We have all heard that in diversity and inclusion initiatives need support and drive from the very top to be successful.  So how do CEOs and top management show their commitment to diversity and inclusion?  We have asked a few diversity professionals for their opinions and have distilled their replies here.

“CEO commitment for D&I isn’t a simple, single statement and/or action, rather a process which involves the whole organization.  As D&I practitioners we often look to the CEO, or someone at the highest levels of the organization to support and advocate for D&I.   The usual reply we get is that their job is to make the business run properly.  When the business case for D&I is clear and aligned to the organization, there is an overall greater chance that the CEO will openly state his/her commitment.  Whether that commitment is linked to advocating the human capital component, new and emerging markets, corporate social responsibility, shareholder value and/or various other key business drivers – it is very important to provide senior leadership, with the information and knowledge needed to understand how D&I can be viewed as a business strategy and something that will enhance the overall performance of the organization. At the end of the day – it’s all about results (i.e., bottomline impact) with everything else simply conversation.”

“CEOs and management should demonstrate their commitment to diversity and inclusion through an active participation in the process. A few ways to demonstrate are: 

  • Attend meetings regarding D&I, whether they are ERGs or the Diversity Council. 
  • Creating a culture that requires support of organizational D&I initiatives.
  • Allocate funds for D&I initiatives
    Practicing D&I in their daily lives within and outside of the organization.”

“CEOs cannot carry the entire D&I initiatives alone. It is an organizational effort that requires participation at all levels.  However, there are things they could encourage:

  1. Looking at policies and structures to ensure these promote D&I
  2. Being educated themselves about D&I
  3. Allowing time for people to adjust to their organization
  4. Creating platforms for exchange and debate, and embracing even those who do not agree….for they have a right to an opinion too!”

“The CEO needs to –

  • work flexibly and promote flexible working,
  • actively mentor a diverse pool of talented individuals and not just those who match the top of the organisation,
  • change HR policies to reflect this”

“The CEO has to voice with conviction and confidence what s/he means by diversity and how diversity and inclusive culture are essential to the success of the enterprise. Diversity as “woven into the fabric” is a helpful metaphor to start with. 

  • The CEO must establish diversity learning (not training) programs. D+I learning means development of diversity skills, or competencies, from the bottom up; training suggests passive, top down, being-told-what’s-right-and-wrong.
  • The CEO must address diversity resistance. People often resist “diversity” and D+I training because they are being blamed for things they don’t do. They also sometimes think their personal belief system is being challenged by the “political correctness” of diversity programming. People are much more likely to accept and learn from diversity learning that steers clear of politics and stays based on research about things like unconscious bias. People must perceive that diversity learning benefits everyone and the whole enterprise.
  • The CEO must establish effective diversity learning platforms that are right for his or her company. Diversity programing should never shame, blame, or finger-point. It should start with basics, such as an inclusive definition of diversity. It should be engaging and fascinating. It has to be practical, i.e., affordable for the company and not overly taxing time-wise for the learner.”

 

 

This article appeared earlier this year in Harvard Business Review and looks at how rude and disrespectful behavior, often from the top, affects a company’s bottom line.  When employees are treated badly, this reflects negatively on the company’s performance and services to the clients.  Needless to say, there are more ways than one to treat people respectfully.  The Golden Rule of Inclusion states: “treat everyone the way you would like to be treated:”  However, the Platinum Rule of Inclusion trumps it by saying: “treat everyone the way they want to be treated.”  It does make a big difference.

When we talk about inclusion in the workplace, starting from a position of mutual respect is one of the most basic rules. Nobody likes working for a boss who constantly treats you disrespectfully, ignores your qualities in favor of your faults, however minor, and overlooks your achievements.  If employees are expected to give their best at work, the least they can expect is to be treated respectfully.  Being treated with respect bears more importance in certain cultures, such as Native American, or Asian.  The concept of “losing face” is also something that employers, managers and supervisors need to be aware of, as it can have serious repercussions for people outside the dominant culture.

“Rudeness at work is rampant, and it’s on the rise. Over the past 14 years we’ve polled thousands of workers about how they’re treated on the job, and 98% have reported experiencing uncivil behavior. In 2011 half said they were treated rudely at least once a week—up from a quarter in 1998.

