” attribute their loss to affirmative action and reverse discrimination, while successful “others” at- tribute their gains to hard work.
Diversity diminishes privilege that had been taken for granted by those in the traditionally advantaged group. For this reason, the entry of “others” into the workforce occurs not in a unilinear fashion but in a more halting pattern. New- comers to the organization are encouraged until the complexion of the work- force has changed just enough that the advantaged group fear that “their kind”
will soon be in the minority. Doors of opportunity swing shut while those in the majority accommodate to the changing faces. Recent resistance to affirmative action bears witness to this. Another issue is that diversity transforms the work- place through culture change. “Others” bring their own values, experiences, sto- ries, and worldview into the workplace, gradually changing the dynamics of the work group and requiring changes in organizational processes.
Fault Lines. Increasing diversity brings opportunities for creativity but also for communication difficulties, disrupted organizational norms, and increased in- terpersonal conflict. Fault lines are dividing lines that split a group into sub- groups based on one or more attributes. Demographic characteristics and differences in personal values have the potential to create fault lines that deepen when personal characteristics combine with racial, gender, or cultural differ- ences. For example, if all women in a group are over sixty years old and all men are under thirty, the sex and age fault lines form a chasm, compared to when a group is simply made up of half women and half men, all of whom are of sim- ilar ages. The more distinct the fault line, the more divided the workplace be- comes. Whereas diversity brings more perspectives and ideas to groups and is a source of innovation and creativity, fault lines exaggerate differences and in- troduce conflict. Due to diverse cultural backgrounds, managers and employees
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may have different expectations about authority, work rules, and acceptable boundaries of dress, workplace behavior, and speech. Randel and Jaussi (2003) recommend that supervisors avoid fault lines by balancing team membership in such a way that radical dissimilarities are minimized.
Training programs that emphasize interpersonal skills, socialization of new employees into the organizational culture, and improving the language skills of foreign-born employees are helpful, as are reviews of existing codes of conduct.
Over time, training, technology, and other shared experiences combine to build identification with the organization and to develop shared understandings. In the interim, organizational structures are needed that allow managers the flex- ibility to operate in the dominant culture and to manage the unique challenges that an ethnically and linguistically diverse workforce present.
Superficial Versus Deep Diversity. If demographic diversity is immediately rec- ognizable, differences in personal values and temperaments take longer to as- sess. Superficial diversity diminishes over time as workers come to know one another as individuals rather than as members of a class. Deep diversity, how- ever, develops over time as individual idiosyncrasies emerge. This explains why demographically diverse work groups typically require a longer start-up time than homogeneous groups. Once heterogeneous groups have worked together and developed a comfort level with one another, group output, in terms of cre- ative and sound decisions, meets and then exceeds the output of homogeneous groups (Watson, Kumar, and Michaelsen, 1993).
Legal Protections
Over the past forty years, a series of laws have been passed to ease the inte- gration of “others” into the workforce and to move members of all groups closer to economic parity. Each of these laws was passed after significant pressure on Congress to level the playing field of job opportunity and to prohibit unfair salary disparities; denial of promotion opportunities; penalties for pregnancy, childbearing, and child rearing; and sexual harassment. The laws progress from insistence about equal pay or an equal chance for hiring and promotion to an understanding that women’s capacity to bear children must be incorporated into workplace practices and that women have the right to be treated with the level of respect accorded to male workers. In combination with one another, these laws serve as levers to pry open the doors of economic opportunity for “others”
and to maintain reasonable working conditions once inside. Laws such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1991, Executive Order 11375, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act of 1990, and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 can be viewed as a collective 158 HANDBOOK OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN GOVERNMENT
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wind sock, indicating the necessity to open the workplace to a more heteroge- neous workforce.
Strategies for Capitalizing on Diversity
An increasingly heterogeneous workplace and an organizational culture that values diversity and tolerance combine to improve decision making, boost pro- ductivity, and enhance morale. Studies show that diversity leads to better or- ganizational decisions—the greater the diversity of employees, the greater the diversity of ideas. For example, a 1993 study conducted at the University of North Texas pitted heterogeneous teams of business students unknowingly against all-white teams. By the end of the seventeen-week experiment, the di- verse groups were viewing situations from a broader range of perspectives and offering more innovative solutions to problems (Rice, 1994).
The human resource manager can help create a work climate receptive to and respectful of diversity. Strategies that advance diversity at work include re- liance on teams rather than hierarchy, cross-functional training that capitalizes on individual differences rather than specialization, broadening position classi- fications to provide maneuvering room to accommodate cross-functional per- formance, and a concomitant move away from viewing each worker with similar training as an interchangeable part on an assembly line. Moving away from one-size-fits-all job assignments, innovative city managers are experi- menting with self-managed work teams and are reporting that such teams en- hance worker satisfaction and productivity (Yang and Guy, 2004).
