WORKPLACE DIVERSITY : Hewlett-Packard Co. Discovers Diversity Is Good for Business : Their program was developed after an in-house survey found minority employees were less satisfied about pay, benefits and promotional opportunities.

Betty A. Sproule’s employees at Hewlett-Packard Co. have noticed improvements in her style lately.

“I’m making decisions faster,” said Sproule, a marketing research manager. “I’ve been more efficient managing my time.”

Sproule, 44, credits a new Hewlett-Packard mentoring program, part of an accelerated development effort designed to ensure that women and minorities get the preparation needed to move smoothly into senior-level positions. It also trains supervisors to manage their culturally diverse work groups.

Since January, she has spent several hours a week talking over career goals with James D. Olson, general manager of the fast-growing video communications division in Palo Alto and watching how he does his job. In July, she will attend a three-week, company-paid crash course in management at Northwestern University.

Such programs aimed at promoting diversity in the workplace are becoming more commonplace as corporate America comes to grips with the nation’s rapidly changing makeup. Companies are belatedly realizing that, to remain competitive, their work forces--in management and on the front lines--must mirror their customer bases.

White males still dominate the corner offices, but the days when they made up the bulk of the work force, especially in culturally diverse areas such as California, are quickly drawing to a close.

A U.S. Department of Labor study prepared by the Hudson Institute, an Indianapolis-based think tank, found that, by the year 2000, only 15% of new entrants into the work force will be white males; the vast majority will be women and minorities, many of them immigrants.

“This is a business imperative,” said Kay Iwata, president of Pacific Resources Education Programs, a diversity consulting group in San Francisco. “If you don’t do it, you’re going to suffer.”

At Hewlett-Packard, the managing-diversity training program is multifaceted. Introduced in 1988, it replaced an affirmative action workshop that focused strictly on compliance with U.S. laws governing equal opportunity.

The new program was developed after an in-house survey showed that minority employees were less satisfied about pay, benefits and promotional opportunities than their non-minority counterparts. Chief Executive John Young, now retired, wanted the new training to stress diversity as a competitive advantage. His successor, Lewis E. Platt, has reinvigorated the effort.

All managers go through nine segments covering such subjects as awareness of attitudes and prejudices, legal issues, corporate objectives and management responsibility. Participants in the three-day program see videos and perform role-playing exercises. Segments on sexual harassment and workers with disabilities are also being developed.

In addition, 24 managers were chosen to participate in an accelerated development program, now in its second year. The ultimate aim is to have 75% of the proteges be women and minorities, with 25% white males. Each is paired with a mentor, who in many cases is unacquainted with the “mentee,” as the participants have taken to calling themselves.

Before hooking up with the mentor, each protege goes through an evaluation process that determines strengths and weaknesses as a manager.

Taia V. Ergueta, a native of Bolivia who is quality and business planning manager for the system support division in nearby Mountain View, learned valuable lessons from the feedback of employees who were questioned about her skills. She found, among other things, that they believed that she did not express confidence in them to do their jobs. She has been working on that since.

By way of demonstrating diversity in her division, Ergueta pointed to a global map studded with colored pins marking the staff’s birthplaces in 44 countries. Worldwide, the company has 93,000 employees, of which 39% are women and 20% are minorities. In senior managment, 13% are women and 8% are minorities.

Separately, Hewlett-Packard also supports networking groups--such as the Technical Women’s Group and the Black Managers’ Group--that address the needs of specific segments.

The women’s group has “become a rallying point for women,” Ergueta said. Does she see a “glass ceiling” at HP for women and people of color who aspire to senior positions? “I think there are subtle impediments,” she said. “(But) I’ve never experienced the overt ones.”

Despite the efforts of such major companies as Bank of America, Hewlett-Packard, Levi Strauss & Co., Pacific Gas & Electric and Wells Fargo & Co., the process of promoting women and minority employees into senior managment is painstakingly slow.

“There just aren’t many companies making any real, significant progress,” said Iwata, the diversity consultant.

At Hewlett-Packard, though, turnover has slowed, and more women and minorities are creeping into the higher echelons.

Olson, Sproule’s mentor, sees such a varied work force as a good thing.

“It gives you a flood of different ideas,” he said. “I have had staffs of all males. They are not as effective as a team as is a mixture” of employees with diverse backgrounds.

For Emily Duncan, Hewlett-Packard’s operations manager for corporate work force diversity, the key is realizing that learning to value and benefit from diversity is “a long, educational process. For H-P to compete, every manager has to be good at this.”