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Running head: IMPACT OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT ON HR FUNCTIONS

The Impact of Diversity Management on Human Resource Functions


Heather Privrat
Human Resource Management and Development
June 26, 2015
Ian Jacobs

IMPACT OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT ON HR FUNCTIONS

Abstract
Diversity and its value to a companys workforce is often touted in annual reports as a great point
of pride by many corporations in the U.S., and several of these corporations devote a lot of
resources to the creation and maintenance of these programs. The 1990s even ushered in a new
position at many companies, Chief Diversity Officer. However, little is written about how these
programs impact the functions of the Human Resources Department. This paper will explore the
various ways diversity initiatives impact the workings of a human resources department, the
challenges a diverse workforce presents for human resources management, and what goals these
initiatives have achieved for human resources management as well as other areas of the
company. Challenges of implementing these programs will be discussed as well.

IMPACT OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT ON HR FUNCTIONS

The Impact of Diversity Management on Human Resource Functions


Much has been made of diversity management in the past twenty years, but what impact
these programs are having is the subject of many debates. To explore the results of diversity
management, it is necessary to understand where it came from and how it impacts the day to day
functions of a company.
The History Behind Diversity Programs
Diversity is a much-discussed topic in todays human resources environment, but it did
not grow organically on its own. Rather, it is the end product of a series of legislative actions and
responses to shifts in the demographics of the U.S. workforce, as well as a response to an
increasingly globalized marketplace. In order to understand what diversity management is and
why it is relevant to the functions of a human resources department, one must learn the history of
how it came to be.
Equal Opportunity Legislation and Affirmative Action
The creation and execution of legitimate new federal government policy is an exceptional
event, particularly when it is as profoundly debated as affirmative action. Prior to the advent of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ushered in affirmative action programs and nondiscrimination laws as we now know them, there were some minor attempts by the federal
government to end racial discrimination in hiring.
During World War I, the federal Division of Negro Economics sought to integrate the
black labor force and integrate it into the worker-starved munitions industries. At the time of the
New Deal, many administrators insisted on racial fairness, including Secretary of the Interior
Harold Ickes, who banned racial discrimination in hiring by his Department, and by the Public

IMPACT OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT ON HR FUNCTIONS

Works Administration. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, who eliminated segregation within
her Department. World War II brought the temporary elimination of discrimination as federal
policy when Franklin Roosevelt issued executive order 8802, creating the Fair Employment
Practices Committee, to ensure that defense contractors did not discriminate against minorities
(MacLaury, 2010). However, none of these efforts lasted beyond the national emergencies they
were created to help end.
Without the urgency of economic disaster or war, President Kennedys executive order
10925 created the Presidents Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and
included a provision that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that
applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their
race, creed, color, or national origin (UCI Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, n.d.).
Lyndon Johnson expanded on this with executive order11246, which added a prohibition on
employment discrimination based on religion of the applicant, as well as requiring federal
contractors to take affirmative action in regards to the hiring and employment of members of
minority groups (Shay, 2012). Two years later, another order expanded the classification of
minority groups to include women.
Anti-discrimination laws continued to expand with the passage of Title IX in 1972, which
prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity
(U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.). There were both an eighteen-year hiatus and multiple
Supreme Court decisions between Title IX and the most recent federal anti-discrimination
legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Passed in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities
Act, the first comprehensive federal act addressing the civil rights of the disabled, prohibited

IMPACT OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT ON HR FUNCTIONS

discrimination in employment, telecommunications, and public services and accommodations


