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Assignment II

Zainab Amin Georgetown University

Question1.

Women have entered the work force in increasing numbers since the mid-1970s. Today, these women represent half of the workforce in American at 52% and are a model of high-level performance, personal maturity and significant professional experience, however, irrespective of that only 37% of these women are in management positions which further drops to 26% at vice presidential positions and 14% at the executive level (McKinsey & Company, 2011). These statistics reflect underlying mechanisms of discrimination against women at top level of management. Organizations need to understand and actively engage themselves to uncover any institutional discrimination that is preventing women to achieve their full potential in leadership roles by creating a culture of support that effectively make use of women talents and their abilities. McKinsey & Company in one of their reports Unlocking the Full Potential of Women in the U.S. Economy argue that organizational structure and the role of mindset are some of the key challenges that women face in their career advancement. At the organizational level, the inability of businesses to create a culture of inclusion makes women feel disengaged. This is very much apparent in the lack of access women have at the top level informal networks (e.g. golf clubs etc) where women can not only make connections with senior leadership but also feel recognized and valued at the executive level. Similarly, the lack of women role models at the top management takes away the sense of affinity and belonging. Another, organizational barrier is the lack of flexibility in terms of work life balance (McKinsey & Company, 2011). Although, workforce demographics have changed considerably, the ability of organization with changing

3 needs of employees has been lagging; this is particularly evident in the area of work life balance. The studies show that women want different things from work than men, the factors that motivate them are the sense of meaning they drive from work and the flexibility of work arrangements, 64% of women cite flexible work arrangements as the most important factor compared to 43% who cite money as a motivating factor (Tapia, 2009). In addition to that, the other set of challenges that provide hindrance in women progressing at the corporate ladder are in terms of deep rooted stereotypes in organizational cultural about women and leadership i-e the assumption about women inability to perform certain tasks at the top level. In his book The Inclusion Paradox, Tapia (2009) refers to various studies which uncover the prejudiced stereotyping about the concept of leadership and how it has come to be culturally associated with the manly traits like self-reliant, forceful, independent, assertive etc. Lastly, women own set of beliefs are also shown to be the contributing factors towards their lack of career advancement, it is argued that as women age they become less competitive in their desire to advance to higher level as compared to men who at all ages desire to take more responsibility and greater control over results, 43% of men vs. 34% of women, (McKinsey & Company, 2011).

The above mentioned challenges that women face in leadership and career advancement are not limited to women working in America. In his book, Tapia (2009) mentions how women make almost half the workforce across the globe and yet out of 40% employed worldwide only 24% of them hold top management positions. This shows that race/nationality and female gender intersect across the globe and common point of intersection are lower wage rate for women and lack of women representation at senior level. These issues are more persuasive in regions like

4 Latin America and Asia where the concept of diversity and preventing workplace discrimination are relatively new.

Although, the challenges to create inclusive culture for women at management level seem daunting the gains to be derived from such measures are bountiful. The recent research in this area shows that the inclusion of women at the top level increase an organizations shareholder value. The organizations with highest number of women at executive level had 35% higher return on equity and 34% higher return to shareholders as compared to organization who had few women at the senior level (Tapia, 2009). This business case for women in leadership has promoted many organizations to include best practices to attract and retain women in their organizations. Some of these initiatives include making conscious efforts to diversify the workforce, bridging the wage differential and introducing mentoring programs. However, as seen from the numbers quoted above, these efforts have not been enough to retain women and lead them into leadership roles, additional measures need to be taken especially to address some of the challenges mentioned earlier. The first step in this regard should be moving beyond diversity and creating a culture of inclusion focused on making women feel more valued and engaged in the organization. This can be achieved by changing the organizations mindset about traditional concept of leadership and realizing that the traits associated with being women make them no less of a leader and accepting the different leadership styles that are inherent in a diverse workforce. Secondly, the traditional concept of mentoring should be revamped, organizations should develop reverse mentoring opportunities for women, this would allow the senior leaders to get to know women more closely in terms of the skills and attributes they bring to work and help channelizing these skills to tap into leadership roles. Lastly, organizations should rethink

5 about the work designs and arrangements by keeping in mind the factors that motivate women and develop appropriate methods of rewards and recognition based on such factors, e.g. by designing work systems that give women the opportunity to avail reduced work hours or ability to work from home as compared to designing competitive compensation structure that do not hold great motivating factor for women (Tapia, 2009)

Question 3:

Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) is sustainable when it is strategically aligned with an organizations mission, day to day operations, patterns of growth and profitability. Moreover, sustainable D&I also mean that it is deep rooted into employee life cycle from recruitment to retirement (Tapia, 2009). The alignment of diversity and inclusion to an organizations purpose of being/mission ensures that employees understand it as a core value for the organization with direct impact on the bottom line. Similarly, tying diversity and inclusion to operations strategy means ensuring that it is part of organizational internal work systems.

