Kaiser Permanente Corporate Diversity

Diversity is a wonderful asset to an organization and brings with it many benefits. Employees bring in their own personal experiences and knowledge to the team (Burns & Kerby, 2012). Having diverse teams allows for the possibility to fix a problem or perfect a process by using different employee’s experiences and past knowledge to find solutions. A diverse workforce can drive economic growth and capture a greater share of the consumer market (Burns & Kerby, 2012). With diversity as a core value, the recruitment pool is widened to find the most qualified candidate and reduces employee turnover as a result. An organization can be highly competitive with a diversity initiative by adapting to a changing environment (Burns & Kerby, 2012).

The way in which an organization tackles diversity determines its negative or positive outcome. All the 5 companies agreed that diversity has contributed to their success. Some barriers were identified in managing diversity like the difficulties faced by women in managing the work and family, fear of discrimination, resistance to change, diversity is not seen as an organizational priority, resistance to change and unsupportive working environment for diverse employees. Diversity contributes to more productivity but if not properly managed could hinder success.

For the last five weeks research has been done on Kaiser Permanente, an organization that contains Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Permanente Medical Groups in eight regions. Since its inception in 1945, Kaiser Permanente has become the largest not-for-profit, integrated health care delivery system in the United States, serving 8.6 million members in eight regions: Northern and Southern California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, the Mid-Atlantic States, Ohio, and the Northwest. About three quarters of the members are in California, the organization’s birthplace. It is the largest nonprofit integrated health care delivery system in the United States. Its mission is to provide affordable, high-quality health care services to improve the health of their members and the communities they serve. For the purpose of this research, focus will be on Northern California in a randomly selected hospital.

Diversity is becoming a more increasing and ever changing dynamic to the business environment. Organizations can either embrace and grow with diversity or be left behind and die out. One of the organizations that is growing with diversity is Target. This paper will look at Target in depth on what they are doing right and wrong, what makes them a leader in diversity, and what leadership is doing to encourage diversity.

Three ways of gaining executive commitment to diversity are to gather data and to assess the organizations current commitment to diversity to show where and why there is a need for change. The development of diversity council can also garner executive support because it offers a way for executive members of an organization to have a dialog with other members of an organization about diversity. Systematic changes are also necessary such as hiring from a diverse roster of candidates when filling a position. (Moodian, 2009,

Recruiting and retaining a culturally diverse workforce are crucial components for an organization that wants to build and sustain a successful operation. Organization must identify and take necessary action to resolve issues involved in the recruiting and

Diversity has become a major part of society in the past decade and organizations have continued to adapt to our changing world. One way that organizations provide support for human and world differences is by creating a diversity mission statements that support the company’s actions. Diversity mission statements for corporations compared to non-profit organizations are more similar than I expected since. Verizon Wireless is the corporation I chose to research due to their current market share and success of the company. Verizon (2017) stated in their diversity statement how important and vital their employee differences have contributed to their success. According to Verizon (2017), 59% is their current workforce diversity and over half of

Diversity has been a hot-button topic for many of today’s companies. Diversity programming and initiatives are regularly implemented by organizations of all types and sizes. As it relates to an organization’s human resources operation, diversity will continue to be an ever-changing term as the work towards equitable treatment for all continues.

Diversity at Target, like everywhere, is a work in progress. Target is ahead of the national average in terms of minority hiring. Additionally, the company has a higher percentage of minorities in management positions than the industry average. “The Strength of Many. The Power of One,” is Target’s tagline for diversity. It is realized that we need many points of view all working towards the common goal in order to be successful. The goals set forward in this plan are: to increase diverse hire mix by 30% over last year; improve retention rate by 30% over last year; and to develop high potential diverse talent in the ST. Louis market. This can be done

Success Of Kaiser Permanente Health Care Model And The Group Health Cooperative Model Of Health Care Compared To Other Initiatives In Health Care “Kaiser Permanente is America's leading integrated health care organization. Founded in 1945, it is a nonprofit, group-practice health maintenance organization (HMO) with headquarters in Oakland, California. Kaiser Permanente serves the health care needs of members in 9 states and the District of Columbia.” Today, it encompasses Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, and the Permanente Medical Groups, as well as affiliation with Group Health Cooperative based in Seattle, Washington. Kaiser Permanente aspires to be the world leader in improving health through high-quality, affordable, integrated health care. We will be distinguished by our strong social purpose, physician responsibility for clinical care, and an enduring partnership between our Health Plan and our medical groups. Kaiser Permanente provides coverage programs for thousands of uninsured children and adults who are ineligible for existing state or private programs due to family income or immigration status. The organization also partners with community-based clinics to provide expertise, clinical guidelines, and other support for these safety-net providers. Through its research centers across the country, “Kaiser Permanente conducts more research, over 1,000 studies annually, than any other non-academic institution in the U.S.” The

I immersed myself into Northwestern’s current state of diversity. I interviewed various employees and received valuable feedback regarding diversity in the organization’s culture. Additionally, I gained greater insight from a human resource representative. This person has acknowledged the organization has failed to implement a successful plan in the past. During my experience, I gathered three (3) key influencers that make diversity work: 1. train and hold managers accountable with the expectation that prevention and adherence to the policy is their responsibility. 2. implement and integrate a zero tolerance policy. 3. Requiring mandatory diversity training for all employees. The bottom line, be proactive in creating and implementing diversity initiatives and policies. It will have a great return on Northwestern’s investment. With this being said, the immersion experience changed my perspectives for the better. Initially, my personal views of the organization were multifaceted. I fought hard to instill a more diverse workplace within the organizational culture. Northwestern Medicine is the second largest healthcare corporation in the Chicagoland area with no minorities in executive leadership; I find this disturbing. In the final analysis, my thoughts regarding this organization has changed some but not significantly. However, after much scrutiny and employee persistence, CultureVision diversity initiatives will be reestablished. I learned how to incorporate my objectives for affective and personal development. In essence, diversity surrounds us every day. We as individuals, can make small changes in our behaviors to fully realize the advantages of diversity, so whether at work or in the community we can better learn from and innovate to make the world a better

Many organizations are beginning to view diversity as an organizational change. This could possibly mean changes in the power dynamics and organizational structure, the way decisions are made, and the way an

The general line of reasoning is that if we learn to incorporate each other’s diverse traits and characteristics in the workplace, we can then use these differences to foster an innovative environment, which will give the company a competitive advantage over the competitors that do not accept workforce diversity. According to the Allied Academies International Conference, “Diversity is rapidly becoming a common practice among companies due to the increasing number of minorities entering the job market today. As these groups become more prevalent throughout companies, upper-level employees are facing numerous challenges when determining what changes must take place to create a positive working environment for everyone. Management is responsible for the development and implementation of effective policies directly relating to diversity to ensure the acceptance of minorities into the workplace and to aid in minorities’ success through equal opportunities and treatment.” (Marcia L. James, 2001, Academy for Studies in International Business Proceedings)

With the changing demographics of the U.S. workforce (Ng & Burke, 2005) and the need for organizations to continually innovate their products and services to remain competitive, embracing diversity and the benefits its brings is going to be key to driving a successful organization

The discrimination-and-fairness paradigm is considered the “dominant way” of understanding diversity by most organizations. It attempts to remove discrimination and create employment equality by seeking to increase diversity among employees. Progress is measured by how well the company is able to meet its diversity number goals but avoids looking deeper at the reality behind the numbers. (Thomas & Ely p. 81)