DiversityNursing Blog

This is the first of a 2-part article and is a follow up to the CAN (Chinese American Nurses) Sisters I published on our blog on August 23, 2011. Click Here to Read the first article in this series.

The article is the collaborative work of a team of Chinese American Nurses (CAN) sisters.  It speaks as “foreign” nurses who have worked in America for a number of years. Our group is very lucky to have CAN meetings twice a month. We have each other’s support. We share our setbacks and clarify our things that might confuse us. Together we provide opportunities to think things through; to have a better understanding of ourselves, to not let fear paralyze us; and to add strengths to face tomorrow with positive thoughts and energy. Go CAN!! Go!!!

Last month, a CAN nurse started to talk about the major differences that we are experiencing in the nursing functions and practices between China and the United States. Everyone joined in the discussion.

Assess and Reassess Our Patients

In USA:
Nurses are expected to know as much as possible about our patients. Nurses have a major responsibility in the assessment and re-assessment of our patients. Most nurses are doing a great job in assessing patients. Nurses are at patients’ bedside 24x7. Physicians are not. We may notice a change first, and take action as the law allows. We can initiate many nursing protocols, especially in an emergency, and then we report the changes to physicians. Physicians come to assess, verify, confirm the changes, and take additional actions.

In China:
The nurse-to-doctor ratio is nearly 1:1 in China. Doctors are just like nurses, at patients’ bedside 24x7. When new patients arrive, doctors perform the first assessments.

Report Abnormal Findings:

In USA:
Nurses report abnormal findings from our own assessments or from the results we receive from other departments or facilities. Most of our current practice is to report the results to nurses first. Nurses are expected and required to report abnormal findings to physicians. We can take actions that are legally allowed. Many nursing protocols are there for us to utilize, especially in an emergency, and then we turn around and report the results to physicians. Physicians come to assess, verify, confirm the changes, and take additional actions.  

In China:
Doctors on the units get reports first. Nurses may not be aware of the results and reports. Therefore, nurses may not be aware of changes or actions needed.

Emergency Responsibilities:

In USA:
Nurses or anyone who witnesses the need can call a code. A nurse is usually the initial emergency responder, until an organized team comes. Teams, including physicians, take over the emergency situation. Organized teams, such as the Rapid Response Team, Code Blue Team, and Trauma Team, have additional training in things like Advanced Critical Life Support and Pediatric Advanced Life Support.

In China:
Doctors are at the patient’s bedside or nearby to respond and initiate emergency actions.

Administering Medications:

In USA:
Nurses are responsible to ensure medications which are taken by mouth (P.O. medications) are swallowed every time, with no exceptions. In the Medication Reconciliation process in some facilities, nurses verify medications on an on-going basis. Verbal and telephone orders are seen often in some facilities.

In China:
In past practice, P.O. medications might be left at the patient’s bedside or with their families, trusting that the patients would take their medications. This is not the right thing to do. It is very dangerous. What if a patient purposely hides his/her medications, and then overdoses on them?  China’s nursing practice is changing; now nurses are watching patients take their medication more often. Doctors are there to verify medications in the Medication Reconciliation process. No verbal orders.

HIPAA Regulations:

In USA:
A patient’s health information is very private, personal property. It totally belongs to the patient. If we don’t have a patient’s written consent, or regulatory permissions, then we cannot give personal information to anyone except the patient. Self-imposed “kindness” such as initiating family or community support for a patient without the patient’s permission is no long allowed. For example, let’s say we go to work at the hospital and see our neighbor who is very sick. Our sick neighbor needs help, especially with child care. We cannot tell another neighbor who we think would be happy to help with the sick neighbor’s child. We have to plan ahead, talk about our intent, and ask the sick neighbor’s permission before we talk to the helpful neighbor. We would be violating the sick neighbor’s confidentiality if we talk to another neighbor without the sick neighbor’s permission.

In China:
Helpfulness and kindness are always welcome as long as it is a sincere act.

Sterile Technique

Performing and maintaining a sterile technique is a big deal in infection control to the nursing practice of both countries. Maintaining sterile technique saves lives, time and money.

In USA:
In some cases, CAN nurses had the perception that a few of their nurse co-workers’ practices were a bit sloppy. When you notice the lack of sterile technique, you must speak up. Express concern about contamination. This is a time to educate our co-workers in a kind way. Often the nurses who are doing the job may not be aware that contamination has occurred. Mentally, we know that it is difficult for us to point out any possible contaminations or any wrong doing. Culturally we were taught to pretend that we did not see; let others do whatever they want to do; we do what we are supposed to do to keep ourselves clean.  “Mind our own business,” is what we learned. But in today’s world we need to prepare a simple and easy phrase or sentence that will help us to gently point out possible contamination. It will save lives. We have a lot to learn about how to be assertive and to be an advocate for our patients.

In China:
The fear of contamination and the strict self-monitoring of sterile techniques are emphasized more. CAN sisters feel that because of our past strict training, sterile technique is branded into our minds.

PIV Insertions:

In USA:
Many facilities prefer to have IV Teams for Peripheral IV insertions to save nursing time, promote patient satisfaction, and decrease line infections. Therefore, nurses’ experiences in starting PIVs are very different. Some nurses do not have to start an IV at all and they have no skill in PIV insertion. For some nurses who start PIVs occasionally, their skill is hit-and-miss. Very few nurses are good at PIV insertion.

