Workforce Language Services

In this article, Judith Lindenberger, MBA and Marian Stoltz-Loike, Ph.D. provide a fascinating summary of the challenges that companies face in an increasingly diverse workforce as well as eight practical guidelines on how to create an effective diversity strategy. 

The following excerpt shows both the difficulties as well as the joys of working in a diverse company, and is followed by insight into how to better respond to the needs of a diverse workforce while meeting the company’s bottom line:

A benefit of a diverse workforce is the ability to tap into the many talents which employees from different backgrounds, perspectives, abilities and disabilities bring to the workplace. An impressive example of this is found on the business cards of employees at one Fortune 100 technology company. Employees at this company have business cards that appear normal at first glance. On closer inspection, the raised Braille characters of employee information are evident.

Many companies, however, still face challenges around building a diverse environment. Part of the reason is the tendency to pigeonhole employees, placing them in a different silo based on their diversity profile. If an employee is male, over 50, English, and an atheist, under what diversity category does this employee fall? Gender, generational, global or religious? In the real world, diversity cannot be easily categorized and those organizations that respond to human complexity by leveraging the talents of a broad workforce will be the most effective in growing their businesses and their customer base.