Management Case Paper - Essay Example

First Initial Wolf Management 301 April 7, Dylan Diamonds’ Diversity Recommendations and Impact Introduction Dylan Diamonds has experienced poor customer service ratings as well as a high level of minority employee turnover. The diversity programs are identified as weak. Post-assessment and after a review of the academic literature on the subject of diversity and how it may or may not affect business performance, the findings and a preliminary recommendation are presented. Jayne & Dipboye; King, Dawson, Kravitz & Gulick shows that improving business performance is not as simple as implementing diversity training and hiring more minorities.

Leveraging the power of your workforce is comprised of specific diversity components and leadership accountability that when in place, becomes a serious competitive advantage for the company and a powerhouse of internal strength to build on. Assumptions have been made that Dylan Diamonds is profitable; willing and able to invest in the management consultant recommendations made at this time; the company sincerely cares about the customer and the employee and that by striving to achieve what is in the best interest of both, the company will then continue to meet its’ financial obligations such as budget requirements.

Recommendations are made for the short-term which would be defined as over the balance of 2011 and the longer term which would be defined as 2012 and beyond. By improving customer service ratings and retaining qualified women and minorities, employee turnover rates will trend downward and Dylan Diamonds will have a competitive advantage and a recruitment and retention edge over other companies in all 50 locations. Recommendations Short Term - Build on Strengths A significant strength for the company is the leadership of the chairwoman of Dylan Diamonds.

She is a woman, is actively involved in the business, and is the Chair of the board. These are significant accomplishments for any woman. The company communications, PR, Human Resource Management areas are not using this information to their advantage. Seymen states for this strategy to work effectively, it would be important to identify the type of organization Dylan Diamonds is at this time and lists three options. Programs could then be tailored around what would have the best chance of success for that type of company.

For example, if confirmed by further analysis, a mentoring program can be kicked off with the chairwoman as the executive sponsor as described in Kilian, Hukai, & McCarty. Trends show that for women and minorities to climb the ladder, they need help to do so. With Dylan, there is no framework to do so. Lacking the framework, there is turnover and a lack of women and minorities at the top levels. Minorities are being hired but then feel like they have nowhere to go. Along with the mentoring program, a career ladder can be developed to help the lower level positions build on one another to get the employee to the rung they need to be to reach the mentoring program.

The minorities that are hired at the entry level need a path to climb the ladder as well. This program would be something the chairwoman’s face could represent. A limitation of starting with this tactic is that some other diversity issue could be being overlooked in the short run, however, due to the number of hot issues, and the literature, this appears to be a great place to start stemming the tide of minority turnover and appealing to customers’ needs. Long Term - Address Gaps and Weaknesses Dylan Diamonds is in need of an extensive diversity audit to be conducted to assess and determine gaps or weaknesses from of the 50 locations and from a corporate level as well.

This would lead to the development of a Diversity Strategy with Annual Tactics. From that audit a response plan would be generated with actionable items including a timetable. This would include a plan for every location and corporate wide as well. Part of that plan would include revising and communicating the corporate mission, vision, and values using gender neutral and culturally promoting wording. For example, in referencing Wolf and Jayne & Dipboye, PepsiCo is used as an example for best practices.

As with PepsiCo, the corporate mission, vision, and values is communicated throughout the company, the leaders will be part of that communication process and show their interest and dedication to the concepts behind the importance of diversity. Wolf shows in the PepsiCo example that members of the leadership team were assigned to a diversity group and specifically stayed involved with that group throughout the year and reported back to the senior leadership team regarding how the group was thinking and feeling.

Dylan Diamonds could launch a plan similar to this. One of the concerns noted consistently in the literature that Dylan has most likely fallen prey to is that a diverse workforce doesn’t bring non-discriminatory outcomes. King, Dawson, Kravitz & Gulick discuss in their study from employee surveys of 395 healthcare organizations that diversity training didn’t equate to less discrimination. As in Wolf education and awareness is only part of the action plan. Enforcement is another key component or some might call it simple follow-up to ensure items are actually completed and not just talked about.

There is much more to it than that due to the depth of personal influences weighing on each employees mind. A limitation of addressing diversity issues from a longer term standpoint is that there are urgent items that cannot wait to be addressed that end up becoming major concerns as we conduct a more in-depth audit. Evaluation Short Term - Build on Strengths Dylan Diamonds will measure the impact and effectiveness of the first recommendation made by the number of mentors entering the program and the number of lower level employees entering the career ladder program.

Since this is the first year for the program, this will be a benchmark year and numbers of participants for goal setting will be established in years going forth. Specific employee behaviors that would be expected to change because of this program will be reduced minority turnover and increased promotions of women and minorities particularly in the leadership levels. How this would be measured is by manually tracking the data associated with this effort, at least in the first year. Long Term - Address Gaps and Weaknesses The Larger Diversity Program will be measured over a longer term time frame.

There will be a diversity committee formed that will track key diversity metrics that have yet to be established. These metrics will be reported out to the board quarterly. To measure the changes in the behaviors, diversity changes would need to be measured by quantitative and qualitative data. First, improvements would be monitored by looking at turnover information and expecting the turnover data to reflect improvements as a result of the diversity program. Profits will be improved and the ability to hire and retain minorities.

Second, there will be included a specific area on the employee surveys asking about diversity events. Do existing staff belief the efforts are enough? Are we reaching the people we need to reach? What else can we do? We want the employees to know and to feel that the company truly does care about all of the employees and supports their lifestyle, ethnic background, gender, and so on. Specific employee satisfaction measures will be aligned with the diversity program and tracked annually for benchmark levels.

Works Cited Jayne, Michele E. A. and Dipboye, Robert L. "Leveraging Diversity to Improve Business Performance: Research Findings and Recommendations for Organizations." Human resource management 43.4 (2004): 409. ABI/INFORM Global. Web. 7 Apr. 2011. Kilian, Claire McCarty, Hukai, Dawn, and McCarty, C. Elizabeth. "Building Diversity in the Pipeline to Corporate Leadership." The Journal of Management Development 24.1 (2005): 155. ABI/INFORM Global. Web. 7 Apr. 2011. King, Eden, Dawson, Jeremy, Kravitz, David and Gulick, Lisa. (2010). A multilevel study of the relationships between diversity training, ethnic discrimination and satisfaction in organizations.

Journal of Organizational Behavior, n/a. doi: 10.1002/job.728. Seymen, Oya Aytemiz. "The Cultural Diversity Phenomenon in Organisations and Different Approaches for Effective Cultural Diversity Management: A Literary Review." Cross Cultural Management 13.4. 2006: 296. ABI/INFORM Global. Web. 7 Apr. 2011. Wolf, P. P. MGMT 301: People and Organizations, Lecture Notes Module #5. 2010.