Diversity Planning in Human Resource - Research Paper Example

AL AFFILIATION SUBMISION Human Resource: Diversity Planning Diversity planning is focused on creating measurable ways that can help in supporting strategic business direction, objectives, and the goals of the organization. Workforce diversity has continued to be a key focus for many organizations. The organization’s workforce for Macy’s company diversity is driven by the U.S economy globalization. The desire by the organization to reflect more accurately on the demographic diversity of United States population is another propelling factor too. The Strategic planning for diversity is a development which is more recent in the operation of businesses for instance, the Macy’s company in this research paper context. In U.S., diversity was not seen as an integral part of planning previously. Diversity initiatives in most businesses processes lacked specificity, were poorly conceptualized and had no link to the business strategic plans. However, in the U.S business operations today, managers and leaders have realized that diversity planning must be aligned with the business operational decisions. This is to ensure that the businesses become successful (Richard Sánchez, Sánchez-Runde, and Luciara Nardon, Pg.18). Some of the U.S owned business organizations, most particularly the Macy’s company, have adopted a number of planning diversity practices in the business world. Such practices are illustratively discussed as follows. Diversity strategic plan is generally referred to as A-One Strategic Plan. The business builds and manages a workforce which is truly diverse. This is done by strategic planning of diversity through its core values of respect to the individual’s dignity, trust, integrity, credibility, personal renewal and continuous improvement. The business organizations use BWF (Balanced Workforce Force) strategy which is a strategy that all-encompassing. The strategy guides the organization in various situations and also covers the all the populations of employees. The strategy sets a 10-year annual target on goal plans for the business. Through the strategy, the managers are held accountable for upward employees’ mobility. BWF ensures that when layoffs occur, then the members of one group in the organization are not disproportionately affected in comparison with other member groups (Richard Sánchez, Sánchez-Runde, and Luciara Nardon, Pg.23). Another diversity strategy used by U.S Macy’s company business entails the continuous business improvement through the development and engagement of people. In this strategy, the business develops six strategic planks that are of priority in sustaining earning growth and quality which is consistent. Also, the business organization’s departments of human resource and operating management develop a-5 year diversity plan jointly. The plan includes a system of minority that measures the representation of diversity function at various business levels of operations. The measures primarily seek to ensure that the business’ workforce is balanced. But most importantly, the diversity plan measures developed serve a vital function of strengthening the ability of U.S organizations to attract, select, hire, recruit, retain and develop most highly qualified employees. The employees who are mostly considered to have a likelihood of qualification are those with high diversity consciousness. The specific measures always included in the diversity plan are positive employee surveys responses, positive publication articles and positive reputation as a choice employer. The plan as well includes an improved diversity representation at all business levels, appropriate and effective remedial action, awards among other employee recognition. This concept diversity plan has proved to be of importance especially when conducting the selection and recruitment processes of workers (Kouzes, James, and Barry,pg.512). Diversity planning, as A-One partner strategic plan, was objectively formed to provide a link between diversity management vision and the required actions needed to make it happen. One of the first needed requirements was to provide a definition for diversity and diversity management. The definitions found were then used to in forming the foundation of the diversity policies for the organization. The definition accomplished was also used to form the vision statement and strategic plan of the business organizations. The core elements contained in a strategic plan are strategic objectives and goals, a cultural audit conducting plan, and a plan for education training and development. The strategic plan also addresses the recognition of accomplishments which are diversity related and the accountability for the implementation of diversity initiatives according to Kouzes, James, and Barry (pg.514). The business organizations and companies like Macy’s use a four step approach for the establishment and implementation of diversity planning. The first step is to create a strong foundation based on commitment, dedicated resources, philosophy and values. The second step entails building of a business internal structure which is solid. The step is to provide initiatives for educating and supporting employees. The third step comprises of building of a solid organizational external structure. The external structure infuses the diversity into the business external environment like the community. The fourth and final step concerns measuring of the results and progresses through an all effort goal setting process. The U.S businesses, in order to develop a successful diversity planning process, are required to periodically assess and evaluate the accomplishment and status process. The evaluation and assessment processes are conducted through various tool creations, visitations and analysis. The diversity strategy plan is evaluated whether it is in support of the business targets, goals and objectives. The diversity strategic plans are required to be unambiguous and straightforward. So as to ensure that all the business’ leaders and employees have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. The business organization on the hand is expected to be prepared in rewarding those individuals who meet the stated expected goals. Also, the organization must set in place the measures of penalty used to penalize the employees who fail to meet the stated goals. Some of the straightforward diversity planning measures include, attrition rates of employees, workforce satisfaction, new customer bases market shares, satisfaction of workplace climate and external awards (diversity effort recognition) according to