In China:
CAN nurses discovered in the support group meeting that most of nurses are good at PIV insertions. We found out that CAN nurses are the “go-to person” for performing PIV insertions. Personally, I have never paid much attention to this as a big difference. It was delightful to find out that this is one of our common strengths.

Salaries & Bonuses:

In USA:
We make good salaries as nurses, even after about 40% is withheld in taxes, income taxes, and sale taxes. On the other hand, if we compare our salaries to physicians’ salaries, we find out a real gap. Physician pay is much higher. Of course, there are good reasons. Physician education and training are much longer and more in depth, and more physically and emotional demanding than nurses’ education. The demand for physicians is greater than the supply of physicians. We have many physician assistants and nurse practitioners who work under physicians and support some of our physician functions and responsibilities.

In China:
Nurses and physicians both have two types of incomes – regular salary and bonus. The nurses’ salaries are much closer to physicians’ salaries in China. Chinese doctors and nurses are equally compensated by the government. It is a perfect system for equal professionals. The differences in their earnings come from their bonuses, which are regulated and paid by the hospital. Currently, no nurse practitioners are working in a hospital or clinic in China.

Nurse to Physician Ratio:

In USA:
The variety of job choices for nurses is huge, including acute hospital care, clinics, nursing homes, home health, insurance, occupational health, schools, law firms, etc. The nursing functions and responsibilities are varied, and it is very different in different health-care and non-health care settings. The physician to nurse ratio ranges from 1:4 to 1:8 or more, depending on the type of facility and the time of day or night. Some nurses function independently.

In China:
Most of nurses are working in hospitals and clinics, the nurse to physician ratio is nearly 1:1. It is a perfect ratio for an equal professionalism. No nurses are function independently.

For us “foreign” nurses, especially those of us who have studied nursing or grown-up abroad, we often find that nursing functions and practices are very similar in some ways and quite different in other ways. This becomes apparent particularly on initial entry into the nursing profession in the USA. Adaptation will ease most barriers. The sooner we can identify the differences, analyze them, and find ways to adjust, the sooner we will adapt to the United States’ way of practice. As we open our hearts and minds to learn new things, we can expand our horizons. Every challenge forces us to learn and to bring out undiscovered talents within us, thereby making us stronger. There is no failure in trying to do the best we can do; the only failure is not trying to change and adapt to a different way of doing things. There are times we have to be brave enough, to have enough self confidence, and to excel on own strengths. We want to keep very strong, solid nursing skills, such as peripheral IV insertion skills. We want to keep the valuable nursing concepts, such as sterile techniques with us. Our skills will be lost if we do not practice constantly. In all, we are excited that we have opportunities to brand ourselves as the best we can be in United States.

Contributors:

Mai Tseng -- RN, BSN,MPA,EMBA, NE-BC,CRNI, LNC
Karen Cox -- RN, PHD, FAAN,
Laurie Ellison -- EMBA
Xu Hong Fang -- RN
Hong Guo -- RN
Sufan Sun -- RN

Please watch for the second half to this article to be published later in December.

by Laura Liswood
Co-founder, The Council of Women World Leaders

Diversity and inclusion are instrumental for any organization that seeks innovation, creativity, and engaged employees. We don't need to make the business case for it; it is well accepted that a diverse workforce is essential to staying competitive in the global marketplace. In today's world, problems are complex, communication is global, and the environment is constantly changing. Diversity is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity.

The real question is, "Are we actually reaping the benefits of our diversity efforts?" By the benefits, I mean the advantage of capturing the differing ways people think about issues and experiences and creation of a truly level playing field. Without an even playing field, a real meritocracy that neither subtly advantages some nor disadvantages others, it is my opinion that organizations will never obtain the benefits they seek from their diversity initiatives.

A precondition to obtaining the advantage of diversity is skilled and aware leadership. Awareness means understanding that we all bring our unconscious self to the workplace. And if there is diversity, even a limited amount, that unconscious is the true gatekeeper preventing our ability to unlock the benefits of diversity within an organization.

Our unconscious perspectives, roles, associations, preferences, and archetypes are with us constantly, and we have learned them in a slow and subtle way. So slow and subtle in fact, we are not aware of what has happened to our world view.

Who teaches us about ourselves? Our hidden teachers include our parents, school teachers, peers, religion, the media, our daily experiences and the very myths, fairy tales and fables that were read to us at bedtime. Each whispers silently in our ear about what we 'know' about others and what we deem right and wrong.

In my book, The Loudest Duck (Wiley & Sons, 2010), I reference the old lessons that we learn from our 'hidden teachers' and how these lessons continue to have repercussions and legacies in the workplace. Many Americans, particularly boys, are taught that 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease' which means speak up and you get what you want. The Japanese may be taught that 'the nail that sticks out gets hit on the head' which is completely opposite in its intent. Women around the world hear 'if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all' and the Chinese are engrained to know that 'the loudest duck gets shot'. The last three are completely and diametrically opposite from the first aphorism, and each is brought to the table in a diverse workforce.

Unfortunately for our diversity efforts in the example above, only one group is easily comfortable raising their hand, speaking out, getting seen as having the knowledge, facts and ideas. The wheel gets the advantage; the nail, duck, and nice are at a disadvantage and the organization doesn't learn much about the ideas of the latter groups.

