WORKPLACE DIVERSITY : Short Takes
Can You Talk the Talk?
Companies for years have used foreign-language instruction to help employees prepare for overseas assignments. But increasingly, businesses want managers to learn a second language in order to communicate with workers at home.
Fruit drink maker Sundor Brands, a Procter & Gamble unit, recently sent 10 managers at its Anaheim facility for Spanish lessons. Meanwhile, 30 Sundor line workers were taking English classes at the same Berlitz International school.
“We are seeing more of this kind of thing than five or 10 years ago,” Berlitz spokeswoman Patricia Zee says. In Berlitz surveys, 20% of respondents say that a new language will help them at work.
On the other side of the coin are people who believe that their careers are stalled because of a foreign accent or even a strong regional accent.
Shellie Bader, a speech pathologist who founded Clear Speech, an “accent reduction” service in Century City, recalls a German-born executive whose English was superb and whose vaguely European intonations were nearly imperceptible.
“But it bothered him when people said, ‘Where are you from?’ ” Bader says. To blend in, he learned to speak “American.”
Good Guys Finish First
Being an equal-opportunity employer isn’t just proper, it’s profitable, one study has found.
Chicago-based Covenant Investment Management found strong ties between firms’ stock performance and their employment records--specifically, hiring and promotion of women and minorities, compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines and employee-versus-employer lawsuits.
Covenant, which advises on socially responsible investing, divided the Standard & Poor’s 500 into five groups, ranked according to hiring performance. The Top 100 companies showed a five-year annualized return on investment of 18.3%--better than any other group and 2.4 percentage points higher than the overall S&P; 500. The bottom 100, on the other hand, had an average yearly return of only 7.9%.
Although, statistically speaking, the linkage doesn’t prove that progressive hiring practices actually cause higher returns, Covenant President Anthony Carfang says: “My own intuition is that there is a causal link, that equal opportunity contributes to the bottom line in terms of increased employee production, increased employee loyalty and lower litigation and training costs.”
The 3 C’s: Computers, Calculus and Culture
At Gardena High School, students engage in role-playing exercises meant to illustrate racial or ethnic stereotypes.
Taggers--youths who use spray-painted graffiti to identify themselves or mark their turf--were invited to create a mural on campus celebrating the school’s ethnic groups. Teachers work to integrate cultural history into the curriculum, even in such subjects as geometry and industrial arts.
Gardena High is one of numerous Los Angeles-area schools where multicultural instruction goes beyond the occasional international food festival or performance by an ethnic folk dance troupe.
It’s all part of a concerted, 2-year-old effort by the Los Angeles Unified School District to prepare students to deal with diversity in the workplace and the rest of the world outside school.
“Just as you have to have computer training today, you’ve got to have these life skills,” says Patricia Ashby, assistant principal at Gardena High.
Today’s Special: Thai Toast
Meat and potatoes is no longer the order of the day.
Thai toast, taquitos, curried chicken, stir-fry vegetables--all are on the tables of company cafeterias in ethnically diverse Southern California.
“We try to make the recipe authentic and the presentation correct,” says Grant Colby of Marriott Management Services, which operates company cafeterias. “If we don’t, the consumer can go to a restaurant outside and find the product they like.”
Mexican food has long been popular in Southland cafeterias, Colby says, but Chinese, Indian and Thai dishes are starting to win acceptance, too.
As much as ethnic diversity has influenced the company lunch, gender diversity may be an even greater factor.
Michael Ross of Service America Corp., another company cafeteria operator, says it is women who have pushed the change from deep fat fried to fresh baked fish, for example, and led the way toward Caesar salads and lighter entrees.
Hey, What’s That Guy Doing in Here?
To help supervisors understand how diversity can work for them, an Atlanta nonprofit research organization developed a game that simulates a production line.
During two-day seminars organized by the American Institute for Managing Diversity, participants split into teams and compete to manufacture a product. The product is a signal box with a corrugated cardboard frame and flashing lights regulated by electric wires and switches. The boxes are simple enough that they don’t require special skills to make, but complicated enough that team members must follow directions precisely and organize the work efficiently. Teams are rated on how many boxes they produce while meeting quality standards.
In order to reach peak production, the game requires teams to draw from a pool of “unemployed” people of diverse ethnic and educational backgrounds--portrayed by institute employees. The idea is that the team that can best integrate the new hires into a cohesive unit will produce the most boxes.
Some players try to circumvent the diversity constraints. Terry Kruzan, executive director of the institute, recalls one team made up entirely of white women--except for one man. The women ignored the man, eventually forcing him off the team, and they resisted hiring the “unemployed.”
“They got off to a fast start,” Kruzan said, but soon arguments began erupting over who was doing the most work and who was slacking off. The bickering caused production to stall and the team to fall behind.
