Features
The Turtle and the Future of Workplace Diversity
Anne Lindberg , 01-17-2010
In elementary school, teachers like to use brain teasers to exercise developing minds and expand kids’ thinking. One popular conundrum discusses a turtle that swims halfway across a stream. Every day the turtle swims half the distance remaining to the other shore.
The question is, when will he reach the other side? The answer, of course, is never.
Poor turtle. He is forever doomed to paddle and paddle with that heavy shell on his back and never get to where he is going.
Attaining true workplace diversity can be as elusive a goal for business as getting to the other shore for that turtle, for many reasons: differing definitions of diversity; ever-changing world demographics; social changes; or the inability to adequately measure the success of diversity initiatives. And, of course, there is the all-too-human tendency to declare success and move on to something else once an obvious goal has been reached — such as the election of a black president.
Roland Beanum, an African-American engineer, addressed this recently. Beanum began his career in the 1950s and worked on the Apollo program in the 1960s. Now, at 70-plus, he’s still working as a logistics manager for a government contractor. And Beanum said, in some ways, minorities are losing ground.
“When I started my career, bias was out in the open, but now it is more discreet: It’s still there but more subtle,” he explained, though he said his concern is not for himself. “I have made my money,” he said with a laugh. But when he thinks about the future, he worries that there is a false sense of progress.
To combat that false sense of progress, workplace diversity must continue to evolve.
Chief Diversity Officer Andrés Tapia of Hewitt Associates, a global human resources services company, said the numbers game is no longer the way to look at the issue. In his book The Inclusion Paradox: The Obama Era and the Transformation of Global Diversity, he argues that diversity by the numbers is one thing, but the ultimate goal is inclusion — using employees’ differences to strengthen the organization and to make it more than the sum of its parts.
Yet companies often interchange the terms diversity and inclusion.
“In reality, I believe diversity is the mix, and inclusion is making the mix work,” Tapia said in a 2009 press release describing his theory. “In other words, many companies have gotten very good at getting the right mix of people in the door, but have been unprepared for how to make that more complex mix work once it comes together. Companies have been good at creating a workforce that looks different, but they aren’t adequately prepared for a workforce that thinks differently. They’ve fallen short when it comes to understanding how to develop a corporate culture where all employees feel included, respected, comfortable and able to do their best work.”
Essentially, the future of successful workplace diversity can be summed up in one word: more. Organizations need more diverse people, not just in quantity, but in variations — racial, religious, cultural, sexual and other. Diversity executives must encourage more real participation by people with decision-making authority at every level and create more appreciation of the value that differences can bring to the table.
And perhaps we also need more of an understanding that, like the turtle, an organization may not ever reach the other side, but it can keep trying and can come close enough to successfully touch its goal. «
Anne Lindberg is a research analyst at i4cp. She can be reached at editor@diversity-executive.com.
