1. DIVERSITY PROJECT
Action Research Programme
Diversity Management Learning Process
DIVERSITY BENCHMARKING PROGRAM
Broad outlines of the policies, programs and
procedures that might be investigated
Javier Armaolea
VICEPRESIDENT

2. ETDF / VICEPRESIDENCY OF DIVERSITY
• Achieving Diversity
• Business Activities
 Market Focus
 Supplier Relationships
 Setting Objectives, Evaluating Progress and Rewarding Success
 SELECTION- ATTRACTION – PROMOTION and RETENTION
 Human Resources Management
 Training and Education

3. Achieving Diversity
Diversity is driven by the imperatives of competitiveness, demography,
immigration, and globalization and these will supercede the social activism and
legislative interventions of the past.
There are two aspects to achieving
diversity
The first is getting The second is managing
there: moving from a non- diversity, ensuring that the
diverse to a diverse benefits are realized while
workforce. the costs are minimized
Spanish Businesses in the 21st century face unparalleled demands for
constant and rapid change, as they compete in a diverse global
marketplace.

4. Achieving Diversity
Recent research and consultation has shown that companies seek to use productive
diversity to achieve results in relation to:
 being an employer of choice that attracts and retains the best
employees
 improved productivity from an increasingly diverse workforce
 enhancing business success through encouraging innovation and
learning.
 understanding and managing customer and stakeholder expectations.
 developing stronger affinities and understanding of the needs of its
diverse marketplaces and the communities where its customers and
employees live and work
 enhancing the company’s image and reputation in these communities
and marketplaces
 decreasing the business’s vulnerability to legal challenges.

5. Achieving Diversity
Maximising job performance is a constant
challenge for managers and the key to a company’s
competitiveness. Diversity management is an
important tool in meeting, specifically, the following
challenge:
the core business competencies of many management
and professional roles and indeed whole workforces
- now include dealing with the related skills of diversity:
flexibility, adaptability, responsiveness, and
an ability to negotiate differences – to learn and to change.
change

6. BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
1. Market Focus - Changing Customer Base, Awareness Of Customer
Needs. Anticipating and Responding to customer needs.
Spanish Companies see flexibility Spanish Companies are serving or selling
and responsiveness to the market as into diverse markets with different needs,
dimensions of diversity. The ability to preferences and sensibilities. Some business
understand the needs and desires of leaders have adopted strategies to ensure
changing markets helps to ensure that the diversity of their workforces reflect
that there are products and services in the diversity of their customers, seeing it as a
tune with potential markets. source of competitive advantage.
This “responsiveness to
customer needs”
occurs at three levels:
The The
where fundamental
service The decisions about
design strategic markets and entry
level level strategies are made
level
the point-of-contact
where product or
between organization and
service design
customer or client
decisions are made

7. BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
1. Market Focus - Changing Customer Base, Awareness Of Customer
Needs. Anticipating and Responding to customer needs.
The service The design The strategic
level level level
Organizations have Organizations which have Organizations that are so
concluded that they diverse workforces that extend attuned to their marketplaces
need employees drawn into management positions, that they make fundamental
from different engineering groups, marketing strategic decisions based on an
backgrounds and departments and other in-depth understanding of how
groups within their operational groups - have different groups of customers
customer base in order discovered that gender, perceive the world, perceive
to better understand ethnocultural or other diversity their organizations, and how
and serve their can help them design and they feel about doing business
customer needs. deliver products in ways which with those who may not
appeal to diverse customer understand or empathize with
segments. their needs.

8. BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
2. Supplier Relationships
Effective working relationships with suppliers are increasingly being identified as critical
success factors for businesses as they seek to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of
all links in the value-chain.
Supply-chain management is emerging as one of the key
areas in which companies can gain competitive advantage.
In many cases this involves actively seeking alliances, partnerships and supply
arrangements with "minority suppliers" who can give non-diverse companies a
starting base for diversifying their operations.
What many Spanish companies have found, is that to reach these markets companies
need input from members of those groups, whether in the design, production or marketing
phases, or whether it is achieved internally, through diversifying their workforce.

9. BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
3. Setting Objectives, Evaluating Progress and Rewarding Success
Developing realistic diversity objectives to meet the organization's particular priorities,
evaluating progress of diversity efforts over time and rewarding those who successfully
achieve diversity objetives.
No single area in the field of diversity management is more sensitive than the topic of
establishing quantitative goals. It is a cardinal principle of management that people do what
is objectified, measured and rewarded and the more diversity management is seen to be a
mainline business practice, as opposed to an externally imposed requirement, the greater the
chance of success will be.
London Life's Women in Management Program Corporation quantified diversity as a business
required each divisional executive to establish initiative because they felt "what gets
reasonable goals for improving gender measured, gets done". Reporting annually to
diversity within the division and to establish their board of directors on their progress keeps
strategies for achieving those goals. Success managers motivated and allows employees to
was to be reported back to top management include their opinions on how diversity is
alongside other business goals affecting them.

10. BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
4. SELECTION- ATTRACTION – PROMOTION and RETENTION
There are many Spanish companies that are implementing action plans through STRATEGIES-
ACTIONS and MEASURES
SELECTION- ATTRACTION – PROMOTION and RETENTION
ATTTRACTION
Strategy
Example
Strategy Goal/Measures
Actions
ATTRACTION – Attracta b l i s h e f f e c t i v e d i v e r s i t y m e a s u r e m e n t o f G e n d e r – m a i n t a i n n e w
1. E s t 1.
a representativep p l i c a t i o n s a n d n e w h i r e s .
a h i r e s a s 5 0 /5 0 s p l i t
percentage of the Spanish w c u r r e n t u n i v e r s i t i e s a n d c o l l e g e s t a 2 g e tte d i c i t y – 12 % o f
2 . R e v ie r . E hn
talent pool focussing oni e w d i v e r s i t y o f c a m p u s r e c r u i t m e n t t e a a p p l i c a t i o n s f r o m e t h n i c
3. Rev ms
Gender, Ethnicity and v e l o p s t r a t e g i c a l l i a n c e s w i t h k e y o r g a n i s ai nio r i s i e s
4. De m t ont
Disability t o t a r g e t s p e c if ic m in o r it y g r o u p s 3 . D is a b ilit y – 5 % o f
5 . R e v ie w in t e r v ie w t r a in in g & p r o c e s s a p p lic a t io n s f r o m d is a b le d
c a n d id a t e s )

11. BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
4. SELECTION- ATTRACTION – PROMOTION and RETENTION
RETENTION
Accommodating employees with families
through job sharing or flexible work hours
In recent years there
has been increasing
attention paid to the In some Providing for extended leave for people who
issue of RETAINING cases this require extensive trips back to their countries
of origin for family or religious reasons
employees who were has meant
aggressively recruited
to increase diversity
in the organizations Offering the right to return to employees who
feel that they need to sever the employment
relationship because of personal or
family obligations.
If achieving
diversity through costly
recruitment programs
is necessary, having
good retention programs
only makes sense

12. BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
1. Develop a common protocol toManagement
5. Human Resources conduct Focus Group
Responding to the needs of a diverse workforce and providing opportunities for maximizing
employees' potential and productivity through the provision of workplace accommodations
compelled to look at many other aspects of the
then it is way in which it manages people through human
When a
company resource policies, practices and processes.
does pursue
DIVERSITY
Different Flexible Language
religions hours issues

13. BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
1. Develop a common protocol toManagement
5. Human Resources conduct Focus Group
workplace accommodations.
for the NEEDS, VALUES, BELIEFS and LIFESTYLES
Valuing which will characterize a more diverse workforce.
DIVERSITY
requires Key areas of accommodation which are currently being
making made by SPANISH companies include:
accommodations • Flexible scheduling to accommodate religious
practices, child-and elder-care, or health issues
• Telecommuting to accommodate family
responsibilities
Accommodating DISABILITIES • Child-care facilities on-premises or subsidization of
childcare in nearby facilities
One of the most pressing social issues has
been to find meaningful work for people with
• Job-sharing to adjust to the dual challenges of
disabilities, especially when those parenting and career building
disabilities affect intellectual functioning
IBM Example

14. BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
6. Training and Education
Training, which communicates the organization's commitment to achieving diversity and
which enables to effectively understand, support and achieve diversity initiatives, provides
employees with the skills to work in or manage diverse work teams.
Almost every account of organizations which have been successful in developing effective diverse
workforces emphasizes the amount of training, both initial and ongoing, that goes into the effort.
training
It is the clearest, most visible manifestation of what management is serious about
TRAINING -- because it takes time, money and the involvement of senior
organizational management -- is the evidence that management wants something to
happen....really!.
Training serves
TRAINING develops the appreciation of the need for diversity and the skills to cope
multiple purposes:
with diversity, maximizing the benefits while minimizing the potential costs
TRAINING makes people from non-traditional employee backgrounds feel that the
organization is serious about developing them to their maximum potential because
they are prepared to invest in them and in developing the people with whom they
will work.

15. BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
6. Training and Education
is a fundamental REPRESENTS the opportunity for the organization to inform and educate senior
component of a management and staff about diversity. The purpose of training is not only to
diversity increase awareness and understanding of workplace diversity, but also to DEVELOP
DIVERSITY INITIATIVE concrete SKILLS among the staff that will facilitate enhanced productivity and
TRAINING communications.
Sensitization to In many cases this involves:
diversity is a key  Learning what others cultures are about,
theme of training  The norms of behavior that exist within a culture,
It takes many programs  The nuances of language and mannerisms and their meaning in
different various settings.
forms