(EEOC, n.d.).
Early Corporate Diversity Programs
In the absence of legislation, some corporations took the cause of integration upon
themselves and created their own policies regarding minorities. IBM has a long history of these
efforts going back even before World War I. In 1914, they hired their first disabled employee. A
larger step towards a diversified workforce was taken in 1935 when IBM recruited twenty-five
women from college senior classes to work in their systems service department. During the
1940s, the company took even greater strides when it hired one hundred and eighty-one disabled
workers, its first black salesperson, and appointed its first female vice president. By the 1950s,
IBM was actively recruiting at historically black colleges and universities (IBM, n.d.). While
IBM was not the only major corporation to do this, Xerox and Procter and Gamble were also
ahead of the curve on this issue. However, these companies were definitely outnumbered by
those that did not actively seek to diversify during this era.
Once the executive orders were issued, a broader range of companies began to draft
policies regarding minority employees. With no direction from Congress to guide them, many
companies subject to regulation by EEO laws hired personnel and legal experts to help them
craft new policies and procedures, as there were no hard and fast rules and changes to the laws
were still being made by the courts and local regulators. The end result of this scramble to stay
ahead of the courts was that these regulations were subject to varying interpretations and most
judges accepted the best practices of leading firms as good faith efforts to comply with the law
(Roberson, 2014). In effect, those being regulated helped create the regulations. Several of these

IMPACT OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT ON HR FUNCTIONS

nondiscrimination policies were written based on language in existing union contracts that were
originally designed to prevent discrimination against union leaders (Roberson, 2014).
By the 1970s, the percentage of women in the workforce had grown to nearly half, and
the number of these personnel experts had doubled. This decade brought the crafting of
rulebooks and policies for hiring and promoting designed to withhold the opportunity for
management to exert prejudice (Roberson, 2014). The primary focus of diversity training in
corporate America was in knowledge of the various laws and company policies of dos and
donts. Recipients of early diversity training had few positive responses to it, as training focused
primarily on treating minorities and women fairly and equitably in what were previously white
male-dominated environments and on the avoidance of lawsuits. Non-minority workers felt that
preferential treatment was being afforded to the targeted groups (Anand and Winters, 2008).
This focus on compliance continued through the late 1980s, when The Hudson Institute
published Workforce 2000. Workforce 2000s preface showed the changing demographics of the
U.S. labor force and noted how soon the workforce would be comprised of more women and
minorities. This publication caused a major shift in corporate thinking and moved the focus of
training from legal compliance and litigation avoidance to how to integrate greater numbers of
women and minorities into the workplace and incorporate everyone under the umbrella of
diversity (Annand and Winters, 2008).
The idea of many diversity programs of the late 1980s and much of the 1990s was social
inclusion, it is important to note that during this time white men were not perceived to have valid
issues about their place in the new more integrated workplace, but rather as being the problem
itself. The target remained on minorities, leading many to believe that this was merely a new
name for affirmative action and a form of reverse discrimination (Anand and Winters, 2008).

IMPACT OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT ON HR FUNCTIONS

Also, no standard for diversity management was developed among consultants and practitioners,
a problem which remains today.
Starting in the late 1990s and continuing through today, the spotlight of many diversity
programs shifted to inclusion and cultural sensitivity. The new paradigm is that it is as important
for the black woman to understand the Asian man and vice versa in order for businesses to
remain competitive not only in the U.S. but in the global marketplace as well. How will these
goals be achieved? That is where effective strategic human resource management comes in.
Functions of Modern Diversity Programs and Their Impact on Human Resources
There is a certain amount of attention that needs to be paid to legal compliance in human
resource management, but that is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to diversity
management. The true challenge is in attracting, retaining, and motivating a diverse employee
pool. This presents several challenges for a human resources department, and these challenges
can be addressed in several ways as well.
Recruiting
Diversity management begins where all company employee relations begin with
recruitment. The most basic form of diversity management when it comes to recruiting is the
Equal Opportunity advertisement at the end of a job listing. However, modern diversity
management reaches far beyond this. Techniques used to recruit a diverse staff range from subtle
techniques such as using photographs of a diverse employee pool in recruiting literature to more
aggressive tactics like target marketing available positions to certain minority groups. Many
other techniques are used as well. Recruiting a diverse pool of applicants is challenging for many
organizations, and it is theorized that this is due to their use of tried and true recruiting
techniques that rely on history and precedent rather than data (Sullivan, 2014). Current popular

