Racial Diversity at Workplaces - Essay Example

Racial Diversity – Wal Mart of XXXX XXXX Submitted By: XXXX Number: XXXX Submission date: XXXX Number of Words: 1339 (Excluding Graphs, Bibliography and Appendix) Introduction: Racial diversity at workplaces is a very common sight, however if this does exist it important to ensure there is no kind of discrimination at the workplace for the minority groups. It is to be noted that almost every society of the world has been class based in some way, shape or form. Thus the existence of inequalities issues is quite common at work places. Discrimination of employees or inequalities of employees means treating an employee different from others. This is a very serious offence and is illegal for companies to treat employees differently. A company can be faced with a lot of legal issues and employees have the rights to even sue the company (Epstein, 1995). The main aim of this report is to understand using a real life company, the different kinds of discriminations that employees face at work, the make up of the group i.e. the racial make up of the group, the existing problems and issues and the solutions used by management to resolve the issues. The company chosen for this research is Wal Mart. The next section will deal with a brief about Wal Mart and a little about the employees. Wal Mart and its Employees: Wal Mart is the biggest retailers in the world. Wal – Mart has wide operations spread across 14 markets, 7390 Wal – Mart stores. They company employees over 2 million associates. It is the largest employer in America. The company claims to give importance to the employee’s growth and careers. The company’s website claims to provide the employees with a competitive pay, skills development and health benefits for the employee and family. Articles and studies have shown that the company pays employees a salary which is way below the poverty line and employees have confessed that they cannot live out of the pay received from Wal – Mart alone. The average hours worked by employees is around 40 hours a week. However the pay received is very low and for some of the employees it is just enough to live out of a Dodge truck (Greenhouse, 2005). A study showed that even though employees were given hikes in salary they did not really benefit from the hikes. Wal – Mart has instituted a new payment method. The company has placed a range for every job level and once an employee reaches the top of the pay range, the salary freezes and chances of pay increase is completely eliminated. The promotion system is also very poor and employees working for almost 13-14 years in the company and have not been promoted (Gogoi, 2006). Wal Mart’s main vision for the company is to become leading retailers in the world. The company’s board consists of a number of executives. The chairman of the board is S.; Robson Walton, who has been a part of the board since 1978. Most of the members of the board are Americans with two exceptions, Jr. James Cash and Christopher J Williams. The communication within the organisation is very open among all the members. The website of the company emphasis on how the company’s main values are to ensure the emphasis on giving the employees an equal treatment and ensuring every person within the organisation is treated correctly without any type of discrimination. Wal Mart - Diversity Issues: Wal Mart has had several lawsuits against itself for discrimination during hiring of employees. Wal Mart has already had a number of issues where the employees have filed law suit against the company for work hour violations and sexual harassment, after which this big blow of racism was also faced by the company. The case is where Wal Mart discriminated against an African American Mr Daryal T. Nelson, who wanted to drive trucks for Wal Mart was rejected on the basis of credit rating which was not a specified requirement of the job. Nelson was said to have all the qualifications, clean driving history, and a valid driver’s license. Also Nelson has said that he has been stereotyped by the company earlier in 2002 as well. It was noted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee that Wal Mart has hired a number of white drivers with experience much lesser than Nelson. Nelson has held a clean driving record for over 22 years (Lawsuit, 2004). Wal Mart’s Solutions: The directors of the company have started give a lot of importance to the employee diversity and safety within the organisation post the law suits the company faced in 2002. G C Thomas Mars of Wal Mart has proved this. GC Mars’s team spend a lot of the investment at the legal end of the company. He announced in one of the meeting, “Law firms that pack their lower ranks with minorities and women while leaving white men in charge are about to find Wal-Mart a tough customer” (Hobbs, 2005) Also in the more recent news with Hillary Clinton being a part of the Board of Directors of Wal Mart has urged Wal Mart to hire more women and minorities to the organisation and it is seen that Hilary Clinton has taken personal interest into this matter to help improve the situation of diversity discrimination. Also she has made efforts of tracking the recruitment of these groups of people to the company and has also taken interest in addressing environmental concerns on behalf of the organisation (Democratic, 2006). It is to be noted that the company has started paying a lot of attention to the diversity within the organisation and if a close look is made at the website, it is very clear that the company has started this in full swing after 2006. In a report of the company Charlyn Jarrell Porter - The Senior Vice President, Chief Diversity officer and the global talent manager, mentioned that the company is truly diverse. The report showed the comments of all the Board of Directors on diversity and it also states that the business has included diversity of employment into the business plan so that the company can move forward and be leaders in all aspects of diversity and inclusion. Wal Mart along with the cooperation of the EEOC has increased the diversity within the organisation and has improved the cultural mix very well. The statistics of the EEOC shows how well the company has grown post 2006. Below is a Graph 1 indicates the company’s inclusion of women into the company at different levels of the organisation, Graph 2 indicates the inclusion of minority into the organisation. Graph 1: Inclusion of Women into the organisation (2005 – 2007) Graph 2: Inclusion of Minority into the organisation (2005 – 2007) Wal Mart’s best practices for Diversity: The company has set down a few important practices for diversity. The company hosts roundtable conferences involving diversity and multicultural leaders and associates. The company benchmark with the other Fortune 500 companies on the best practises of diversity. Also the company has been promoting diversity within the organisation by including cultural heritage months and culture awareness programs for the employees (Wal Mart, 2008). Learning and Conclusion: Wal Mart is a leading retailer hence it needs to emphasis on diversity. This is a very important for the company, as any discrimination of any type can easily damage the reputation of the company. It is to be noted that the steps taken by the organisation is very prompt and the help of the EEOC has helped the company develop and increase the diversity within the organisation. The involvement of the EEOC has helped the company to increase the type of mix and if noticed now the company has a good combination of almost every culture. The entity has helped the company in a number of ways. From this example it is very clear that the government of US has taken discrimination very seriously and has made the best decision by introducing both the EEO and Affirmative Action into the system to help the minority. In conclusion it is best to say that Wal Mart has done a good job improving its recruitment procedures and has learnt well from the law suits it had faced in the past with great help of the EEOC. References Democratic, 2006, ‘Hillary urged Wal Mart to practice diversity, environmentalism on BOD...’, 10 March 2006, Accessed on 16 October 2008, Retrieved from http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2505967 Epstein, R.A., 1995, ‘Forbidden Grounds: the case against employment discrimination laws’, Third Edition, Harvard University Press, U.S.A. Gogoi, P., ‘The flip side of Wal-mart’s Pay Hikes’, August 14, 2006, Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/aug2006/pi20060811_696579.htm, Accessed on 14 October 2008 Greenhouse, S, 2005, ‘At Wal-Mart, Choosing Sides Over $9.68 an Hour’, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/business/04wages.html, Accessed on 16 October 2008 Hobbs, M., 2005, ‘Wal- Mart demands diversity in Law firms’, Fulton County Daily Report, 6 July 2005, Accessed on 16 October 2008, Retrieved from http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1120579809481 Lawsuit, 2004, ‘Coldwater, MS. Wal-Mart Defending another Racial Discrimination Lawsuit’, 24 September 2004, Accessed on 16 October 2008, Retrieved from http://www.sprawl-busters.com/search.php?readstory=1581 Wal Mart, 2008, ‘Diversity and Inclusion’, Accessed on 17 October 2008, Retrieved from http://walmartstores.com/Diversity/306.aspx Appendix Below are a few graphs that show a break up of the different cultures that are recruited within the organisation and the positions they are appointed for: (Wal Mart, 2008) Read More