Creating a Diversity Program June 17th 2012 Gopala Ajjarapu MGT 100.C1 (Manager as a Communicator)

Introduction Human capital is the foundation of all organizations, thus it is extremely important for them to manage their talent. In order to gain a competitive edge it is necessary for all organizations to make full use of its human resources by adopting teamwork, proper recruiting, training and development of people to diverse roles. Diverse roles benefit from diverse people, skills, aptitude, and cultural backgrounds that people bring with them. Thus, it is extremely critical for all organizations to have a diverse workforce. Diversity Management is not a new phenomenon but something that companies having been striving for a long time. With the workforce becoming global, spreading across multiple ethnic and racial groups, in the multiple geographic regions, it is becoming extremely important for companies to put programs together and implement proper diversity programs. Women are now playing increasingly important role in the workplace and thus making it all the more necessary for human resource (HR) departments of the companies to invest in harnessing the diversified work force. Hence the goal of this paper is to understand the strategic importance and creation of a diversity program. The need for a diverse workforce in different industry and organizational contexts has caused organizations to develop different flavors of diversity programs that are designed to increase the available talent pool and their productivity, and decrease turnover. This paper uses the following approach to understand how the top diversity practicing firms use diversity for their success: (1) identify different diversity mechanisms and tools used in their diversity programs, (2) understand how these diversity mechanisms and tools enhance their organizational functions, and (3) relate each diversity mechanism or tool to one or more specific organizational outcome that provides competitive edge. Based on this analysis, this paper will develop a set of questions that can be used to help in creating a diversity program for a given company in order to leverage its diverse workforce and to increase its functional efficiency and organizational effectiveness.
PwC

PwC is a global company with 771 locations spread across 158 countries with its headquarter in New York, a global workforce of 168,710, of which 35,836 are based here in the US. PwC has been rated the number one company globally in its financial consulting marketplace report (PwC--Facts&Figures, 2012) and is also ranked as the business-consulting leader worldwide. (PwC--Facts&Figures, 2012). With a workforce spread across 158 countries, the company has been working diligently and is on the forefront of diversity-management strategies. (DiversityInc--PWC, 2012). Bob Moritz, U.S. Chairman and Senior Partner, believes that that in order to succeed in today’s global economy it is going to require organizations to have a culture that will attract and retain the most talented people from diverse culture’s. Bob holds all executives responsible for leveraging diversity. In fact he measures their success in terms of their diversity goals, and also looks to see how well they perform in cross-cultural mentoring, recruitment, retention, engagement, and promotion, in their groups. PwC is continuously looking to be creative in engaging and promoting the best and brightest employees while deliberately promoting diversity in teams. PwC offers people the ability to have the flexibility to deal with personal and professional challenges. They offer onsite religious accommodations, childcare assistance, nanny resources, paid paternity leave, well being rewards, and tax equalization for all domestic partners. PwC believes in offering their folks a mentoring program, and almost half of the pairings are cross-cultural.