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Essay about Managing Diversity Programs Through Communications

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Managing Diversity Programs Through Communications Abstract "Organizations must look at diversity now as a critical factor in their future success, not just a social imperative… A diverse workforce is now an important competitive advantage." (Jose De Anda, assistant human resources director for the Southern California Region of Kaiser Permanente) Every ten years this great country of ours conducts the collecting of the U.S. Census. While still in progress at the beginning of this decade, we need only to look at the results of the 1990 census to begin to understand why diversity programs became so important in the nineties. This last census yielded important data, "Almost one in every four Americans in 1990 was of Asian, …show more content…

This paper will discuss the methods used by managers and groups in the work environment to ensure effective communication with a diverse labor force. We will discuss the barriers they are faced with and compare methods used by companies who have successfully and unsuccessfully implemented diversity programs. Communications With Managers When introducing a new concept, such as Diversity in the organization, there is always resistance, inertia, and limited focus of change among the different groups and functions. These are normal and can only be addressed through communication in various forms. A few of these forms are education, meetings, and one-on-one coaching sessions. What psychologists have found is that employees go through similar emotional phases as those who are grieving whenever there is an organizational change. These phases are denial, bargaining, anger, and acceptance. Effective communication makes the first three phases shorter. A good communications model is the Johari Window (Joe Ludz , Harry ). When first introducing Diversity Programs, executives had to look at what they knew about their organizations and managers, they had to look at what they might not be admitting to themselves but might be relaying unconsciously by tone or gesture to the managers, what their outward appearance was and has been in the past, and most importantly they needed to look at the unknown area where they knew that there

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