Articles

The 21st Century Workplace -- Are Women the New Men?

It has been widely reported that for the first time in history, women are less than a percentage point away from making up the majority of the national workforce. The economic downturn has hit men harder. They held nearly 80 percent of jobs that have been lost during what is now being called the "mancession." What's more, The New York Times recently reported that some of the highly educated, high ...

The Diversity Leadership Imperative: The Need to Progress from Diversity Management to Diversity ...

I will start with two basic points that everyone can logically agree with: 1.) Every organization needs quality leadership to be successful in a highly competitive world, and 2.) Diversity is a reality that is here to stay, and its impact is increasing exponentially as our demographics continue to change. Further diversity's impact will broaden via globalization as the world continues to shrink ...

Four Critical Global Workforce Diversity Strategies

For the past century, our discussion about equal opportunity - which has evolved into a conversation about workforce diversity�has been limited to race and gender. In the United States, those are the historic issues that have been the cornerstone of our civil rights debate. That limited focus on race and gender has been the result of two outcomes: management that did not satisfactorily address ...

Overcoming Gender Differences: The Golf Outing Invitation

I am a female currently employed in the legal field, at a worldwide firm. I generally consider my co-workers and organization to be relatively progressive and sensitive to unique individual needs. Therefore, it is easy to understand the surprise and disappointment I felt when the members of my team (all of whom just so happen to be male) decided to take a day off to go golfing without the ...

Diversity: It's a Leadership Issue

Diversity is a popular management topic in many countries and companies. A wide of sweep resources in HR and management time is devoted to diversity in large organisations, especially government, educational and global organisations. In a publication by the European Commission in November 2003, "fixing" diversity is reported as having significant benefits and costs. Benefits include reduced ...

EMPLOYERS GO EXTRA MILE FOR MOTHERS

What you don't know about your resume, cover letter, and personal branding strategies are affecting the outcome of your job search � and career. Put a top resume writing firm and leading career strategist in your corner for a shorter and smoother job search, a higher salary, and more successful career. Guilt is one of the biggest side effects ...

Barriers to Intercultural Communication

Today's competitive global economy results in frequent cross-border movements of staff that results in a growing diversity at the workplace. As the inevitable happens between cultures, breakdowns in communication are a common occurrence. That is certainly costly to the multinational enterprise in terms of workplace relations, returns and revenues, and customer relationship. Not to mention, the ...

External Talent: Why do Minorities and Women leave in the first year?

You are the staffing manager and you have spent countless hours and energy trying to fill key positions in your organization. Your charge has been to actively seek out minorities and women for different positions in the hopes of increasing the diversity within the organization. You have accomplished your tasks and everything seems okay. Your candidate gets on board, things seem to be going ...

Improving Relationships Among Culturally-Diverse Staff

According to a recent survey conducted by the Families and Work Institute, 52 percent of Americans prefer to work with people like themselves while only 34 percent would rather be with colleagues who are ethnically or culturally different. Clearly those in the 52 percent would be very uncomfortable in America's health care industry where cultural diversity has come to be the norm. At first ...

Seeing Applicants Accurately: Bridging Cultural Gaps

Cultural and racial diversity have dramatically changed the way we do business in the United States. Nowhere is this more true than in the mortgage lending arena. Not only have the Fair Lending and Community Investments Acts made us all more conscious of the necessity of lending fairly, but, as individuals, we are gradually becoming aware of the subtle and unintentional forms of discrimination ...

Holding Immigrants to a High Standard: Do We Care?

Nobody said coming to America would be easy. The nation always has been and continues to be populated people who regard hardship as an acceptable price to pay for a new life in a new land. With more than 450 different languages spoken in the United States today, my question is: Is learning English any different from enduring the unrelenting sea-sickness of a refugee boat, the terror of the ...

One for All and All for One

Words are plentiful these days -- words about war and patriotism and courage. What is in shorter supply is an honest rhetoric about loyalty. We profess an �all for one� stance in which Americans unite against the enemy, but sadly it seems that while �all� includes every American, when it comes to the �one,� the equation torques and those of Middle Eastern extraction are abruptly banished from the ...

White Males Have Needs Too

One of the biggest challenges facing both diversity professionals and meeting planners is how to couch the diversity message in such a way as to make everyone � regardless of background � comfortable with what we are trying to accomplish. I am faced with this problem everyday. Most recently, I was asked to do a speech for a manufacturing company which wanted to expose its staff and managers to ...

What Do I Do Now?

Well, it has happened before and I suppose it will happen again. Right in the middle of a recent speech on diversity, a woman in the audience found it amusing to tell an ethnic joke. It wasn�t a horrible joke, but it wasn�t appropriate either. I won�t repeat it here, but suffice it to say it lay somewhere between the tone of �there was a priest, a rabbi, and a minister� and something that would ...

Opportunity Lost

Maybe it is a curse or maybe a blessing, but I sure do think about diversity a lot of the time. This makes me perpetually aware of comments, relationships, and anything that has to do with how diverse people are getting along. Of course this drives my friends and colleagues crazy, but it is even worse when I do it to myself. This happened some weeks ago when I went to dinner with a new ...

English - It's Greek to me

English is a strange language. Did you ever notice that a "slim" and "fat" chance are the same thing and that you park your car in a "driveway," drive on the "parkway," and sit bumper to bumper during "rush hour?" Why is it that we duck our heads when someone cries "heads up!" and bring a contract to life when we "execute" it? How is it possible that to be "bad" is to be good or "cool" in some ...

American Culture: Knowing Yourself In Order to Understand Others

How often have you said something like, "It seems like every other country has a culture but we don't," or "America is just a hodgepodge of groups -- we don't really have any values that distinguish us?" Even Mark Twain -- often regarded as a spokesperson for 19th century American popular culture -- commented that the only thing Americans have in common as a culture is a fondness for ice water. ...

Formal Mentoring: A Way Around the Barriers of Bias

Sexism, racism, blatant discrimination�certainly each of these can be a factor in keeping women and emerging groups from advancing in the workplace. More often, however, the reason is more subtle and, because it is subtle, it is harder to diagnose and difficult to cure. That reason is the subtle biases that cause even the most well-meaning of us to exclude diverse groups from our informal ...

Diversity Rules: How to Interact with Colleagues from Different Backgrounds

In today�s global business environment it is common to work with diverse groups in the accounting field. Whether your company is looking to expand overseas or has an internal team representing different cultural backgrounds, the need for accounting professionals to work effectively with diverse colleagues is becoming increasingly important.

Below are a few tips for ensuring a positive ...

Equal Opportunity Employer?

Several months ago, while searching for a job, I came across a company, which had placed an advertisement for copywriters and proofreaders. Since I could apply online, I emailed them my resume and cover letter. The following day, I was glad to see they had replied. However, upon reading their message, my enthusiasm dwindled. They had asked me to fill out a �voluntary� survey � a questionnaire ...