Accountability

It's not enough to talk about diversity and take some actions around diversity. You need to assume responsibility for improving your work environment with respect to diversity issues. If you have developed the business case for diversity, it's easy to link improving diversity performance to enhancing overall corporate performance. Addressing diversity issues also may support the achievement of specific corporate strategies, for example, expanding internationally or becoming an employer of choice.

Identify relevant diversity performance measures for your organization: You will want to review the measurement section and identify both quantitative and qualitative measurements for tracking the progress of your diversity effort.

Evaluate all employees, including individual contributors. As part of performance management, every employee should be given feedback on their commitment to addressing diversity issues within your organization. In this way, every employee takes ownership for creating a work environment that is fair and inclusive.

Establish an on-going feedback mechanism. Quantitative and qualitative measurements describe only part of the story of your diversity effort. Employee feedback often fills in the gaps and suggests reasons why your measures on diversity performance are improving, or not improving. You should develop a process to get feedback from employees, individual business units and/or teams.

Monitor and report progress. It's easier to begin a diversity initiative than to sustain the energy and commitment necessary to resolving diversity issues in the workplace. Nevertheless, your accountability as a manager requires that you monitor the impact of your diversity initiatives and periodically report on your progress.

Take action and show results. You shouldn't just talk about diversity. You need to have on-going results, even if they're small.

Mid-level and senior managers also should consider the following:

Make a high level appointment of a qualified woman, person of color, or person with a disability. Nothing signals your commitment to increasing the diversity within your organization like the selection of a woman, person of color, or a person with a disability to a senior role.

Hold managers accountable for ‘mutual familiarization' – getting to know a diverse group of employees. Just as it's important for you to get to know a diverse group of employees, it's important for your managers. By increasing their familiarity and comfort with employees from different backgrounds, they will be more likely to recommend someone who is different from them for a new position, a high risk assignment, or a special program.

Evaluate the performance of all managers. As your diversity effort progresses, you may want to tie a portion of manager bonuses to the achievement of specific diversity objectives.

Consider the use of a balanced report card for diversity. A balanced report card utilizes a wide variety of agreed-upon measures to evaluate a diversity effort. You should review the Measurement Section in order to select the most appropriate measures for your organization.

This toolkit is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended to replace legal, compliance, or other professional advice. TWP assumes no liability for the use of this toolkit.
Web-based Leaders' Toolkit, © Copyright, 2002. Technology Workforce Partners. All Rights Reserved. Technology Workforce Partners was a consortium of high technology companies that worked collaboratively on diversity issues in the workplace from 1995-2005.