Diversity the First Step in Creating Diversity

Diversity The first step in creating diversity plan is to devise a strategy for the plan. It is necessary that the plan be devised with specific objectives in mind, and importantly that those objectives align with the organization' overall strategy. The second step in creating a diversity plan is to understand the state of diversity in the workplace today. It is important to understand where the organization is today, in order to draw a pathway to get from that point to a new point defined in Step One.

This involves taking a diversity audit of the company, which will help to illustrate some of the demographics, for example. It is also worth investigating what the prevailing attitudes are of people within the organization, and also it is necessary to understand what issues may have arisen in the past. This audit will also allow for step three. Step three is the setting of pathways to get from where the organization is today to where it wants to be in the future. Pathways should also come with objectives.

It is critical that the plan focuses on how to achieve the goals set out in the first stage, but also that there is an understanding of specific objectives against which the success of the plan will be measured. Step four is to communicate the plan with the organization. This is not simply a matter of making an announcement that the plan exists. Instead, it is important that there is a total buy in throughout the organization.

The first step is to get buy-in from senior management, especially from the C-suite. It must be understood that the diversity plan is essentially an organizational change process, so the standards methods for organization change need to be follow in the communication and implementation plan. Therefore, it is critical that senior management supports the plan -- vocally -- so that the rest of the organization shows a high level of commitment to it (Hyter, 2004). There also needs to be champions for the plan as well.

Such champions would allow the plan to have sponsors at lower levels of the organization, and as a result these sponsors will be in a good position to promote the plan to the different divisions. They can communicate the rationale for the plan throughout the organization. They can identify the different points of resistance than might exist, and they can also highlight success stories. With their help the team responsible for the plans' implementation can adjust the strategies on the fly.

Thus, it is not simply a one-way communication of the plan that needs to be done. The diversity management team needs to engage the organization in a two-way flow of communication about the plan, and will therefore be able to build the diversity management plan into the organization's overall corporate culture. The fifth step is measurement (Boatwright, 2006). It is important for control of any program that there is accurate measurement of its outputs.

In this case, the outputs that are being measured should be directly related to the objectives of the diversity management program. These can be education and awareness outputs, or demographic outputs, but whatever they are it is necessary for the organization to measure whether.