Obviously, diversity is needed, but so are the tools that unlock that diversity. Let me give you an example. All of us have been on conference calls. You hear the manager of the call say "Anyone out there have any comments?" Most of the time all you get is silence (or clicking of computer keys). What happened to all that cognitive diversity we wanted? We hear mainly from the people who are in the room with the manager. No one else speaks and all of those good ideas, fresh perspectives, and differing global awareness are gone. An easy solution would be to let people on the call know they will be called on and then by name, ask them for their comments. This is not rocket science, but it does require a far greater consciousness about who gets heard and how to ensure that all are included. How we unconsciously react to diversity is the key step that often gets skipped.

Most organizations have realized the business case for diversity and have made good faith attempts to hire people who reflect that business case. But once we get the diversity, we have not yet learned how to create an organization that fully obtains the benefits of it. Often this can be diagnosed by looking at the hierarchy and the numbers of individuals at various levels. In many companies today, it is not an intake problem, it is an upgrade problem. We get people in the door at the lower levels in the pyramid but they do not make it to the top. The heterogeneity gives way to homogeneity. Why? My belief is that we need to move now to Diversity 2.0 and give managers and leaders the training, awareness, skill sets, tools that ensure we engage and capture the full benefit of the diversity we say we are so committed to.

By Laura Raines
Pulse editor

If the purpose of nursing school is to prepare students for real-life practice, then it must address the challenges of working with a multicultural population, says Sharon Grason, nursing instructor at Georgia Perimeter College.

“If you work in an urban setting, it’s a rarity that the patient in the bed will come from your same background,” said Grason, MS, RN, CNS. “Cultural diversity is a growing part of nursing.”

Because she believed the nursing curriculum at GPC only skimmed the surface of cultural diversity, in 2010 Grason launched a senior capstone project to make nursing students more culturally aware. It’s now the last course nursing students take before they graduate.

Grason’s experience working with migrant farmers in Moultrie showed her how important multicultural understanding is for nurses.

“Seeing how migrants lived and worked totally opened my eyes and made me look at how to care for them in new ways,” she said.

To be effective, Grason knew she had to earn their trust.

“When you can show that you have some idea of their lives and what is important to them, the patients’ level of trust goes up tenfold,” she said. “They are more apt to listen and you are better able to help them.”

Grason wants nursing students to realize that diverse patient populations have different health care needs and challenges. To be effective nurses, students need to learn how to take those differences into consideration when caring for patients.

In the capstone project, teams of students choose a different culture to research.

“We begin to learn about the traditions, religious beliefs, social norms, common health problems, foods and the indigenous medical remedies of that population,” said Kristina Palmer, a GPC senior nursing student.

Her group is studying Russian and Eastern European cultures, and they have discovered a large population in metro Atlanta.

“Being aware of patients’ backgrounds and understanding the cultural dynamics can help you give better care,” Palmer said. “For example, in some cultures you have to talk to the dominant male in the family if you want medical advice to be followed. We’re not trying to change the culture, but to make patients more comfortable with how we’re trying to help them.”

Group presentations

The groups will present and share their findings — including a list of facts about the culture and answers to frequently asked questions — at an international cultural day at the end of the term.

“Many teams dress in costume, serve native foods, display cultural artifacts and hand out brochures about their cultures, so that students and guests can benefit from their research,” Grason said.

Nursing student Tarra Clark is studying migrant farmers, a mostly Hispanic population.

“We’re seeing how their eating practices are related to common health problems like high blood pressure or diabetes,” Clark said.

She has learned that glucose and blood-pressure screenings, earlier prenatal care and dietary education is helpful in treating many Hispanic patients.

“We all need to be aware that how we deliver health care to a patient makes a difference,” said Karen Feagin, a senior nursing student.

As a volunteer at a free health clinic, Feagin encounters people from all backgrounds. She’s learned that some cultures consider it rude to make eye contact with the patient. Some cultures require a same-sex practitioner and others have a mistrust of Western medicine.

“Sometimes when patients don’t understand what you are saying, they’ll just agree to be polite. When in doubt, it’s better to find a translator,” she said.

Feagin’s group is studying the culture of Koreans, a large and growing population in metro Atlanta.

“They have a higher risk for hypertension, but a diet that’s high in salt because of preserved foods, so that’s a challenge,” she said. “If they mistrust American health care, they will go to a local Korean practitioner or contact their family back home to get local herbs and medicines. If you know that, you can ask about herbs and help them choose ones that won’t interact negatively with the medicines you’ve given them.”

Valuable lessons

Feagin says the capstone course is enlightening and she looks forward to learning about other cultures from the other teams.

“I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know,” she said. “But you go into nursing to keep people healthy and help them achieve the best quality of life possible. This kind of knowledge will help us provide safer, more-intelligent care.”

Nursing is a second career for Feagin, who spent 10 years in accounting.

“Everyone ends up in the hospital at some point and it’s the nurses that dictate your experience. That’s who the patients remember” she said. “I wanted to be that person who is remembered because she made a difference in someone’s life. This is a great program and I’m thrilled to be in it.”

After three semesters of offering the capstone course, Grason will compile all the cultural information into a manual that the nursing department will give to its clinical partners and hospitals.

