Making Diversity a Business Advantage ???

PRESENTED BY

GROUP 4SECTION A

What Is Diversity?Diversity refers to differences in different personal traits.Personal traits can be listed as gender, age , religion, community, culture, background, country specific, etc.

What is organizational diversity??Organizational diversity refers to employees of a specific organization and from which backgrounds they come from to work.Organizational diversity is implemented to understand employee’s background, styles and perspectives.

Implementing diversityIBM started implementing diversity in mid 1990’s.IBM launched a new unit to focus on African-Americans, women, and people with disabilities. Today, that effort yields almost $1 billion in annual sales.Entry point to new markets.Most out of the Fortune 50 organizations had Chief Diversity Officers.Change from assimilation to one that recognizes and builds on differences.

Why diversity is not priority for top executives?Executives think implementing organizational diversity will not be helpful in creating competitive strength in new emerging markets.Most of the companies though take it seriously by making a commitment, won’t implement it at the end.

DIVERSITY STRATEGYWhat are the diverse populations we aren’t currently serving? How are their needs different?How can we use our diversity to reach them? How can we better leverage diversity—for instance, do we need to recruit more aggressively from a particular identity group or should we invest in improving the performance of internal teams?

ANALYSIS OF OPPURTUNITIESDo a four-part analysis of opportunities to leverage diversity in your organization’s workforce, marketplace, supplier network, and community. In each, a simple return-on-investment calculation will help us judge the profitable option.

Diversity in practiceAnalysis of diversity initiatives of a large energy firm delivered these positive results:

Targeted marketing to Hispanic consumers would yield an additional $30 million to $36 million in net annual contribution margin (including the cost of marketing).

By reducing attrition levels among women and minorities, the company could save an estimated $5 million to $7 million a year on recruiting, training, and lost productivity.

Better understanding of supplier diversity and knowing where to focus investment, the company identified $2 million to $4 million in revenue opportunities and cost savings

Optimizing funding to community organizations resulted in an estimated $2 million to $3 million impact to contribution margin through a combination of cost savings and increased sales.

BUILD INFRASTRUCTUREActive role by CEO

Link between diversity and effective leadership

IBM created task forces representing major demographic groups helped learn from the differences

Recognizing differences and learning from them.

Listen to your peopleThis is achieved by first making people listen to you.

This can be done by understanding the group :unless they are interested in our topic they wont listen, instead we can put a question or give real time examples.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck had senior leaders for key identification groups.

It asks each team to answer questions such as:

a) How to accelerate leadership development from your groups?

b) How can we advance inclusion of your group?

Chief Diversity Officer ,Dagit says, Merck has achieved key opportunities in areas such as product development, marketing etc.

For e.g. In 2007 one of the teams got recognized for obtaining the HALAL (in Arabic means “lawful”/”permissible", type of food permissible for Muslims under Islamic law) certification from Gerdasil (Vaccine to prevent HPV ) and marketing the product to Muslim women as hygienic.

Hold everyone accountableYear end performance evaluations for senior leaders.

To ensure long term diversity programs always tie messages of business strategy and objectives.

Usually accountability is considered as punishment or negative consequence.

But if approached correctly it can produce positive and valuable results.

a) Improved performance.

b) More innovation and creativity.

c) Increased participation and involvement.

Conclusion Organizational Diversity will help in creating mutual

understanding between people who come from different backgrounds and cultures, think

innovatively, implement their innovations which result in triumph!!!