IMPACT OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT ON HR FUNCTIONS

efforts include recruitment at diversity fairs and through diversity management organizations,
targeted advertising in minority-focused publications, and campus recruiting at historically black
and womens colleges (Jayne and Dipboye, 2004). While these efforts have diversified the
applicant pool to some extent, many organizations are not getting the results they desire. While
employee referrals are a tried and true method of sourcing high performing, longer tenured
talent, research shows that a company will have more success attracting minority talent through
more formal means such as career fairs, employment agencies, and newspaper and online
advertising (Newman and Lyon, 2009).
The highest success levels in minority recruiting appear to be linked to a slightly different
approach, namely strategic partnerships with minority organizations, both professional, and at
universities with diverse student bodies (Digh, 1999). These organizations not only provide a
diverse talent pool, but having a long standing relationship with these groups serves as a
showcase of your companys commitment to inclusion, a public relations move that can pay
dividends in the form of an expanded customer base as well. This alliance will also play a large
role when it comes to the experiences minority employees will have while working at your
company, as superficial diversity programs tend to lead to higher employee turnover rates for
minorities (McKay, 2005). Another business case for these partnerships relates to the companys
bottom line. Specifically, the relationships between specific network building practices and firm
performance were larger than those between performance-based incentive practices and firm
performance, a pattern that is very clear in two measurements sales growth and stock prices
(Collins and Clark, 2003).

IMPACT OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT ON HR FUNCTIONS

Employee Relations and Retention


Success in recruiting will do little for your organization if those hired do not feel they
belong, are unable to perform in the corporate culture, or simply leave for greener pastures.
Employee engagement and retention can be assisted with proper diversity management, and
these programs can also often be explicitly linked to results. Advocates of diversity management
suggest that work team heterogeneity promotes innovation, and research supports this idea. A
study of innovation in organizations revealed that the most innovative companies deliberately
establish heterogeneous teams to "create a marketplace of ideas, recognizing that a multiplicity
of points of view needs to be brought to bear on a problem" (Cox and Blake, 1991). The same
study also found that highly innovative companies had done a better job than most on eradicating
racism and sexism. These highly innovative companies also employed more women and racial
and ethnic minorities.
Other studies have reached similar conclusions and stressed that diversity of a group
affects the way in which its members perceive stimuli, process information and adopt decisions
(Martn-Alczar, Romero-Fernndez and Snchez-Gardey, 2011). This data suggests that diverse
demographic characteristics lead to different cognitive characteristics of work teams, and in
addition to cognitive effects. Researchers have argued that the diversity of these teams is also
likely to have positive effects on group cohesion, job satisfaction, and commitment.
One of the great success stories of diversity management is Procter and Gamble. Their
diversity management and employee engagement programs have led not only to increased
market shares, but new product developments as well. Rather than the more traditional
mentoring programs, they have a program called Mentor-Up, where female junior and mid-level
managers are paired with senior executives to coach them on diversity and work-life balance

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issues, such as generational differences and gender communication issues (Clutterbuck &
Ragins, 2002). Human resources can use insight into how corporate policies directly impact the
lives of a diverse workforce and adjust them accordingly. The program offers women the
opportunity to speak freely and describe in the first person how these matters directly impact
them. Since P&G rotates senior executives through the role of Chief Diversity Officer, the
Mentor-Up program keeps a steady flow of fresh perspectives coursing through the diversity
management program and the human resources department (Rodgers, 2014).
While there are many other cases that can make a business case for diversity, how does
this affect human resources management? Again, that answer is in data. It becomes the
responsibility of s strategic human resources department to take this feedback and the successes
of these programs and present the data to management to make the business case for these
initiatives. Most project managers will not make notice of how the diversity of their group
impacted the end result, it is left to human resources to monitor these outcomes. In the case of
Mentor-Up, information directly from employees can be directly delivered to human resources to
be used in decision making and policy implementation, but other aspects of diversity
management are more subtle and easily overlooked. Effective HR strategy will keep this data and
use it when it comes to determining policies and expenditures in order to make the most of the
resources they are given.
Training and Development
When it comes to diversity management, a certain amount of training involved must
focus on the legal aspects of human resources, specifically anti-discrimination laws. It is
important for all employees to be aware of these laws and the responsibilities they impose on
both the employee and the company, but is crucial for human resources to be well versed in this