The measures that are undertaken for sustainable D&I within an organization develop a culture of retention for women and minority because it not only attracts a diverse workforce by means of adopting pragmatic diversity but also ensures that the diverse workforce feel valued and engaged within the organizational culture. This can be achieved by developing an organization environment based on cultural competence, which means that individuals are able to understand and take into account each other cultural differences and use them to their advantage by treating them as a better and creative way to solve problems. Moreover, another factor in

6 sustainable D&I that retains minority and women in the organization is its ability to include them in its talent pipeline and investing in their career development. Similarly, compensation system based on minority and women needs and work designs developed to meet the needs of this particular group are also some of the motivating factors to stay loyal to the company promoting sustainable diversity and inclusion. (Tapia, 2009)

The case study of Coca Cola, gives a real life example of an organization that embedded the concept of sustainable D&I not only in its strategic mission but also in every aspect of its employees life cycle. Coca Cola started off by strategically aligning its culture and business goals with diversity and inclusion initiatives. This link made the employees view diversity tied to the overall success of the organization. Secondly, the company also ensured that sustainable diversity and inclusion was reflected in the way it recruited, promoted and compensated its staff. In terms of recruitment, Coca Cola ensured that the staffing measures were inclusive of women and minorities and developed an ongoing impact assessment mechanism to ensure that corrective actions were taken if any step in staffing procedure was found to have an adverse impact on the women or minority groups. Similarly, the performance management system was designed to be fair and inclusive of all its employees and tied to the training and development needs of the workforce. Also in order to ensure that employees saw the performance management system as fair and transparent, it was explained and communicated to all the employees. Another measure that the company took for ensuring sustainable diversity initiative was implementing a compensation system and giving employees and managers the communications tools to understand it. In order to ensure that the compensation system was fair for all its employees a monitoring system was put in place and managers were held accountable for the decisions they

7 made regarding employees salary. Also in order to ensure diversity at senior level, managers were compensated for taking such initiatives. Lastly, Coca Cola developed and implemented a diversity awareness/education program as mandatory diversity training. It developed an impact assessment analysis of the program to ensure that it was updated and relevant to current work practices and the company also aligned this program with the growth strategy. The above five factors adopted by Coca Cola shows the companys commitment to adopting and promoting sustainable diversity initiatives (Chair, Lee, Knowles & Redwood, 2006)

Question 2:

The main point of contention in Ricci v. DeStefano case was a trade-off between the validity of the selection procedure and the goals of promoting a diverse group of firefighters. The City of New Havens used selection procedure based on the written and oral tests that would promote firefighters to the positions of Captains and Lieutenants. However, the results of the test showed that it had racially adverse impact on minority groups especially African Americans. Based on these results and for the fear of lawsuit from the minority group, the City disregarded the tests and claimed that it had a disparate impact on the minority groups (Dawkins, 2006).

The challenges that HR faced in the case was to assess the legal dimensions of diversity efforts at their department, they made the mistake of assuming that racial disparity in pass rate was enough to constitute a claim for discrimination. The second challenge that HR faced was due to its lack of prior planning on how to respond to the results of the test based on its validity, such concerns should have been raised prior to holding the test than after it was conducted. Thirdly, the HR did

8 not have a strategic diversity plan in place and they tried to define it in narrow terms more specifically in terms of African Americans.

This case was interesting from the prospect of diversity because it challenges the employers to look beyond the narrow definition of diversity. The City framed its diversity efforts by actually saying that it wants to provide opportunities specifically to African Americans and that left out the white firefighters who eventually sued the City for reverse discrimination. The final ruling on this case in favor of the defendants show that an employer should not take measures that would ensure equal employment or promotional opportunities based on race or other protected category. The court further argued that the only way an employer can engage in intentional discrimination for the asserted purpose of avoiding or remedying an unintentional disparate impact, the employer must have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability if it fails to take the race-conscious, discriminatory action. (Dawkins, 2006). This court decision has wilder implications for employers as now they will have to invest much more time, attention, and thought into employment practices and procedures, because they cannot modify ultimate outcome based on fear of unintentional disparate impact, the employer need to have a strong basis in evidence to believe that the process would not survive a disparate-impact lawsuit before nullifying the final results (Dawkins, 2006).

The second important point in the case was the validity of the promotion test used by the fire department. The administration of tests is one of the selection criteria that many organizations use to attract, promote and retain best talent. Such tests can be a good predictor of measuring an employees ability to perform the job. However, these tests need to be valid i-e the test measures

9 knowledge skills, abilities and other characteristics which are relevant to better job performance. The validity of tests is important because without it employers would make selection and promotion decisions that are not related to job performance and will ultimately have the potential to expose them to a law suits. However, if an employer can devise a test that is valid and related to job necessity but its result cause disparate impact on members of protected class, it has the right to use the test if it can show that no alternative tests are available with less discriminatory impact. The challenge for HR is to devise valid test procedures which are valid and directly linked to the business necessity. There is no reason that an organization cannot make use of tests as a tool for selection criteria but it needs to ensure that the validity of test is not questionable.

10 References

1. Tapia,T.Andres ( 2009). The Inclusion Paradox ( 1st ed.) . Hewitt Associates

2. Mackenzy & Company, (2011). Unlocking the full potential of women in US economy.

3. Alexis, M. Herman, Chair, H.M.A, Burns ,M.A, Casellas,F.J,Cooke,D.E, Lee, L.B & Redwood, A. R ( 2006). Fifth annual report of the task force

4. Dawkins, F. (2006). Is Diversity None of Your Business? Lessons from Ricci v. DeStefano.