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July 1, 2008 - Richard Donkin
Most big employers today across the industrialised world have some kind of diversity policy. But how many of them are thinking about the meaning of diversity in their day-to-day work?
Two new surveys, one carried out in the US by Adecco and one undertaken in the UK jointly by the Chartered Management Institute, The Department for Work & Pensions and The Institute for Employment Studies, suggest that employers still have some way to go in establishing diversity as an ingrained approach to management and recruitment.
The UK survey of 1,350 managers found that employers were doing too little to explore the ways that different groups of people look for job opportunities. While some diversity policies are beginning to tackle the problem of age discrimination, particularly against older people, there is evidence that young people too suffer a hidden discrimination.
According to the study more than three quarters of job searches in the UK today are being undertaken online yet only 11 per cent of people in the research said they had found suitable jobs on the internet. Since online job searching is most common among young people, the research suggests that those concentrating their job searches within the internet are being disadvantaged as many employers continue to use print media as their principle source of recruitment advertising.
Additionally the research highlighted a need for a better understanding of how different ethnic groups search for jobs. While press advertising remains popular among black managers, online searches are preferred by Asian managers and personal networking is favoured by white managers.
"This study shows that it is vital that employers take a close look at the methods they use to attract new recruits and to appeal to all groups and not just a limited band of potential employees." says Stephen Timms, the UK's Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform. Understanding the aspirations of the whole workforce is key to recruiting and retaining the best employees." he says.
Findings from the US-based Adecco research support this view. While much of the pioneering work in diversity programmes has been pursued among US employers, the Adecco USA Workplace Insights survey found that 78 per cent of employees did not feel that companies were doing enough to embed their diversity programmes across their workforces.
No more than a third of workers consulted in the research believed that American companies had achieved total workplace diversity and half of them said that they had suffered some kind of discrimination at work. Age was identified as the most common form of workplace discrimination.
Lois Cooper, head of Diversity and Inclusion at Adecco USA, says that companies must work at creating an "environment for diversity" in the workplace. This, she argues, needs to go further than thinking about recruiting minorities and in to the fundamentals of defining differences to ensure that policies truly reflect diversity.
"If, for example, an employer is only recruiting graduates from Ivy League universities, they are not going to get a wide spread of people from different social, economic and ethnic backgrounds," she says.
The same goes for recruiting across Europe. Those companies that have chosen to concentrate their graduate recruitment across a narrow seam of high achievers among a limited number of universities are not going to benefit from the rich mixture of attitudes, outlooks and talents that can be achieved by spreading the net across many different communities and skill areas.
While the UK study found evidence that racial discrimination still exists for job candidates from the black and Asian communities, it also found persistent disadvantages in job development and training leaving too few opportunities for promotion and advancement among ethnic groups.
"Despite increasing demands for openness and transparency many of the barriers to achieving greater diversity at a senior management level persist," says Jo Causon, director, marketing and corporate affairs, at the Chartered Management Institute. She adds: "It should be a significant concern for employers because they run the risk of wasting a talent pool that already exists."
Hülya Hooker, IES Research Fellow and author of the UK report, agrees. "If organisations want management talent at the top, it's there, and in an ethnically diverse pool," she says. "Recruitment approaches must recognise that managers from different ethnic groups are attracted by different benefits."
Lois Cooper says that Adecco is working closely with client employers to ensure a strong supply of skilled employees from diverse backgrounds. This extends to advising employers about providing wheelchair space and the right kind of workplace support for traditionally disadvantaged groups.
"Part of my roll," she says, "is convincing employers that diversity in employment feeds through to the bottom line. Creating diverse workplaces isn't just about doing the right thing. It's good for business too."
Her argument is underpinned by the findings of the UK report. Organisations, it says, are missing out on vast swathes of talent as a result of poor understanding of the job-hunting habits of Britain's under-represented groups. As demographic trends continue to squeeze the talent pool it is vital that employers respond to these weaknesses sooner rather than later.
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