“We wanted to do something to give back and we hope that this will be a good resource for their educational departments,” she said.

from insideWorcester.com
By Dave Greenslit CORRESPONDENT

WORCESTER —  The city is diverse and becoming more so, presenting both challenges and opportunities.

That was the consensus of several speakers today at a forum called “The Changing Face of Worcester,” sponsored by the City Manager's Coalition on Bias and Hate and held at Worcester Public Library.

“Worcester remains a vibrant city made up of people from just about everywhere in the world,” said Edgar Luna, who works in the city's Department of Planning and Regulatory Services and gave an overview of 2010 census data.

That data show Worcester's white population has dropped from 70.8 percent in 2000 to 59.6 percent in 2010, while the Hispanic and black populations have grown from 15.1 percent to 20.09 percent and from 6.2 percent to 10.2 percent, respectively.

Ravi K. Perry, an assistant professor of political science at Clark University, said Worcester has always been a city of immigrants, but today's arrivals are from Southeast Asia, Central America and Africa, instead of Italy, Ireland and Armenia.

Medium-sized cities have been slow to respond to their changing populations, he said, but that doesn't have to be the case in Worcester. Calling the city one of the most diverse in the country, he said, “Worcester has the opportunity to be a model if we pay attention to these local demographics” and learn how minority interests can be represented.

School Superintendent Melinda J. Boone noted that 65 percent of students in Worcester schools are minorities and that 80 different languages are spoken by students in the system. Under a 2009 agreement with the federal Justice Department, all major school documents are translated into several of the major languages.

“We have a very diverse school population, and that's a real asset,” she said, adding that the changing demographics also present a challenge in achievement, especially because so many students are poor.

“We want to expose students to programs and opportunities that will close that gap,” Ms. Boone said. “An undereducated citizenry will cause Worcester to shrink and shrivel.”

Education will break the cycle of poverty by preparing students for the type of jobs that will be available to them, she said.

Mark Bilotta, chief executive officer of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium, said area colleges, with 30 percent minority enrollment, have some catching up to do to match the percentage in the city.

The consortium is working, he said, to retain talent for the regional workforce and to ensure students are prepared to work in a global economy, something enhanced by Worcester's diversity.

Luis G. Perez, a retired juvenile court judge, also stressed the importance of education. He said the dropout rate and the number of minority students expelled eventually results in many people being sent to prison.

“I believe in prevention,” Judge Perez said. “And the most important tool in prevention is education.”

“If the School Department doesn't do their job, where do people turn to? They turn to the courts,” he said.

Also speaking at the forum were Dr. Matilde Castiel of the UMass Memorial Medical Center and Stephen Hill of the city's Department of Neighborhood Services/Economic Development.

Excerpts of this article are from Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, Editor-in-Chief for the American Journal of Nursing

At the most recent Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) biennial meeting in Gaylord Texas, there was a seminar and discussion of the top 10 issues facing nursing, led by STTI’s publications director Renee Wilmeth. The issues were compiled from responses provided by 30 nursing leaders, and were presented in question form:

1) Is evidence-based practice (EBP) helpful or harmful? (Amazing how many interpretations there were of EBP, some of them—as I know from our EBP series—quite incorrect.)
2) What is the long-term impact of technology on nursing?
3) Can we all agree that a bachelor’s degree should be the minimum level for entry into practice? (General agreement here, despite concerns regarding the adequacy of financial support for achieving this goal.)
4) DNP vs PhD: separate but equal? (Not much discussion—I think no one wanted to really get into this.)
5) How do nurses get a seat at the policy table?
6) How do nurses cope with the growing ethical demands of practice? (This generated the most discussion, especially around whether society should provide unlimited costly care to those whose personal choices contribute to their health problems.)
7) How do we fix the workplace culture of nursing?
8) What role do nurse leaders play in the profession?
9) What are we doing about the widening workforce age gap?
10) How do we make the profession as diverse as the population for whom it cares?

What do you think? Would you agree that these are the ‘top 10’ issues? What’s missing? What’s here that shouldn’t be? We would love to hear your opinions, please share them here.

By Sam Baker - 10/31/11

The Health and Human Services Department on Monday finalized new standards to track broad factors that affect people’s health.

The standards are part of HHS’s effort to reduce healthcare disparities — differences in health status and access to healthcare that stem from social, cultural and environmental issues.

HHS devised the new standards to provide more detailed information than what it has collected previously. The department cited, for example, differing rates of diabetes between Mexican-Americans and Cuban-Americans. By tracking health data on that level, rather than using catchall terms like “Hispanic,” HHS says it will be better able to address health disparities.

The standards announced Monday also include tobacco use, obesity, education level and exposure to secondhand smoke.

“It is our job to get a better understanding of why disparities occur and how to eliminate them,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. “Improving the breadth and quality of our data collection and analysis on key areas, like race, ethnicity, sex, primary language and disability status, is critical to better understanding who we are serving.”

A study published this month in the journal Health Affairs found that private insurance companies are also doing a better job tracking health disparities. The number of health plans collecting racial and ethnic data more than doubled from 2003 to 2008, the study found.

by Pamela Babcock - Freelance Witer
for shrm.org

NEW YORK—Getting diversity and inclusion (D&I) “right” requires strong CEO commitment. But an all-white panel of CEOs who recently won diversity leadership awards said the seeds for their passion were planted long before they entered the corporate ranks.