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aspect of diversity. A thorough understanding of these laws not only helps avoid litigation, but
can assist in employee retention as well.
Moving beyond mere legal requirements into training and development opportunities
within the company and diversity management, things get a little bit more complicated, but also
have the potential to have many positive aspects for the company as a whole, and particularly for
human resources. As was previously discussed, a diverse team working on a project will show
greater levels of commitment, cohesion and innovation, but what about programs specifically
designed to advance members of minority groups in the company? Research has shown that
managers in organizations where there is a lack of effective human resources diversity policies
are likely to promote or give better performance appraisals to subordinates who have similar
cultural backgrounds (Shen et al., 2009). In the case of employee advancement, the impact of
diversity management begins with a well-crafted, thoroughly communicated diversity policy.
Yet, it is foolish to assume that policy alone will achieve the desired results. The task
given to human resources is to create a workforce that is responsive to market demands and can
manage the risks associated with innovation (Richard, 2001). Research has shown that diverse
groups create innovative solutions. But how to build those groups? Step one starts with building
those groups, but recruitment efforts alone will not achieve that, companies need to do this
within their existing workforce. The most common answer to this problem is mentoring
programs. Mentoring programs can have positive effects on the protgs career, but also has
rewards for human resources as well in the forms of increased retention rates, performance, and
motivation. Just as valuable and more commonly overlooked is the continuity of a corporate
culture that mentoring programs foster (Wilson and Elman, 1990).

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These successful outcomes are less likely when mentor-protg relationships involve
people from two different races or genders. A qualitative analysis of nine Black professional
women found that these women were discouraged by the lack of Black role models. They also
felt their relationships with white females were defined by a lack of trust. This lack of trust
between different races was found in males as well (Ensher and Murphy, 1997). Luckily, this
does not represent a complete picture of interracial mentoring.
Some companies have made changes to the traditional mentoring program to better serve
minority protgs with great success. They two way nature of Procter & Gambles Mentor-Up
program led to a fifty percent increase in minority women being promoted to vice president or
general manager. Building on this success, the company launched its annual African American
Womens Summit to provide an opportunity for their black female employees to network with
each other across different offices and departments (Ebron and Riss, 2007). This type of targeted
interaction opportunity not only fosters a sense of belonging where employees can see
themselves reflected in their peers, but fosters communication between different departments.
Diversity can present other unique challenges for not only human resources, but for the
physical workspace as well. Disabled workers present these challenges. In the U.S., only twenty
percent of people with cognitive or physical disabilities participate in the workforce, and this
group suffers from twice the unemployment rate of the rest of the workforce. However, a study
of its distribution centers by the American Society of Safety Engineers found that workers with
disabilities had a turnover rate forty-eight percent lower than that of the nondisabled population,
with medical costs sixty-seven percent lower and time-off expenses seventy-three percent lower
(Cann, 2012), statistics that would make disabled workers highly desirable from a human
resources perspective.

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In 2007, Walgreens capitalized on this data with the opening of its distribution center in
Anderson, South Carolina, where forty percent of the workers are disabled (Black, 2011). With a
new facility in place to accommodate these workers, there was still the challenge of meeting their
goals for hiring of disabled workers. The center had an in-house training center, but it was
necessary to bring in outside assistance to help with staffing. As with successful minority
recruiting, this was done by working with local disability outreach groups and service agencies,
again highlighting the importance of relationships with outside organizations.
Compensation and Benefits
When most people think of compensation and diversity in the same category, they assume
the discussion will be under the umbrella of discriminatory practices against women and
minorities. However, compensation and benefits are tools at the disposal of human resources
professionals for recruiting and retaining a diverse employee pool, even in the absence of a
formal diversity management program. Like a properly executed training and development
program, benefits packages can also be levied to attract and retain workers, as well as to motivate
them. Employees have multiple needs that vary based on age, family, cultural values, and stage
of career, and human resources departments are tasked with finding solutions to accommodate
this wide range of concerns, without anyone feeling as though they are being treated unfairly.
While benefits like on-site daycare would work wonders to attract and retain parents of small
children, offering such a pricey perk to that is only useful to a certain segment of the employee
pool can be off-putting to the other workers. Finding the balance between the needs of the
company, needs of the employees, and the perception of fairness is critical.
Where compensation and benefits become a critical tool for human resources is talent
retention. Much has been discussed lately regarding the female brain drain, where women are