The costs chip away at the bottom line. Nearly everybody who experiences workplace incivility responds in a negative way, in some cases overtly retaliating. Employees are less creative when they feel disrespected, and many get fed up and leave. About half deliberately decrease their effort or lower the quality of their work. And incivility damages customer relationships. Our research shows that people are less likely to buy from a company with an employee they perceive as rude, whether the rudeness is directed at them or at other employees. Witnessing just a single unpleasant interaction leads customers to generalize about other employees, the organization, and even the brand.

We’ve interviewed employees, managers, HR executives, presidents, and CEOs. We’ve administered questionnaires, run experiments, led workshops, and spoken with doctors, lawyers, judges, law enforcement officers, architects, engineers, consultants, and coaches about how they’ve faced and handled incivility. And we’ve collected data from more than 14,000 people throughout the United States and Canada in order to track the prevalence, types, causes, costs, and cures of incivility at work. We know two things for certain: Incivility is expensive, and few organizations recognize or take action to curtail it.

In this article we’ll discuss our findings, detail the costs, and propose some interventions. But first, let’s look at the various shapes incivility can take.

Forms of Incivility

We’ve all heard of (or experienced) the “boss from hell.” The stress of ongoing hostility from a manager takes a toll, sometimes a big one. We spoke with a man we’ll call Matt, who reported to Larry—a volatile bully who insulted his direct reports, belittled their efforts, and blamed them for things over which they had no control. (The names in this article have been changed and the identities disguised.) Larry was rude to customers, too. When he accompanied Matt to one client’s store, he told the owner, “I see you’re carrying on your father’s tradition. This store looked like sh– then. And it looks like sh– in your hands.”

Matt’s stress level skyrocketed. He took a risk and reported Larry to HR. (He wasn’t the first to complain.) Called on the carpet, Larry failed to apologize, saying only that perhaps he “used an atomic bomb” when he “could have used a flyswatter.” Weeks later Larry was named district manager of the year. Three days after that, Matt had a heart attack.

The conclusion of Matt’s story is unusual, but unchecked rudeness is surprisingly common. We heard of one boss who was so routinely abusive that employees and suppliers had a code for alerting one another to his impending arrival (“The eagle has landed!”). The only positive aspect was that their shared dislike helped the employees forge close bonds. After the company died, in the late 1990s, its alums formed a network that thrives to this day.

In some cases an entire department is infected. Jennifer worked in an industry that attracted large numbers of educated young professionals willing to work for a pittance in order to be in a creative field. It was widely accepted that they had to pay their dues. The atmosphere included door slamming, side conversations, exclusion, and blatant disregard for people’s time. Years later Jennifer still cringes as she remembers her boss screaming, “You made a mistake!” when she’d overlooked a minor typo in an internal memo. There was lots of attrition among low-level employees, but those who did stay seemed to absorb the behaviors they’d been subjected to, and they put newcomers through the same kind of abuse.

Fran was a senior executive in a global consumer products company. After several quarters of outstanding growth despite a down economy, she found herself confronted by a newcomer in the C-suite, Joe. For six months Fran had to jump through hoops to defend the business, even though it had defied stagnation. She never got an explanation for why she was picked on, and eventually she left, not for another job but to escape what she called “a soul-destroying experience.”

Incivility can take much more subtle forms, and it is often prompted by thoughtlessness rather than actual malice. Think of the manager who sends e-mails during a presentation, or the boss who “teases” direct reports in ways that sting, or the team leader who takes credit for good news but points a finger at team members when something goes wrong. Such relatively minor acts can be even more insidious than overt bullying, because they are less obvious and easier to overlook—yet they add up, eroding engagement and morale..

The Costs of Incivility

Many managers would say that incivility is wrong, but not all recognize that it has tangible costs. Targets of incivility often punish their offenders and the organization, although most hide or bury their feelings and don’t necessarily think of their actions as revenge. Through a poll of 800 managers and employees in 17 industries, we learned just how people’s reactions play out. Among workers who’ve been on the receiving end of incivility:

  • 48% intentionally decreased their work effort.
  • 47% intentionally decreased the time spent at work.
  • 38% intentionally decreased the quality of their work.
  • 80% lost work time worrying about the incident.
  • 63% lost work time avoiding the offender.
  • 66% said that their performance declined.
  • 78% said that their commitment to the organization declined.
  • 12% said that they left their job because of the uncivil treatment.
  • 25% admitted to taking their frustration out on customers.