Hersen, Michel, and Joahn (pg.1268). The business organizations are as well required to conduct a tool creation an organizational chart assessment annually. This is to facilitate the identification of its current status of diversity and to determine whether the diversity has a reflection of the community it is serving. Each organization’s head of department meets the senior leadership regularly to discuss the currently recruited employees’ promotability. A determination of what is possibly being done throughout all the business levels to develop the employees’ talents is also discussed. The organizations have set specific objectives of the workforce in order to analyze the performance of diversity plan. The goal of evaluation assessment is to have a customer-reflecting workforce. This serves as creating a strong sense of visitation between the workforce and the customers being served by the organization in its community of residence. For instance, in the year 2000, the worldwide management had a reflection of the global market demographics. By the year 2007 there was a reflection of the local demographic markets being served by the organizations in U.S. This provided a clear indication that U.S organizations had an integrated diversity planning on their performance based culture of operation. Another assessment and evaluation tool is coaching. Coaching is defined as the essence of leadership. A leader’s coaching profile in the organization is used in the definition of workplace behaviors as well as results achievement required. The organizations specific target behaviors required are defined in three targets. The targets are building the right team, encouraging excellence, and caring about people. Each of the desired targets of coaching is assessed as either being the development opportunity or strength of the U.S organizations. A profile of every employee in leadership is completed annually for an evaluation. In this tool of assessment, the concept of visitation is paramount. This is because the leader and his or her coach have to meet to discuss and deliberate on the gained feedback from all related sources. The two parties have to then agree upon the top priorities of opportunity development and strengths. The profile is used for the development of annual related plans, plans of human resource and performance appraisal plans. Also, scorecard is another tool being used in the assessment and evaluation of diversity planning progress. The scorecard has three areas used in assessment. The first one is using coaching as a tool to build awareness around company goals continuing to mainstream and diversity. The second area is encompassed in the plan of Workforce Representation and the third area comprises of the Employees Council Activities. Specific value measurements are created for each scorecard area at the beginning of each year. The measurements are included in a format of scorecard and provide the descriptions of the supportive goals in the areas and the blank result annotated area. A top management level team conducts the scrutinization of the scorecard result so as to determine the level of performance and its progress. One of the measure which is diversity related that has been put in place is Workforce Representation. The leaders in senior levels develop plans which are actionable and are focused on cross-functional movements, internal development and retention, measurement and external recruitments. The progress plans of the managers are discussed monthly at the steering meeting by the top level management. According to Noe Raymond (pg. 216) the top organizations leaders are also expected to conduct an analysis in order to identify four actions if minimum in their annual plan performance. The plans have to visibly demonstrate on their personal basis commitment to promote diversity. The action plans are required to be substantial and specific. For example, of the four required actions, one could be an undertaking of mentoring five organizations employees during the specified year. The CEO of One Partner’s organization, in order to meet one of his four committed duties, organized for a half-day meeting which he attended together with the 30 CEOs of other major corporations. Moreover, the U.S Macy’s company business has developed a tool of Managing Diversity Diagnostic to evaluate and assess the performance of diversity planning. The tool contains a checklist that gives the groups of businesses a template of the actions suggested items that are to assist the managers in developing their plans of Diversity Actions. The tool provides a weighted action items so that mangers are able to see the action items which are considered most critical by the senior leadership. The tool of diagnostic measures the how effective the actions implemented are and the commitment of the executive. The U.S organization companies furthermore conduct a visitation where the annual Diversity Audit stages are assessed at organization’s unit to determine the progress in achieving Diversity. A common framework for dialogue is provided by the audit, departmental diversity unit planning and the goals of developing a work unit. The units developed must meet the qualitative and quantitative thresholds set, and the lead individual designation. The department managers of work units and heads hold an annual meeting with all employees of the organization to review on how Diversity continuum can contain the work units. Finally, the business organizations use Photograph Audit to help in the evaluation of whether images of their Diversity performance are a representation of community served or stereotyped. The goal of this analysis and tool evaluation process is to ensure the facilitation of accurate, inclusive and balanced community diversity coverage. There have been a number of training programs developed for both the staff and executive employee levels in the Macy’s company organization that enhances its level of diversity consciousness. One of the programs developed is the partnership between non-minorities and minorities employees. It is critical to have a diversity strategy of gaining employees buy in. however it is also important to create programs and mechanism through which employees can be able to actively engage in the initiative of diversity. Diversity initiative originates from a grass root level as the impetus for the initiatives which frequently emanate from minorities who have had the experience of challenges of being a first-hand minority. Such individuals are motivated to efforts of change in order to address their needs. Therefore, it becomes important for both the minority and