Defining What Diversity Means to Your Company

Creating the right diversity plan for your company can be a difficult task. You have an affirmative action plan, but where do you go from there? How do you make it work? There are many strategies and plans for implementing diversity in a company, but if they are not specific to your company’s needs and functions, they may not work. The first step to creating your company’s diversity program is defining what diversity means to your organization.

Diversity means different things for different companies. Diversity of a company should include more than just meeting quotas or having activities. You should focus on your company’s goals and create game plans that increase and uphold benefits of diversity throughout the organization. If your company conducts monthly luncheons recognizing different cultures or pays attention to the issues of some groups over others, you may want to reconsider your company’s diversity initiative.

Use the following questions as a brainstorming tool to create your company’s diversity initiative:

1. Is there a need for diversity? The demographics of the U.S. are changing daily. Soon, minorities will outnumber non-minorities. Your company demographics should mirror that of your company’s community. Consider how the new 2000 Census will impact your workforce.
2. What is the purpose of the diversity program? The diversity program should reflect your company’s objectives. Diversity is a reality, not just numbers.
3. What are our strengths and weaknesses regarding diversity? Determine where your company has succeeded or failed with diversity initiatives in the past. How that has positively or negatively affected your company will define your diversity objectives.
4. Where do we need to focus our initiatives and why? Diversity needs to start in your company where your company falls short in its diversity initiatives.
5. How will we create a goal-oriented plan that is specific to our company? After you have defined what diversity means to your company, focus on meeting those needs and goals.

Having answered these questions, you can begin to define diversity at your company. Once diversity has been defined, merge it into your workplace cultures by selecting the right program.