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leaving corporate America in droves. There are many things human resources can do to mitigate
this that if open to all employees, can help retain and motivate them as well. The real difficulty
for human resource departments is to manage the cultural shifts that come with programs to
combat female brain drain. Popular solutions to this problem are flex-time and job sharing,
solutions that would do well to attract millennial workers as well.
However, a new solution to this issue has been implemented by Deloitte that not only
addresses the female brain drain, but the evolving needs of all workers. It is called Mass Career
Customization, and it simultaneously helps to address changing family expectations, generational
differences in work style, shifts in labor pool demographics, and the influence of technology all
at once (Benko and Weisberg, 2008). Created in response to the majority of workers who have
intentionally dialed-up or dialed-down their career at one point or another, Mass Career
Customization (MCC) helps to find ways for these employees to accomplish their personal goals
while staying with the company rather than leaving as they have in the past.
The same as most other effective decision making tools, MCC is data driven, in this case
by annual data input from the employees themselves on the levels of career acceleration,
workload, schedule, and leadership roles the employee wants to be involved in at a given point in
time. Employees review their inputs on an annual or semi-annual basis and adjust their levels as
their needs and wants have changed. Not only does this afford the employee a sense of control
over their work schedule and level of engagement, it provides valuable insights to human
resources and department managers so they can head off any looming problems before they
arrive. The ability to have input into the process helps not only with employee retention, as they
are not leaving the company to find the workload and schedule that suits their needs, but it builds

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customer loyalty as their relationships with your employees remain intact (Benko & Weisberg,
2008).
While every company does not have the resources for a program like MCC,
compensation and benefits can still be an important part of diversity management for the human
resources department. Certain benefits are unimportant to some workers, but crucial to others,
the challenge for human resources is again to find the balance that satisfies all employees and fits
the needs of the company as well. While it would be wonderful for a company to offer every
benefit each worker wants to all employees, the reality of cost constraints do not allow for most
corporations to do so. Human resources must stay on top of the shifts in employee needs and
adjust compensation policies accordingly if they want to keep the workforce they worked so hard
to attract.
Challenges of Implementing Diversity Programs
As with any company-wide initiatives, diversity management is not without its
challenges. One challenge of diversity management is that there are no standard practices as
there are with other aspects of human resource management. Other challenges stem not from
lack of knowledge on what to include, but on more functional issues.
The first challenge a company faces when implementing diversity management is the
cost. Unlike capital equipment expenditures, it is harder to calculate return on investment for
diversity management. The easiest metric to measure successes in diversity management are
retention rates, recruiting costs, stock prices, and company profits (Richard, 2000). The harder to
measure benefits come from things like public perception and employee commitment to the
company mission.

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Even with a well-organized, well-funded diversity management strategy in place, there