Experiments and other reports offer additional insights about the effects of incivility. Here are some examples of what can happen.

Creativity suffers. In an experiment we conducted with Amir Erez, a professor of management at the University of Florida, participants who were treated rudely by other subjects were 30% less creative than others in the study. They produced 25% fewer ideas, and the ones they did come up with were less original. For example, when asked what to do with a brick, participants who had been treated badly proposed logical but not particularly imaginative activities, such as “build a house,” “build a wall,” and “build a school.” We saw more sparks from participants who had been treated civilly; their suggestions included “sell the brick on eBay,” “use it as a goalpost for a street soccer game,” “hang it on a museum wall and call it abstract art,” and “decorate it like a pet and give it to a kid as a present.”

Performance and team spirit deteriorate. Survey results and interviews indicate that simply witnessing incivility has negative consequences. In one experiment we conducted, people who’d observed poor behavior performed 20% worse on word puzzles than other people did. We also found that witnesses to incivility were less likely than others to help out, even when the person they’d be helping had no apparent connection to the uncivil person: Only 25% of the subjects who’d witnessed incivility volunteered to help, whereas 51% of those who hadn’t witnessed it did.

Customers turn away. Public rudeness among employees is common, according to our survey of 244 consumers. Whether it’s waiters berating fellow waiters or store clerks criticizing colleagues, disrespectful behavior makes people uncomfortable, and they’re quick to walk out without making a purchase.

We studied this phenomenon with the USC marketing professors Debbie MacInnis and Valerie Folkes. In one experiment, half the participants witnessed a supposed bank representative publicly reprimanding another for incorrectly presenting credit card information. Only 20% of those who’d seen the encounter said that they would use the bank’s services in the future, compared with 80% of those who hadn’t. And nearly two-thirds of those who’d seen the exchange said that they would feel anxious dealing with any employee of the bank.”

The article by Christine Pearson and Christine Porath appeared in Harvard Business Review, and is an excerpt from their book “The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It”

 

Article by: Kazim Ladimeji

Hiring for culture fit is one of the key hiring mantra in the modern recruiting world. In fact, there are studies that show that one of the main reasons that new hires fail is due to a lack of culture or attitude fit in one form or another.

But, the more that I have looked at the hiring for culture fit paradigm the more uneasy I become with it. I think the term has been oversimplified and I think there are many situations when it is appropriate to hire someone who may be disruptive to your existing culture, and below I have set out several reasons why you might recruit people who really don’t fit your culture.

1.Your culture may be toxic

It could be that you current organizational culture or department subculture is toxic. For example:

Does your organization take too many risks or too few risks? Is there a lack of customer focus? Is your culture truly customer centered? Does your organization have an appropriate level of ethical conduct? And, more important, are these culture failings damaging employee engagement, customer satisfaction and shareholder satisfaction? If the answer is yes, then you may have a toxic culture and, along with other interventions, there is a strong argument to start hiring folks who don’t fit the current culture, but who are more in tune with a desired future cultural state.

2. More innovative organization

It is no coincidence that many of the world’s most innovative companies are also in the Fortune 500. It shows that innovative organizations can disrupt the market and gain competitive advantages, which ultimately drive success.

If you hire people from different industries, with different attitudes, with different view points and with an altogether different outlook, admittedly, you and some of your team members may clash with these disruptive elements; however, they can be a disruptive force for good, challenging yours and the team’s ideas and the status quo.

Yes, they will rock the boat (but most businesses are not on boats), but if this energy and disruption is managed and channeled effectively, you will generate new ideas, new ways of looking at things and perhaps open doors to new opportunities that you never knew existed. It could result in you opening a new office in a new country, launching a new product, or totally overhauling an existing product its mediocrity the organization has become accustomed to and accepting of.

3. Create a more customer-centric business

Your customers and clients will be diverse in terms of their individual personalities, outlooks, and attitudes. Organizations with a broader range of personalities, outlooks and viewpoints will be able to engage far more effectively and flexibly with a diverse client base. It can make you more customer centric.

