 |  Global Novations / Resources / Articles and White Papers / Diversity and Inclusion in the New Economy | | | By Verna Ford, Executive Consultant, Novations Group, Inc.
Originally published in Diversity Executive magazine.
The economic downturn has caused some organizations to curtail their commitment to diversity and inclusion. But it's in the rapidly growing ranks of the unemployed that leaders may find the seeds of the next generation of best practices.
According to a recent survey, 79 percent of corporate managers recognize the value of hiring people different from themselves. But the reality is almost three in 10 are unsure how to do it effectively.
These findings are according to a 2008 survey of more than 2,500 senior HR executives conducted by Boston-based Novations Group, a talent development consulting firm, in which respondents were asked to characterize management's attitudes toward diversity hiring.
It used to be that when a company needed to downsize, the management team would still take diversity goals into account. It was careful not to disproportionately impact one group over another. Then, suddenly, the list of expendables began to include whole departments, plants or divisions. Diversity wasn't an issue. Everybody had to go. Now, in this unparalleled period of layoffs for corporate America, even HR executives are debating the relevance of a diversity and inclusion agenda.
But not so fast. Before giving up on diversity and inclusion best practices that practitioners labored for decades to install into organizations, perhaps there will be need for them with a new demographic group — the white-collar worker, over-schooled and underskilled for the new and sometimes dirty work of America.
Under the Obama administration's New Energy for America plan, the first wave of hiring will be for blue-collar positions as part of the nation's combination jobs/infrastructure rebuilding program. These jobs will be in areas such as road reconstruction, bridge reinforcement, schools refurbishment and urban water system repair.
Next, as part of the nation's quest for energy independence, a less familiar category of job opportunities will get attention: the "green-collar" role. Some of these positions will require new knowledge to be added to traditional skills. Experienced construction contractors will need to learn how to install solar panels and energy-efficient windows, auto repair mechanics will have to learn to rebuild hybrid engines, and industrial sales representatives will have to evolve into eco-savvy hucksters of recyclable goods.
Among the early green jobs, there will be white-collar professions such as scientists and engineers, but many of these will be for largely unfamiliar specialty positions, such as biofuel researchers and sustainability experts. These will not constitute the bulk of new jobs, and rarer still will be candidates who have a prior or baseline knowledge of how to do this type of work.
The New Face of the Unemployed
With unemployment expected to climb as high as 10 percent, unprecedented volumes of those looking for work will be white-collar executives — most of whom will be overqualified or unqualified for the nation's first jobs to be filled in 2009, 2010 and perhaps 2011.
When the dot-com bubble burst in the late 1990s, many people who were not prepared to act entrepreneurially begrudgingly took a step down the career ladder. Executive vice presidents accepted director roles, assistant directors accepted IT staff positions as they were released from start-up companies and absorbed back into the corporations that were then investing heavily in automating their operations and Web-enabling their services.
Luckily, those skill sets transferred easily. But that was technology.
This time around, white-collar job searchers — former investment bankers, insurance executives, marketing managers, residential real estate developers and various six-figure administrators — often are without those readily transferable talents. Because being successful has for the last 50 years or so meant tying sense of worth to escalating job titles, it is likely the nation will find itself with an unprecedented number of depressed and unemployable former executives.
"The emotionally strong are reschooling themselves in terms of new and more fluid skills," said Lorita Williams, an assistant vice president at Simmons College in Boston. "Our graduate school and nursing school enrollments are up this semester with such people. They are preparing to translate whatever jargon they know for the language of the viable labor sectors of the future. The prudent who are still employed and who are not inclined to go back to school should start looking now for alternative applications of their current skill sets because more layoffs have been predicted."
For example, Williams said a good pharmaceuticals salesperson might look to the Obama administration's initiative to automate medical records.
"At first glance, this might seem like a big step down, but these will not be your grandmother's data-entry jobs, which were little more than transcribing hard-copy data into soft copy," she said. "A prerequisite for these new positions will be a working knowledge of disease, drugs and health care protocols."
Living through the deepest recession in decades, the $4 coffee-loving class may have to rethink many of its closely held assumptions about the role government should play in job creation for the unemployed and underemployed, such as what it means to serve as a civil service worker, to have a job versus a career or to eke out a living wage as a 1099 employee of a small business rather than as a bonus-eligible full-time equivalent of a billion-dollar firm.
There likely will be a growth in empathy for various demographic groups that have long experienced disappointment in their job searches: being judged as not qualified or overly qualified and thus an inappropriate fit for the only job openings in town.
Diversity in These Times
In these times, how should we think about diversity and inclusion? According to the 2008 Novations survey of HR executives, 21 percent of managers don't see the value in hiring people different from themselves. Twelve percent nevertheless cooperate with company hiring goals, and 9 percent see no value and make no effort to meet objectives.
It will be fascinating to follow the fate of these 21 percent of leaders who traditionally felt diversity initiatives are inappropriate at best, and unfair at worse. In mid-2008, before the economic collapse, some were still staunchly quoting the resistor's slogan: "It is my duty to hire the best qualified person for the job," and defending discriminatory practices that sought to preserve certain types of jobs for certain groups of people. That slogan often was accompanied by claims of not being able to find qualified minority actuaries, accountants, physicists or engineers — even as the job banks of minority industry organizations were flush with candidates.
"Best qualified" is about to take on a new twist, and many experienced laborers will find themselves in the catbird seat for jobs when the rehiring begins. Not only are these multiskilled technicians creative problem solvers, they are likely to be the best prepared for working with multiethnic teams, solving cultural conflict, getting a diversity of talent up to speed quickly and inexpensively, and managing work projects efficiently. |
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