are still issues to overcome for these strategies to be adopted. Even if the program is well crafted,
if the benefits of the initiative are not clearly communicated to the employees, the project will
fail (Holt, n.d.). Communication does not end with making the information available, but making
sure the message is delivered in a manner in which it is well received and processed by the
recipient.
The most difficult challenge to overcome when it comes to implementation of a
successful diversity management program as a part of strategic human resource management is
resistance from management and employees. Even in the most positive of environments, there
will be individuals who look down on these programs and do not take a diversity plan seriously.
These negative attitudes present a big challenge to managers and owners trying to implement and
maintain a plan, and also have the potential damage morale, slow adaptation, and decrease
productivity (Holt, n.d.). If initial phases of the diversity management program fail to bring these
individuals on board with the plan, it creates another issue for management and human
resources: knowing when to let these disruptive employees go.
Does It Work?
Fortunately, there is research that supports these programs with results of real value to
both the human resources department and the companys bottom line. When surveyed by Forbes
regarding their companys current diversity and inclusion priorities, forty-three percent cited
retention and development of talent, followed by ensuring diversity in the workplace in general
with thirty-five percent citing it as a goal, twenty-nine percent cited developing a robust pipeline
of diverse talent, while twenty-eight percent were concerned with managing cross-generational
issues (Egan, n.d.).

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Specific goals accomplished through diversity management can be found in many


company reports. SAS, the worlds largest private software company and a user of the MCC
program averages a three percent turnover rate compared to the industry average of twenty
percent. They credit this tool and their diversity management program as a whole with
contributing to a ninety-eight percent customer retention rate of (Benko & Weisberg, 2008).
While Procter and Gamble have had tremendous success with Mentor-Up and the
promotion of women as mentioned before, several products for sale at your local store were
developed as a result of their diversity management program. In 2004, P&G started a new
experiment in problem solving. They converted an old brewery into an open workspace with the
feel of a startup. Dubbed The Clay Street Project, the concept was to assemble small teams of 8
to 12 members from various departments and demographic backgrounds to try and solve
problems where every other method had failed (Colquitt, LePine & Wesson, 2011). One of the
first projects tackled by the Clay Street Project was the revival of the Herbal Essences brand. The
breakthrough that eventually led to dramatic sales growth for the brand was based on the insights
of a young intern, whose perspectives led the group to realize that Millennials have a very
different idea of what the word organic means for todays consumer, versus the meaning it had
for older generations (Cohan, 2012). An entirely new product line, Swash, clothing refresher
products for clothing that is not quite dirty was developed at Clay Street to address an unmet
need of interest to Generation Y (Procter & Gamble, n.d.).
Procter & Gamble is not alone in leveraging their diversity management program for
sales growth. IBM's efforts to develop the client base among women-owned businesses have
quickly expanded to include a focus on Asian, black, Hispanic, mature (senior citizens), and
Native American markets. The Market Development organization has grown revenue in the

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company's Small and Medium-Sized Business Sales and Marketing organization from ten
million in 1998 to hundreds of millions of dollars in 2003 (Thomas, 2004).
Is there backlash?
As with any change to the status quo in society, there has been some backlash to diversity
management, as well as lawsuits as a result of diversity initiatives as well. Some of these
negative sentiments stem from resistance to change and social attitudes towards women and
minorities in the workplace. However, some of them also come from what is called diversity
fatigue.
Diversity fatigue is a form of backlash to diversity management. It is a term used to
describe the beliefs that some individuals hold that there are often more important things that the
company should be directing their efforts towards, or that diversity management is a program
that should end and be deemed successful if minority hiring increases. Veta Richardson,
executive director of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association believes that diversity fatigue
is a natural response when an organization is focused on results, and those results are not coming
as quickly as they like. Advancing diversity and increasing inclusion can take three steps
forward. Then people leave and it feels like a step back, but its just evolution (Hayes, 2008).
This fatigue is why it is critical for human resources to communicate diversity initiatives as an
ongoing, quality control type process rather than a project with a definitive end goal.
What about the resistance to diversity based on social attitudes? There is evidence of a
backlash against affirmative action and other diversity efforts on the part of whites, particularly
among white males (Kidder, Lankau, Chrobot-Mason, Mollica & Friedman, 2004). Much of this
stems from the fact that white males have traditionally held most positions of power and they

