WORKPLACE DIVERSITY : Beyond the Mirror’s Image
Employers from Xerox Corp. to Atlantic Richfield Co. to Procter & Gamble are embracing the ideal of workplace diversity, the hot human resources topic of the 1990s.
Going beyond the civil rights agendas of earlier decades, which stressed affirmative action to redress past discrimination, the new diversity movement seeks not only to bring in the disenfranchised--variously encompassing women, minorities, the aged, the disabled, gays and lesbians--but also to integrate them into the day-to-day workings of an institution.
But how does that work out practically? Interviews with executives from across the country and with diversity consultants suggest that it remains a problem.
The most common complaint is that companies, most of which were either founded by or are managed by straight white males, may be eager to bring minorities into the fold, but are insufficiently prepared for the resulting culture clashes.
The ironic result is that some minorities, who were ostensibly brought on to provide a fresh perspective, end up struggling to conform to the old ways of doing things in order to succeed. Or they eventually grow so frustrated that they leave the firm.
“Our sense is that almost all employers are aware this is an issue, but only half have taken substantial action to modify their procedures,” said Thomas Rollins, director of research at the Hay Group, a Philadelphia management consultant. “That’s not to say it’s simply lip service, but that the programs have not kicked in to full force yet. It will still take some time.”
In some cases, companies go so far as to hire “clones” of their current workers: minorities with the same schooling, economic backgrounds and regional roots as their non-minority workers.
“They tend in the interview process or the hiring process, however complicated it is, to weed out people who are too different . . . from themselves,” says Jacqueline Dickens, vice president of 21st Century Management Services Inc., a diversity management company in West Chester, Ohio.
In general, companies place a low priority on adapting to a diverse work force, according to a Hay Group survey of 1,405 companies last year.
Only 12% of the companies responding to the survey said diversity was among their top three or four priorities. A full 20% said it was not very important.
Without a major change in attitudes from the top down, however, there is little likelihood that a firm can hope to diversify its management methods as it diversifies its work force.
Nancy Pappas, a Xerox marketing executive., says that certain behaviors she characterizes as typically Asian can put an Asian-American at a disadvantage if a firm is not prepared to accommodate them.
“I’m a first generation Asian-Pacific. Because I grew up in a family that is Chinese speaking, I don’t have the same ability . . . to answer in a manner that’s as articulate” as a native English speaker.
Moreover, the “typical Asian stereotype is to work hard, even if you’re given a marginal assignment, and do a good job . . . (with) the expectation that you would be rewarded automatically. . . . But the other component of success . . . is building the relationships and making that work known, publicizing your own attributes and contributions”--behavior that some Asian cultures regard as boastful or immodest.
If such differences are not taken into account, a subtle kind of discrimination takes place that either forces minority workers to change their ways or effectively limits their ability to win promotions into top management--the so-called glass ceiling effect. An African-American woman, who declined to be named, recently left her job as an international finance executive for a national consumer products company in New York City to start her own consulting firm.
“I felt enormous pressure to conform to a culture I didn’t feel was valuable,” she said. “There were too many roadblocks for me to succeed, even though I was doing very well. . . . There were attempts to either cut me off from the information flow, or to do something to keep me two steps behind, and I didn’t see my white counterparts going through that.”
But having the right credentials doesn’t always guarantee success. Another woman, who also asked not to be named, was a natural for her job as a senior financial analyst at a New York television network: She had the right combination of an urban, East Coast background, an Ivy League education and previous experience with a major corporation.
Yet she is preparing to leave after five years because she believes that her status as an African-American woman has impeded her progress. “There have been real difficulties as a black woman in this environment, in terms of it being in a technical area, like finance, and because I’m a non-MBA,” she said.
She finds herself excluded from meetings, not invited to the guys’ softball games, dropped from the invitation list to social functions, cut off from access to top management. She has searched in vain for a mentor to help her negotiate the corporate maze.
“It’s not that (the network) is a bad company or an experience where I haven’t grown professionally,” she adds. “But . . . I don’t fit their conception of someone who’s going to play the politics. . . . There is a cultural barrier for people, and I don’t believe that’s something you can change” easily.
Losing such a manager can be a big step backward for a company. Maria Contreras-Sweet, vice president of public affairs for Seven-Up/RC Bottling Co. of Southern California, is often asked by company marketers for insights into Latino consumer habits.
But Contreras-Sweet, who is also a member of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Glass Ceiling Commission, says she knows of other minorities whose cultural perspectives may not be valued as highly. They leave jobs with U.S.-based companies, only to be snapped up by the U.S. units of Asian or Latin American firms eager to capitalize on the managers’ bicultural knowledge.
Of course, not all minority executives feel pressured.
An African-American market unit manager for a major beverage company in the Midwest said things at his firm are very simple: “In this company, people are concerned about the bottom line. All the concern and language is about the bottom line. . . . Diversity as a primary topic doesn’t come up that much. It’s only your skills, what are your capabilities.”
Virginia Oaxaca, a human resources consultant with Arco, has been directly involved in training the oil company’s managers to be more sensitive to cultural differences.
“Part of our training is to tell these people that they cannot hire in their own image,” Oaxaca says.
Ultimately, accommodating differences can pay off, consultants say. “The goal of diversity programs is to provide employers with a better sense of how these differences are actualized in the workplace, to be more sensitive to the fact that there are many roads up the mountain,” said Neil Pickett, director of program management at the Hudson Institute, a think tank based in Indianapolis.
“People who conform to the very traditional, old-fashioned, bureaucratic mind-set of a large company are not good for a company no matter what color they are,” he added. “More companies are depending on the creativity . . . of their employees, and they want people who can think outside the box.”
