What is Diversity? Diversity is an attempt to recognise the strengths and potential of each and every individual. It is an attempt to broaden a working culture so that all creative thinking styles, approaches and life patterns can be accommodated for the benefit of the individuals and the organisation. Why is diversity important? There are three important reasons for looking at diversity – legal, ethical and business practice. Legal: Anyone with management responsibility needs to be aware of their legal duties. Claims for discrimination often lead to large awards and take up much HR time, as well as giving bad publicity for the employer. Ethical: Many organisations have developed values that require ethical behaviour from all staff. Many potential recruits look closely at the culture of an organisation before they make a final career decision. Business practice: An organisation must recognise the changes occurring within its customer base or catchment area and capitalise on them. 50% of the ethnic minority population in the UK is under 25 and last year 79% of those joining the European job market were women. Companies that take advantage of these changes will have the opportunity for increased sales, new ideas and a better future. Some early signs of future problems in this area include difficulties with recruitment, failure to win certain contracts, a rise in use of grievance procedures or an imbalance in the ethnic, gender, age or disability mix of applicants for a job or promotion. However, forward-looking organisations will act on these issues now, not wait for problems to occur. Diagnosis before cure… Companies seeing such problems will often want to change very quickly before their business suffers. They look to ’positive action’, ‘targeted groups development’ or other ‘miracle’ cures. However, the challenges may be deeper rooted than they think and some ‘solutions’ may exacerbate a situation by alienating the majority with what looks like preferential treatment. Employers must assess very carefully what is happening in the organisation, and why the issues are arising. Organisations will often require an audit to see this bigger picture. An audit measures the employer’s intentions and procedures as well as the perceptions of employees and other stakeholders. The audit will reveal strengths as well as dangers within the organisation. Although in larger companies the audit can be carried out using internal resources, given the sensitivity of the issues it is usually better that the auditor is seen to be independent. Anecdotal evidence is as valuable as statistics, and our experience has shown that the perceptions and feelings of the workforce are more readily given to strangers rather than colleagues. Part of the audit may also be legal and will involve checking company procedures against latest UK legislation and EC directives. People are the common factor Common to all Diversity strategies is the move from system-based thinking, where process is everything, to people-based thinking, where individuals are celebrated. Diversity is not about the largely unhelpful groupings that dominated Equal Opportunities thinking in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s when success was measured in terms of percentages rather than the development of individuals. Diversity is about capitalising on individual approaches to life and styles of work. It is about developing personal creativity and bringing the mixture together for the benefit of all. It aims to realise the potential of each individual. Diversity programmes examine the value of existing stereotypes, questioning unhelpful grouping and assertions such as ‘What women think is…’, ‘What black people want is…’ and ‘What older people feel is…’. They encourage individuality while recognising the effects of different cultural backgrounds. This contradiction is at the heart of Diversity. We are all products of our individual upbringings. These influences need to be understood in order for managers to manage effectively, but once they begin to dominate then we are in the realm of stereotyping and what ensues is prejudice and resentment. The first step of a solution may well be identifying under-represented sections of the community, and may even involve setting agreed targets for recruitment and promotion, but these must never become an end in themselves. Indeed they can be counterproductive if employees sense an element of favouritism.

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