hrough their commitment and involvement of diversity issues, Xerox was awarded the prestigious Malcolm Baldridge quality award in 1989 for its three decade campaign to hire and promote women as well as minorities (Managing diversity: Lessons from the private sector, AOL Electric Library). The company has been a leader in the development of diversity initiatives which include programs designed to improve employee motivation, and teamwork through helping people to understand differences in gender and race as well as disabilities. Although some of these programs go back over thirty years to the height of the Civil Rights Movement, todays diversity initiatives refer to a much wider range of programs designed to create a well running, cooperative workforce. Many initiatives start with benchmarking and company-wide goal setting. This then results in various recruitment, promotional and employee retention programs. These retention programs can include everything from educational grants to multilevel training programs. Another valuable retention program can be the redesign of performance review processes. One thing is for sure, and that is that in order for it to work, diversity training must be able to incorporate ALL the demographic trends that are taking place in the country. In recent years, women have become a growing presence in the labor force. As Gary Powell point out, The proportion of women, which was 42 percent in 1980 and 45 percent in 1990, is expected to be 47 percent in the year 2000 (Powell, P.36). Elderly workers are another major demographic group that has begun to be included in the workforce due to diversity initiatives and sensitivity training programs. This presents a number of different challenges for businesses today. Older employees may prefer more time o...
