Mary works for a nonprofit agency that provides technical assistance to small business owners. The mission of the agency is to help low-income people, women, and people of color start or grow their businesses. The agency has been very successful in reaching out to low-income and women business owners, but is less successful in serving communities of color. Few people of color know about the agency or apply for assistance through its programs.
One day, two well-dressed, articulate African American men, Philip and John, visit the agency seeking assistance in starting up a new business. Both men are well educated; John has a master’s degree, and Philip has a doctorate. They are employed as engineers at a large, highly respected local company. Mary and her supervisor, a white man, meet with the men and determine that the agency will be able to help them start up their business.
Later that week, Mary’s supervisor laments the fact that the agency has not been successful in reaching out to people of color. Mary says, “Don’t forget about Philip and John. Maybe they can give us some advice about how to do a better job of marketing to African American business owners.” Mary’s supervisor laughs and replies, “Those guys aren’t black! They’re two white guys pretending to be black!”
What are the implications of the supervisor’s comment? How would they be different if, like Philip and John, the supervisor was African American?
MY POST;
Workplace diversity is a workforce that consists of employees from all backgrounds, religion, ethnicity, abilities, age, and gender. Numerous benefits lie with the inclusion of diversity in the workplace to a business. All businesses that want to succeed in the current global market have to have a well diverse workforce (Noe et al, 2017).
It can be interpreted from Mary`s supervisor comments that the Non-profit agency she works for lacks appropriate workplace diversity to fulfill its mission on helping individuals from low-income background start and grow their own companies. Further implications from the supervisor's comment are that the supervisor is encouraging stereotypical tendencies since he has exaggerated beliefs that people of color can’t be well educated. This proves that the company cannot adequately meet its goals with such opinions being active in the company.
If the organization had a supervisor who was African American, perhaps it would have experienced better results in helping out people from all backgrounds and color. Philip and John are both well-educated, and they may have connected the company to other well educated African Americans who perhaps wished to establish their businesses. There would also have been access to a wide range of talent that can be accessed when a company hires someone who potentially offers a bigger recruitment pool of business rather than the restrictive one that the non-profit organization is currently working under. There is also an increased possibility that there will be successful projects in a wide range of locations and the employees from the organization would gain experience from working with different cultures and accomplishing goals by various ways which almost guarantees innovation and creativity in the workplace (Heitner, 2018). The non-profit agency would also be more adaptable to change, which is inevitable in any business environment.References
Heitner, K. L. (2018). Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in the Workplace. In Diversity and Inclusion in the Global Workplace (pp. 49-67). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2017). Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.