4. Greater access to talent

If your organization can accept and channel a broad and diverse range of personalities and opinions, it will undoubtedly have a much larger candidate resource pool at its disposal, meaning it may be able to hire quality people faster.

5. More flexible

Having a broad range of attitudes, outlooks, and preferences can mean that your organization is able to respond in a more flexible way to a changing and dynamic marketplace. For example, as changes in the marketplace create a greater need for risk taking, the naturally innovative can step up to the mantle. But, if a period of consolidation is required, then perhaps the more conservative stalwarts then come in to their own. A diverse culture can make you more flexible and adaptable making it easier to exploit opportunities and combat threats.

 

Retrieved from: http://www.recruiter.com/i/5-reasons-to-hire-people-who-dont-fit-the-culture/?goback=%2Egde_61998_member_239646283

Why U.S. Employers Do So Little

Many of the facts below have been confirmed by the 2007 WBI-Zogby Survey.

Bullying is Legal

Most workplace harassment and mistreatment (80%) is completely legal. Remarkably, a hostile work environment is actionable (illegal) only in very few situations.

America’s individualistic society feeds aggression and competition in the workplace. These traits block an empathic concern for the well-being of others, make bullying look tame when compared to other forms of physical violence, and justify inequality of status across ranks within organizations — dubbing a few as winners and the rest losers. Bullying is not only tolerated in business, it is often seen as necessary. Lawmakers are reluctant to pass laws that reign in unfettered workplace violence resulting in psychological injury.

Poor Leadership, Inept Managers

The majority of bullies (72%) are bosses…

  • Bullies derive most of their support from…HR. It’s a club, a clique, that circles the wagons in defense when one of their own is accused.
  • Some executives command bullies to target particular employees. Bullies are simply good soldiers following orders in a blind fashion.
  • Supervisory training is nearly nonexistent. No budget. No time. Few good skills taught. OJT transmits bad habits.
  • Executives blame the problem on a “few bad apples,” deflecting blame for systemic causes and denying responsibility for systemic cures.

 Employers Don’t Know How to Stop Bullies

Everyone walks on eggshells and is afraid to confront “the golden” bully, the boss’s favorite. HR misapplies the tools of traditional conflict resolution, for example, mediation. Wrong solution for the actual problem. The workplace culture holds no one accountable. Confronting bullies is unthinkable. Executives and senior managers have been badgered by the bully, too. They are afraid of an emotional confrontation. They loathe conflict and remain paralyzed. By not acting, they tacitly endorse the bully. They fear lawsuits brought by the bully if they dare investigate or punish the bully. There is rarely a basis for such suits. The fear is irrational.

Bullying Is Underreported

  • Forty percent (40%) of targets never tell their employers…
  • Bullying is erroneously branded as “conflict” or a mere “difference in personality styles.”
  • Both are true, but bullying is also a form of violence. Simple labels minimize its impact on both people and the organization.
  • Historically, complaints lead to retaliation (revengeful hurting) or reprisal (taking away of rights or status).

Knowing this, targets are reluctant to use internal employer processes.

 

From: Workplace Bullying Institute: www.workplacebullying.org

 

Here is a very short video (3 minutes or so) by the firm Ernst & Young (http://www.ey.com/US/en/Home) on the importance of Diversity and Inclusion for their business.

One does not need to be a global giant like Ernst & Young to understand the benefits of diversity to business success in competitive markets.

 Here is the link to the video.  Hope you enjoy it!

 Here are some main points in the video:

  •  Diversity and inclusion are two different things.  Diversity is the mix of people.  Inclusion is how you maximize that diversity on each team and in the work environment.
  •  Failure occurs when you have diversity but not inclusiveness, when people don’t feel appreciated for their differences, and the value they bring to the team.  There is POWER in diverse teams: diverse people bring different view points to problems, thus leading to creative solutions.

ARE YOU AN INCLUSIVE LEADER?

  •  Inclusive leaders value team members’ differences.
  •  Inclusive leaders actively seek out different perspectives.
  •  Inclusive leaders understand that diversity matters to our firm, and to our clients, and strengthens our global business.

 

When we bring together our unique backgrounds, perspectives and experiences and abilities together, we achieve so much more!

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