Capitalizing on diversity is a two-way street. Classification systems need to be broadened to allow for greater exercise of each worker’s skills. Job redesign requires supervisors to think more globally about departmental operations. Ca- pacity building is necessary to accommodate workers who do not fit easily into the pigeonholes of narrow classification and compensation systems of the past.
As the wave of the future, broadening the scope of one’s work calls attention to the importance of teamwork, flexibility, and reframing jobs. Workers who do not fit easily into prescribed roles may fit more easily into more broadly defined jobs.
CONCLUSION
Diversity does not have to be a zero-sum game where one side wins and one side loses. Rather, it represents a gradual loosening of the old way of doing things and a move toward greater involvement of all segments of the population. To achieve diversity requires hiring and promoting the most capable candidates, being always mindful of the necessity to achieve a workforce that is representa- tive of the citizens being served. The more productive workplaces will be those that adapt to the changing workforce and do away with the tradition of “one size
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fits all” when it comes to job descriptions, traditional notions of work, and nar- row job classification schemes.
HRM is the vehicle in each organization for changing power relations among groups of workers, leveling the playing field, and providing equal opportunity for the “other,” not just at the entry gate but at checkpoints throughout the organi- zation. The pushing and shoving required to modify traditional work modes shows how entrenched the model of a homogeneous workplace is. The difference between capital resources and human resources is that capital, as an inanimate object, is far more predictable than human behavior. Whereas organizations own capital, they merely “rent” human resources to receive the benefit of workers’
labor. The impermanence of renting human assets drives the need to identify workplace variables that address worker needs and entice workers to stay rather than leave. Unlike buildings, equipment, and other capital investments, even the most productive worker may walk out the door at any time. Unlike other strate- gic assets, human assets can demand higher salaries, reject supervision, or be- come unmotivated.
Recruitment strategies need to be inclusive. Human resource managers broaden candidate pools by advertising on Web sites and in publications that target diverse applicant pools. Managers who scrutinize their selection processes, especially job requirements and testing, ensure that protected groups are not inadvertently or disproportionately screened out during the hiring process (Nobile, 1991). Once on board, workers’ skills and perspectives must be brought to bear to achieve the organization’s goal. To merely hire a “repre- sentative workforce” and then insist that all organizational processes be con- ducted in the future exactly as they were in the past is to overlook an armament of untapped resources.
As the pace of decisions speeds up, job opportunities proliferate, and high- skilled workers become scarcer, job satisfaction is an essential ingredient for re- taining workers. A number of variables are now receiving added attention because of their impact on an employee’s decision to stay or leave, including employee participation in decision making, recognition, fairness, satisfaction with coworkers, and a sense of being part of a team.
Options for flexible work schedules—once nonexistent—have become a re- ality, with benefits for workers and employers alike. Job sharing, compressed workweeks, temporary assignments, reduced hours, telecommuting, and flex- time have provided employees with the means to realize a better balance be- tween work and family and an opportunity to engage simultaneously in more than one endeavor (school and work, two careers, work and leisure). Simulta- neously, it provides a means for employers to hire employees who would not otherwise be able to meet a traditional workday.
In the long run, diversity brings cultural change. For human resource man- agers, this means that there will be tension as practices shift and workers make 160 HANDBOOK OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN GOVERNMENT
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room at the table for others who are different from themselves. Training in tol- erance and sensitivity to differences are the foundation on which any formal workshops on compliance with equal opportunity laws should be built. Formal laws, regulations, and policies to eliminate discrimination or voluntary strate- gies for encouraging diversity are necessary but not sufficient to address the problems and opportunities of a pluralistic workforce. Proactive human resource managers serve as change agents for a workplace that embraces diversity as a central value. A managerial philosophy that embraces diversity helps diminish the tension that arises naturally from change.
Promotion from within is an effective way to signal the importance of diver- sity. Promotional policies should be reviewed and promotional statistics moni- tored to ensure that all groups are advancing throughout the organization (Nobile, 1991). Performance appraisal and reward systems should reinforce the importance of effective diversity management. It is important to realize that tra- ditional assessment tools may have limited utility for evaluating people who are different from the evaluator (Galagan, 1993). Changes in human resource poli- cies and benefits plans that make it easier for employees to balance work and family role demands are essential. So is ongoing training. For example, training to confront issues concerning the employment of workers with disabilities be- gins with the preparation of detailed job descriptions for each position. Men- toring programs that target women and minorities serve to connect “outsiders”
with the informal networks of organizations, and they facilitate career ad- vancement in the process. By establishing recognized mentoring relationships, up-and-comers who in the past had been overlooked for leadership positions are groomed for promotion.
Following these collective recommendations can help create an environment that develops the full potential of all members of our diverse population and achieves strategic advantage in the process. They ensure that diversity is man- aged not at the edges but in the mainstream of an organization’s operations—that the philosophy of diversity is woven into the basic fabric of organizational life.
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