George Borst, president and CEO of Toyota Financial Services, grew up playing stickball in Hollis, Queens, N.Y., while Michael I. Roth, chairman and CEO of Interpublic Group, was raised in nearby Brooklyn. Michael Howard, COO of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, lived on military bases because his father was in the Air Force.

Meanwhile, John Edwardson, chairman and CEO of CDW, was raised in a small southern Illinois town that had just one African-American couple but later lived in Hyde Park, a diverse area on Chicago’s South Side. And John B. Veihmeyer, chairman and CEO of KPMG, who has five sisters and two daughters, said he has seen first-hand the career challenges the women in his family have faced.

Personal experiences frame you, Veihmeyer told attendees June 8, 2011, at the CEO Diversity Leadership Awards and CEO Forum, held at Columbia University here. “You’re actually in a position now to try to make a difference about something that has probably been important to you your whole life.”

The 2011 CEO Diversity Leadership Awards were presented by Diversity Best Practices, a New York-based membership group for diversity and inclusion practitioners. In addition, the group recognized diversity officers with its annual Diversity Officers Leadership Award (DOLA).

2011 DOLA winners included Herbertina “Tina” Johnson, senior director of diversity for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service; Melissa Donaldson, director of inclusion practices at CDW; Heide Gardner, chief diversity and inclusion officer at Interpublic Group; Kathy Hopinkah Hannan, national managing partner of diversity and corporate responsibility at KPMG and Joe Husman, corporate manager of corporate social responsibility for Toyota Financial Services.

Carol Evans, CEO of Diversity Best Practices and president of Working Mother Media, said the awards recognize CEOs who are “leading the culture” and diversity officers “who not only have the strategy on their shoulders, but also have to make sure that everything gets implemented.”

The Business Case

During the event, several CEOs explained why diversity is a strategic imperative:

Borst said diversity is key to helping mirror the market his company competes in and said Toyota Financial Services makes more loans to African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans and women than does any other captive finance company in North America. “By having an organization and a structure that is diverse, we’re better able to understand this market,” he said.

Toyota supports underserved and underprivileged communities, “which unfortunately are dominated, in a lot of cases, by diversity,” Borst noted. This has had a spillover effect with employees: In the most recent annual associate opinion survey, 96 percent said that they thought that Toyota Financial Services was socially responsible, he added.

Instead of what he called “checkbook charity,” Borst said, the company participates in events at Boys & Girls Clubs of East Los Angeles, where associates “can dig in and volunteer and build relationships both with the community and with one another.”

As a professional services firm, KPMG requires intellectual capital that is as diverse as the clients it serves. Veihmeyer said it’s easy to get passionate about diversity because “it’s the right thing to do, for all the right reasons.”

But if that’s all you view it as, you’re not going to succeed, he said.

“We can’t have our diversity initiatives kind of tucked over to the side as some fifth leg to a stool,” he said. “What we have tried to do is to bake diversity into each of those four strategic priorities: quality growth, professionalism and integrity, being an employer of choice, and maintaining a global mind-set,” Veihmeyer explained.

The company can’t afford to fail to attract or retain a single high performer because it doesn’t believe KPMG is “supportive, committed to and totally focused on their success, irrespective of what their background or other needs may be,” Veihmeyer added. That’s why, among other things, the company has a key accounts rotation program that targets ethnically diverse associates to ensure that, early in their careers, they receive the client exposure and broad range of experience needed to succeed.

Roth of Interpublic, an advertising and marketing giant with 41,000 employees in 130 countries, noted that the advertising industry has “historically been terrible when it comes to diversity and inclusion,” pointing to the television show “Mad Men” as an example. His firm’s diversity initiatives are a differentiator in the marketplace because “If we’re not communicating the message correctly for our clients, we lose our clients.”

Edwardson of CDW, an IT products and services provider, said that shortly after he joined the company, he asked about the company’s target market and was told by its advertising agency that it was “white males between the ages of 26 and 42.” A couple of weeks later, he viewed focus group videos and realized quickly that this wasn’t the case. Changes were made and revenue grew. Diversity is “clearly the right thing to do, but it has been darn good business for CDW as well,” he said.

Bringing the Mission to Life

Borst said recent drama—a global recession, product recalls and a tsunami and earthquake in Japan—could have pushed diversity onto the sidelines at Toyota. However, “What we have tried to do is to make sure it stays as one of the important priorities,” he said. “I try to make sure the behavior I’m trying to model is modeled by the rest of the people on the management committee, and it all cascades down,” he said.

The Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which provide goods and services for the Army and Air Force, has about 43,000 employees in 30 countries. Howard said he likes “helping develop the future.” He spends a couple of hours each week with different diverse groups and asks high performers “what can we do to help you?” Howard said they usually have the hard skills—they know how to do the jobs—but they often lack networking or social skills. “They are very eager to learn,” Howard reflected. “I say ‘well I’ve got half an hour,’ and two hours later we’re still talking.”

At CDW, it’s critical to build the pipeline at all levels of the organization, according to Edwardson. “I spent a lot of time with recruiting to make sure that for every single opening that we have that comes up that we have a diverse list of candidates,” he said.