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perceive these programs as giving preference to minorities and therefore they were losing their
advantages and opportunities to these employees (Kidder, et.al. 2004).
There are other theories in play in this white resistance to diversity initiatives and
affirmative action as well. Modern racism (MR)the belief that Blacks are no longer subject to
discrimination and instead receive unfair advantages in contemporary society, and collective
relative deprivation (CRD) (Shteynberg, Leslie, Knight & Mayer, 2011). In contrast to Whites
MR beliefs, which are beliefs regarding the extent to which a minority group is advantaged in
society, CRD are beliefs regarding the extent to which their group is disadvantaged in society
(Shteynberg, et. al., 2011). Individuals who hold either of these beliefs generally oppose any
initiatives that target a group to which they do not belong, but do not show the same resistance to
programs that are race and gender neutral. There is little that human resources managers can do
to change these individual beliefs, but they do provide them with yet another hurdle to cross
when communicating about diversity initiatives, and that is to stress the importance of inclusion
in these efforts, to avoid alienating employees and activating beliefs of MR or CRD.
Finally, there are issues that arise in the legal arena. Significant litigation regarding
diversity initiatives has been sparse, but there are some interesting issues that can arise from it
nonetheless.
In 2002, a white middle manager at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, N.Y., brought a reverse
discrimination lawsuit against the company, believing he was demoted for poorly handling the
harassment of a black subordinate by other employees. He claimed that Kodaks Cultural Change
Strategy, a zero tolerance policy for discrimination was being used to discriminatorily discipline
and terminate Caucasian employees, according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court
of Western New York (Frase-Blunt, 2003).

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In more complicated and nuanced cases, the acceptance and celebration of one
employees demographic can be construed as a violation of another groups rights. There are two
specific cases, with two different outcomes regarding the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) employees versus the religious beliefs of other employees.
Both of these cases show how diversity management can become a case of swimming with
sharks for the human resources department.
A case discussed by the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding is as follows:
As part of a diversity program, a large technology company displayed posters depicting
gay employees. A devout Christian employee was offended by the posters because he believed
that homosexuality was sinful. In response, the employee decorated his workspace with highly
visible, large print Bible verses that could be interpreted as condemning homosexuality. The
verses were visible to other employees, who felt uncomfortable, as well as to visitors to the
office. Given this, the employer considered the Bible verses to be in violation of the companys
anti-harassment policy and asked the employee to remove the posters. The employee responded
that the LGBT-friendly posters were a sign that the company did not value his religious beliefs.
He refused to remove the verses unless the company would agree to remove the diversity posters.
The employer would not remove their posters, and gave the employee some options for
example, displaying the verses in a less obvious way, or moving his workspace. He rejected
these, explaining that the verses needed to be prominently displayed. When his conduct
continued, he was fired. The employee then sued the company for disparate treatment and failure
to accommodate his religious beliefs (Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, n.d.).
In this case, the court found for the employer on the grounds that it is not required for an
employer to accommodate the imposition of an employees religious beliefs.

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In a seemingly similar case, a large corporation required all new hires to sign off on its
diversity policy as a condition of employment. The policy required employees to agree that they
respect and value the differences in all of us. When one new hire refused to sign it, citing that
by agreeing with this statement and signing it would be forcing him to act against his Christian
beliefs, which held homosexuality and non-Christian religions to be sinful. The new hire stated
that he would be able to treat all of his coworkers with respect and treat them in a nondiscriminatory and civil manner. The company did not wish to discuss its policies and the
employees reasons for not signing it, so they rescinded the offer. In this case, the courts found
for the employee, stating that the company went too far with its mandate and refused to
accommodate the new hires beliefs (Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, n.d.).
These cases go to show that navigating diversity management is not only a slippery slope,
but one that travels in many directions, not just downhill. It also demonstrates the difficulties
imposed on human resources management when implementing these policies.
In conclusion, while diversity management is often thought of as a companywide
program that affects all employees equally, the reality is not so. These programs, while providing
benefits and challenges for all, create more challenges for human resources management than
they do for other departments. Balancing these initiatives against other company goals and legal
departments is tricky, and will remain so. It may become an easier task in the future if a
universally accepted set of best practices emerges, but as diversity management is a relatively
new concept that is not universally applied in the business world, that framework is still many
years away.

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22

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