Rise in workplace diversity still leaves much to be desired

On August 28th, 2008, 44 years after Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama accepted his party’s nomination for President of the United States. And even though we currently have an African American and a white man running for the two highest offices in the land on the democrat side and a senior and a woman running on the republican side, “America still hasn't reached the point where people are judged more by the content of their character than by their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, class, sexual orientation or physical ability,” says Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, former president of Spelman College in Atlanta.

I can’t say I disagree. While I am pleased with the progress we as a nation have made in promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace and in most social settings, we still have a long way to go. We may not be living in the embarrassing era of American history where schools, restaurants, bathrooms, and water fountains were segregated as the result of some unholy “separate but equal” doctrine, but in many American workplaces, turnover of diversity employees is much too high, usually because many diversity employees still feel unwelcome and unappreciated in the workplace.

It is fantastic that the Republican and Democratic nominees for president and vice president are more diverse than ever before, but let’s take a peek at other areas of government:

US Congress: Only 17 percent of Congress is made up of women, African Americans make up only 8 percent of Congress, Hispanics just shy of 5 percent, with 1 percent Asian Americans.

State Governors: Just 8 state governors are women, 2 are African American, only one is Hispanic, and just one is Indian American (Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal).

A brief look at the makeup of corporate boardrooms and executives of American companies reveals increases across the board in the number of female, Black, Hispanic, disabled, and LGBT executives but is far from representative and far from where it should be.

What baffles me about the state of workplace diversity is that most employers know that workplace diversity isn’t just about doing the right thing; in terms of sustainability and long term financial solvency, it’s the smart thing to do as well.

Workplace diversity is an essential source of US competitive advantage in the ever growing global economy. It stimulates innovation, increases profitability and helps companies better understand and market their goods and services to their consumers. In a workplace that lacks diversity or which has an atmosphere of intolerance, whether perceived or actual, productivity, innovation, and profitability will all inevitably decline.

Now—not tomorrow, not after the elections—is the time for all US companies, as Dr. Cole so eloquently put it, to “create an environment that values all employees; that moves beyond tolerating diversity to respecting it, celebrating it and using it in the interest of a company's business objectives. We need to move beyond counting heads to making sure that every head counts."

I can’t say it any better than that.