Roth noted just how influential some diversity groups can be. Interpublic’s Women’s Leadership Network, which has about 10,000 participants globally, sponsored an event in June 2011, titled “Beyond Mad Men: Toward Gender Diversity in Creative Roles,” during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Roth will host the event, which will be moderated by CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien and feature a panel that includes Martha Stewart. It will focus on the dearth of women in the most senior creative roles and what can be learned from women who have made inroads in advertising, marketing and media.

In the end, organizers emphasized, it’s important to have a partnership between the chief executive and chief diversity officer. Andrés Tapia, president of Diversity Best Practices, said that without an effective diversity leader, “a CEO’s commitment cannot be turned into the strategies, programs, processes and action plans that bring the mission to life.”

In closing, Gardner of Interpublic offered this thought: “What I am learning is: Inclusion is pretty much the same everywhere,” she said. “It’s not just about making diversity counts but about making diversity count. And that holds true wherever you are.”

Pamela Babcock is a freelance writer based in the New York City area.

from

A new poll from the Society for Human Resource Management shows that only two in 10 organizations have an internal group focused on diversity within the organization.

Regardless of whether organizations do or do not have internal groups — a diversity-focused committee, council, or advisory board — the human resources group plays a significant role in diversity initiatives. When asked, “Who is responsible for implementing diversity initiatives at your organization?” 65% of poll respondents cited the human resources group. Another 62% said the human resources group is responsible for leading diversity initiatives.

The second most cited group responsible for both implementing and leading diversity initiatives is the president/CEO and his or her office, said 21% of respondents polled.

The findings were released yesterday to an audience of human resource and business professionals attending the 2011 SHRM Diversity & Inclusion Conference & Exposition in Washington, D.C.

“While internal diversity councils aren’t the only way that an organization can move the needle around diversity and inclusion, these results are an indication of how few organizations are responding to the world’s rapidly changing demographics in a proactive and meaningful way,” says Eric Peterson, manager of diversity and inclusion at SHRM. “Clearly, we still have a lot of work to do.”

Additional findings include:

* In fiscal year 2010, 16% of organizations represented in the poll had a diversity training budget (29% of the 16% has a separate, stand-alone diversity training budget while 71% factored it into the overall training budget).

* Comparing fiscal year 2011 to 2010, diversity training budgets remained the same in 75% of organizations, increased in 14% of organizations, and decreased in 10% of organizations.

* 55% of poll respondents said their organization has a formal, written policy addressing sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. Another 36% have no policy, formal or informal. Nine percent rely on an informal policy.

* Regarding gender identity and/or gender expression, 21% of organizations have a written policy while 79% do not.

© 2010 Thomson Reuters.

By Todd Henneman
Workforce.com

Lecturing employees about diversity is one thing, but some companies are taking training a step further. Strategies include engaging employees in teamwork exercises and having workers simulate disabilities.

In July, Jennifer Vena decided to talk with colleagues about Tourette’s syndrome after watching video clips of American Idol contestant James Durbin and public speaker Marc Elliot, both of whom have the neurological disorder known for causing motor and vocal tics.

It’s the latest in a string of topics advanced by Vena since she decided a year ago to add one item about diversity to her team’s monthly meeting agenda. “It is really each individual making a commitment to demonstrate inclusiveness in his or her daily actions that will make a difference,” says Vena, a senior consultant at Bright Horizons Family Solutions, a private company that manages employer-provided child care centers.

Vena’s self-imposed monthly commitment is part of an initiative known as One Thing introduced last year by Bright Horizons. The brainchild of the company’s diversity council, One Thing challenges employees to take one action that fosters workplace diversity and inclusion. More than 600 employees have submitted One Thing commitments. Other employees have vowed to take new co-workers to lunch so they feel welcomed or to read books to learn about other dimensions of diversity.

“It’s an evolution of the way we’re doing the work,” says Dan Henry, Bright Horizons’ chief human resources officer and co-chair of the diversity council. “There is only so much training you can do in this space. At some point, it has to come down to what people do.”

Bright Horizons isn’t the only company whose diversity practices are evolving. Increasingly, companies are supplementing lectures with activities ranging from simulating deafness to using case studies that hone skills for navigating complex situations. The goal: to create better managers, not simply more sensitive ones.

“Companies are offering courses on how to be an effective team member, conflict resolution, cultural agility,” says Quinetta Roberson, a management professor at Villanova University’s School of Business who has researched diversity trends. “They’re giving people an openness to experience where people can deal in various contexts with various people, where people have the tools to navigate in any context.”

Beyond guilt trips

The National Training Laboratories of Bethel, Maine, which is now called the NTL Institute, determined more than a decade ago that “practice by doing” is second only to “teaching others” as the most effective way of learning. But only in recent years has diversity training transitioned away from side shows and guilt trips to skill-building, such as resolving conflict and providing developmental feedback to subordinates with whom managers have little in common.

“People learn more by doing,” says Ondra Berry, co-founder of training firm Guardian Quest. “We can recite experiences from our lives blow-by-blow because we remember more when we’re actively involved, especially when it has made an impact on us.” NV Energy Inc., which provides electricity to 2.4 million customers throughout Nevada, hired Guardian Quest for three days of training four times per year.

The sessions are about teamwork as much as they are about diversity. In one, a line of people must navigate under chairs and around other obstacles, communicating only through taps and touches. In another, the group must figure out how to pass everyone through a spider web of ropes.

