Strategic Use

• It is fairly narrow view of diversity to think of it as a simple recruiting plan to get more underrepresented groups of people. Diversity is no good unless the new people, thinking, innovation, creativity and expertise can be harnessed for some business purpose. This is strategically using diversity. Your company needs to match its diversity goals to your general business goals. For example, if you want to reach new markets, you want people who speak that language or are from that culture, helping you develop culturally appropriate products or services and representing your business externally. The goal is to instill your diversity efforts into the psyche of those who are driving the future of the business. Diversity must be inexorably linked to the success and health of your business.
  
  

Return on Investment

• Diversity is not so tangible, but to get it right, your company has to put a lot of time, money and resources into recruiting, retention, policy and training. Measuring the impact of diversity is crucial to sustaining it for the long-term. What good is the program if you can't prove you reaped some benefit from it. The Society for Human Resource Management, ASAR, as well as "Diversity Executive" magazine have published articles on how companies can institute a diversity scorecard. For example, they suggest you start with basic hiring numbers, employee attitude surveys, focus groups, training evaluations and the assessment of management. More important are metrics that show change as a result of diversity, such as improved productivity, profitability, benchmarking with similar organizations and savings in terms of turnover. It's important to assign dollar figures to each variable you measure, so that you can also measure improvement or worsening on your diversity indicators.
  
  

Retention and Inclusion

• One of the toughest issues in diversity management is keeping employees and creating an atmosphere that values, and appropriately acts upon, the ideas of all employees. Minorities in your company might not feel valued or might not feel empowered to speak up. If your company's actions don't follow what you say about diversity, they might also feel like tokens and quickly find a way out. You can help by ensuring all qualified employees, regardless of their background, are considered for promotion, establishing a mentoring program for new employees and mixing diverse business groups for working on new projects.
  
  

Uncomfortable Diversity and Employee Pushback

• Rules alone don't change people's minds. If your employees are uncomfortable with your company's diversity practices --- and possibly the new faces --- it might show up in work products and deliverables. Senior employees might feel their position is threatened, and others might simply have had too little exposure to people who are different from them to know how to work together on teams. As an employer, you have to meet this challenge head on. First, you need a clear set of policies that govern how employees are to be treated and how they are to relate to each other. In addition, a fair and balanced complaint, investigation and grievance procedure needs to be instituted. Follow up policy with regular training. Senior managers need training on how to manage diversity, use it to help business development and measure it. Employees need to understand how diversity makes their work better and some might need to be sensitized, especially to uncommon differences, such as religious and certain sexual orientations. Make it fun, too. Bring in food and music and allow employees to celebrate differences naturally rather than be commanded to be accepting and tolerant. Communicate frequently about what's happening with your company's diversity initiatives