non-minority organizations’ employees to establish a partnership in the diversity initiative for the purposes of ensuring effectiveness. The partnership between populations of minorities and non-minorities involve the development of a relationship network between the key organizations stakeholders and minority constituents. Both of the parties do share a common goal of increasing the organizations’ diversity. The partnerships can come in forms which are different such as task forces, leadership teams and network groups (Raymond, pg. 224). Also, the program mechanism training and development is having a stakeholder at the senior level to conduct the liaison service to the organizations of minority affiliation. These affiliations give the minority employees the interaction opportunities with each other so that they can coach, support, counsel and share information with each other. The establishment of partnership between affiliation organizations and senior executives allows for the interests of minority constituencies to have a representation at the leadership level. This also helps in facilitating the implementation of the initiatives of diversity. Another form of training program is the engagement of task forces that are cutting across the affiliation groups, hierarchical levels and demographic boundaries. The task forces can be charged with the duties of addressing the issues specifically faced by the minority constituencies and employees. The task force is then to identify the strategies that can be used to solve such issues. In this context again, task force acts as an important program for the senior leadership levels in playing a partnership role. The senior leaders serve as executive sponsors or champions of diversity to represent the interest of task force hence symbolizing the support for efforts of diversity. In addition, the other training and development program stems from organization’s leadership composition. The individuals directing the organizational activities are regarded as being the most senior managers. The leadership team is to an extent comprising of individuals from constituencies of multiple minorities. The relationship developed between the teams of non-minority and minority leaderships serves as a facilitator to the diversity effort. Performance appraisal tool is typically a composition of performance management system and the development of employees. Effective performance appraisal provides the outcomes of job expectations and responsibilities clarification, enhancement of individual productivity, development of employees’ capability to the fullest potential. It also acts as a driving behavior for the alignment of core values, strategy and goals of the organization (Jones, Gareth and Jennifer, pg. 68). The overall review process of the recommended steps of performance appraisal as an evaluation tool for employee improvement is as discussed. The first step is performance planning. This is the beginning step of in the cycle of performance appraisal management. In this step, a review of employees’ performance including employees’ behaviors is evaluated and the results expected to be achieved. Behavioral expectation and modification are important because they provide a reflection of how employees go about on getting the jobs done. The behaviors also explain how employees support the team, mentor others and communicate. The second process is the ongoing feedback. This process occurs when both the results and behavioral expectations have occurred. In this case, performance are discussed and feedback provided on a basis which ongoing throughout the period of rating. The third process is employee input. It takes the form of employees being asked to provide of ratings self performance on the performance standards. The ratings are then weighed on comparison with the ratings of organization managers. The fourth and final step is performance evaluation. This process entails the evaluation of behaviors. The process provides a competency model which articulates on skills, abilities, knowledge and other deemed characteristics instrumental for positive income achievement ((Jones, Gareth and Jennifer, pg. 72). The goal of this research paper is to present a conceptual framework model of the actions for specific processes attributed to the planning diversity strategy. In the paper, a foundation has been laid for further exploration of planning diversity initiatives. The concept of diversity application, consciousness and the model of performance management is introduced and discussed. The programs for employee training and development are also explained. The research paper offers a contribution of importance to the literature of diversity on organizations. It provides a theoretical perspective on why some initiatives of diversity have the capability to achieve the intended goals of increasing minority representation yet others are not. The academic literature on the diversity research paper explained however remains devoid of understanding the common factors that that increase the diversity workforce effectiveness. The factors of diversity planning are presented in a conceptual framework model that is unable to operate on itself efficiently. The main objective of planning diversity is to ensure the achievement of sustained success. The leaders’ actions are also explained that they must work in conjunction with diversity system initiative which is well designed. The attributes of diversity is that it operates in tandem feeding off one another hence creating an immediate relational, psychological and behavioral outcomes that propel the success of diversity. In conclusion, the numerous organizational approaches that have been taken to promote diversity have yet to yield the full results desired. The main desired outcome is that of increasing the representation of the minority workforce underrepresented in various U.S organizations. WORKS CITED Hersen, Michel, and Joahn Rosqvist. Encyclopedia of Behavior Modification and Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Sage, n.d.. Print. Jones, Gareth R, and Jennifer M. George. Contemporary Management. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2008. Print. Kouzes, James M, and Barry Z. Posner. The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2012. Internet resource. Noe, Raymond A. Fundamentals of Human Resource Management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2013. Print. Steers, Richard M, Sánchez C. J. Sánchez-Runde, and Luciara Nardon. Management Across Cultures: Challenges and Strategies. Cambridge [etc.: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print. Read More