Carolyne Sharp attended the training after changing jobs involuntarily as part of a reorganization at NV Energy. She was unhappy because she had been transferred from a power plant, where she liked her co-workers, to the corporate office, where she would be working in purchasing and contracts.

“After I took the training, I was fired up,” Sharp says. “I found my voice. I wasn’t afraid to say something anymore. The true me came out again.”

Since, she has won five awards for her efforts to expand the number of minority suppliers, holds regular reunions for her training cohorts and organizes an annual companywide event to honor veterans.

The earliest forms of diversity education arose soon after President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order in 1961 that required federal contractors to “take affirmative action” to avert discrimination based on race or national origin. By 1963, government contractors such as Western Electric provided two days of lectures and discussions about prejudice to leaders of all their locations.

During the 1970s when the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gained the power to bring lawsuits against private companies, training sessions proliferated to help employers avoid litigation. These compliance sessions evolved in the 1990s into training that used broader definitions of diversity, including factors such as sexual orientation, religion, communication styles and tenure.

Now, companies are increasingly looking for quantifiable returns on their investment. They’re tracking employee engagement to see whether the training translates into higher scores and looking at 360-degree evaluations to see whether managers gained skills.

“The expectation is more than a good experience,” says Michael Hyter, president of diversity consultant Global Novations. “It’s real, measurable learning. It’s a measurable outcome. There is a specific skill that ought to be obvious for the investment that we’re making in this person’s development experience.”

Hyter says that he holds his firm to a different standard than he did a decade ago, emphasizing to clients how his firm’s training builds competencies and enhances employee engagement.

In one instance, a client had become alarmed about turnover among women of color. Hyter’s firm conducted a cultural audit, which suggested managers were weak at providing developmental feedback across the board, not only to women of color. The firm identified competencies, trained managers and embedded behavior into 360-degree evaluations every 90 days. Within 18 months, turnover decreased and more women and minorities had risen within the organization.

“If we talked 10 years ago, I would have said we gave 5,000 people diversity training and left, and they loved it,” Hyter says. “But nothing much would have changed. There was no real measurable change in behavior or skills.” Nowadays, he asks specifically what outcome clients seek and looks at what skills drive those results.

In 2010, 68 percent of the member organizations surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management indicated that they have practices in place to address workplace diversity compared with 76 percent of organizations surveyed in 2005. But of companies with diversity practices, 71 percent say they provide training compared with 67 percent in 2005.

“The organizations that were really invested in diversity and inclusion work before the recession hit remain so,” says Eric Peterson, SHRM’s manager of diversity and inclusion. “Those who were getting started, it was an easy cut to make when they needed to cut back.”

Making an investment

Sodexo Inc. is among the companies that have invested years of time and money into diversity strategy. The food and facilities-management services company offers multiple diversity workshops available to everyone from cashiers to members of the C-suite, invites outside speakers to lead sessions at its annual diversity conference and offers webinars available anytime from any location.

“We use every opportunity we can to spark people’s interest and seed a desire to learn more,” says Betsy Silva Hernandez, Sodexo’s senior director of diversity, learning and consulting.

Managers attend a full-day diversity workshop, facilitated by a cohort of external trainers, within six month of joining the company. There, managers learn about their role in building an inclusive workplace, reflect on their own views of diversity and explore situations that they may encounter. One scenario presents a white male voicing resentment based on his perception of reverse discrimination.

“It gives them an opportunity to talk about the issues in a safe place—what they feel are going to be their challenges—and an opportunity to talk about what they can better do to lead in this space,” Hernandez says.

Managers can opt to attend 15 Diversity Learning Labs, follow-up sessions that range from 90 minutes to three hours offered throughout the year. Topics include gender, sexual orientation, cross-cultural communication and disabilities. A recent lab simulated working with disabilities. For one hour, participants lived with a disability. One employee wore special earplugs that blocked all sound, another temporarily lost vision, while someone else spent time in a wheelchair.

“We want it to be interactive,” Hernandez says. “We look at 90 percent interaction and 10 percent sharing information and raising awareness.”

John Friedman, director of public relations for Sodexo, gave up his sense of hearing during the lab. He went with a colleague to a place that was “100 percent familiar, where we’d been to 100 times in our own building,” he says. “It was a markedly different experience and profoundly humbling.”

Eight years ago, Sodexo also began conducting an annual diversity and business summit, a place where it tests new learning labs on such topics as generational differences. Each year, the full-day event is held in a different region, with area managers invited to attend with North American president and CEO George Chavel and his executive team.

As diversity has become ingrained into business strategies, Chavel and other chief executives are immersing themselves in their companies’ initiatives. Their involvement underscores the organizational commitment to diversity.

Consider, for example, Mark Wagar, president and CEO of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the New York City-based subsidiary of WellPoint Inc. In 2008, the company introduced the Empire Diversity Council to serve as an advisory body to its senior-management team. Wagar then launched a “community ambassador program” in which members of employee resource groups help identify ways of better serving their own demographic.

When Asian employees formed a resource group last year, they asked Wagar to serve as executive sponsor because, he says, “of my activism.” A self-described “giant Dutchman,” Wagar agreed and is working with members on a business plan detailing employee education and customer research goals.

“If it’s a business reality that there’s lots of old white men running companies, if you don’t have old white men who are willing to speak out about this and about how it [diversity] makes richer lives and better business,” Wagar says, “it’s not going to go as fast as it otherwise would.”

Some companies also are linking diversity education to performance evaluations. Bright Horizons evaluates employees against the company’s values, known as the Heart Principles. Employees learn about this connection in diversity training they attend during their first 90 days. Among those principles: “We strengthen our organization by embracing diversity and never allowing acts of nonacceptance.”

Sodexo goes further. It ties managers’ bonuses to training, recruitment and other diversity goals. This connection provides an incentive for managers to attend additional training sessions and to encourage subordinates to do so, as well. The strategy appears to be working: In fiscal 2009, 2,900 employees participated in 85 learning labs, and the next year 6,900 attended 243 labs. Through June, Sodexo already had exceeded its 2010 attendance.

Discussions about business cases for diversity—reducing turnover-related expenses, tapping new market niches, better understanding customers—still dominate conferences.

But Caesars Entertainment Corp. is taking a novel approach. Fred Keeton, chief diversity officer of the casino operator based in Las Vegas, has developed a concept that he calls “Diverse by Design.” Many organizations assume that having a diverse workforce naturally creates better teams, but Keeton handpicks team members to ensure that the teams have what he considers to be the relevant mix.

He applies the hospitality industry’s concept of yield management to diversity, creating teams with what he considers the best mix of cognitive styles and experiences to solve thorny business problems or drive revenue.

“Every dimension is not always important to what you want to do,” says Keeton who is also vice president of finance for external affairs. “You’ve got to manage your diversity like you manage so many other things.”

He mines employee data, picking the most relevant attributes using a matrix that considers everything from thinking styles to job function, geography, cultural style and the traits traditionally thought of as diversity: race, gender or ethnicity.

Insight into cognitive styles, for example, comes from the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument survey, collected and shared with employees in diversity training conducted during their first 90 days.

Caesars uses Diverse by Design teams for only its toughest tasks. “If you have a problem that’s a really easy problem, having a lot of diversity doesn’t necessarily help you answer that problem,” Keeton says. “If you’ve got a really hairy, nasty, dirty problem that’s hard to solve, diversity becomes most potent. We call it creating the capacity to call the baby ugly because the people who created the baby aren’t going to call it ugly.”

The company piloted the first two teams in 2009 and has since formed eight other teams. One looked at ways of improving buffets. The team didn’t review the food itself, but rather proposed ways to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of buffet operations. A second team looked at the revenue-management systems of hotels, while another focused on whether to buy new or retain existing slot machines and what mix of games to offer.

Keeton says the results are proprietary information but the strategy is working.

Yet even after 50 years, diversity programs continue to spark debate. Sociologist Frederick Lynch, an associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, argues that diversity programs promote the notion of hiring people because of their skin color, gender or other demographic traits. He considers this tokenism.

“As I see it, we have gone from trying to make up for past discrimination to affirmative discriminations,” says Lynch, author of The Diversity Machine: The Drive to Change the “White Male Workplace.” Changing demographics may lead to a “natural affirmative action,” he says.

But other experts believe diversity won’t just happen without a lot of hard work. Patti Digh, a former vice president of international and diversity programs for SHRM and co-founder of the training firm the Circle Project, voices her frustration that companies insist on developing business cases before advancing diversity, saying this demand amounts to a stalling tactic. Diversity programs no longer need to be justified, Digh says.

They’re core business tools that should be integrated across product development, marketing and communication, not thought of as a separate silo.

“In the year 2011, continuing to say, ‘We have to build a business case for diversity’ is like saying, ‘We should really look into this new Internet fad,’ ” Digh says.

By MICHELLE T. JOHNSON
http://michelletjohnson.com
Special writer to The Kansas City Star

Through the end of the year I will be looking a little more deeply into the definition of common terms that come up when discussing workplace diversity. Let’s start with “diversity” itself.

Although I’ve written about it in this column for several years and directly and indirectly defined it, people still seem confused. Or rather, my definition goes against the common, comfortable, self-centered way that people are used to thinking about diversity.

Most people think of diversity as a synonym for “race relations.” If they are particularly cynical or hate the very idea of it, then they think of diversity as another way of saying “affirmative action,” which really makes a negative in their minds.

My definition of diversity that I train with is layered and involved, and provides a great starting point for discussions in my workshops and longer writings.

But in a nutshell, it’s about difference — the difference between two people that can or does affect how they approach their jobs. Everything from the small difference of a person who has an assigned parking space to the person who has to circle the lot to find a decent space.

Diversity is also about the differences that are large and societal, such as race or sex. Recently I visited the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, N.C., and trust me, there is nothing small in seeing film footage and photos of the horrific things that Americans have done to Americans in the name of racial superiority.

Though the remnants of that legacy still leave their mark and have mutated into new dynamics of discrimination, it’s not just the big differences that count.

One of the difficulties of dealing with diversity is that it requires one to look at comparisons. That’s why the common definition of diversity is often self-centered.

People have a tendency to look at it through the lens that either supports who they are or potentially harms them.

But when diversity serves to simply determine difference as a measure of bringing several viewpoints or frames of reference into a working situation, it can be seen as a positive and not a threat.

Or to paraphrase something I recently read, if two people think exactly the same when trying to solve a problem or address a challenge, one of those people is completely irrelevant.

Diversity is about making everyone relevant.

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/09/19/3153953/with-diversity-everyone-is-relevant.html