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    Case Study 1

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    Kate Thurgood
    Spencer Owens & Co. was experiencing issues with managing diversity in their workforce. Employees of color were quick to accuse white employees of racism, and there were many complaints coming from women employees and employees of color. These issues stemmed from the company's methods of integrating a more diverse workforce. In the short term, the company could hold informal social events to allow employees to build personal relationships outside of work. In the long term, re-administering the company's diversity survey could assess changes in the workforce. The company's "sensitivity training" sessions backfired and caused employees to point fingers at each other instead of raising awareness of issues like racism and sexism. Forming separate networking groups for different identity groups also contributed to

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    Case Study 1

    Uploaded by

    Kate Thurgood
    1K views3 pages
    Spencer Owens & Co. was experiencing issues with managing diversity in their workforce. Employees of color were quick to accuse white employees of racism, and there were many complaints coming from women employees and employees of color. These issues stemmed from the company's methods of integrating a more diverse workforce. In the short term, the company could hold informal social events to allow employees to build personal relationships outside of work. In the long term, re-administering the company's diversity survey could assess changes in the workforce. The company's "sensitivity training" sessions backfired and caused employees to point fingers at each other instead of raising awareness of issues like racism and sexism. Forming separate networking groups for different identity groups also contributed to

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    Spencer Owens & Co. was experiencing issues with managing diversity in their workforce. Employees of color were quick to accuse white employees of racism, and there were many complaints coming from women employees and employees of color. These issues stemmed from the company's methods of integrating a more diverse workforce. In the short term, the company could hold informal social events to allow employees to build personal relationships outside of work. In the long term, re-administering the company's diversity survey could assess changes in the workforce. The company's "sensitivity training" sessions backfired and caused employees to point fingers at each other instead of raising awareness of issues like racism and sexism. Forming separate networking groups for different identity groups also contributed to

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    1K views3 pages

    Case Study 1

    Uploaded by

    Kate Thurgood
    Spencer Owens & Co. was experiencing issues with managing diversity in their workforce. Employees of color were quick to accuse white employees of racism, and there were many complaints coming from women employees and employees of color. These issues stemmed from the company's methods of integrating a more diverse workforce. In the short term, the company could hold informal social events to allow employees to build personal relationships outside of work. In the long term, re-administering the company's diversity survey could assess changes in the workforce. The company's "sensitivity training" sessions backfired and caused employees to point fingers at each other instead of raising awareness of issues like racism and sexism. Forming separate networking groups for different identity groups also contributed to

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
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    CASE STUDY #1: MANAGING DIVERSITY AT SPENCER OWENS & CO.

    Kate Thurgood MGMT 4010 May 12, 2011

    A few observed behaviors at Spencer Owens & Co. were that employees of colors were quick to bring charges of racism against their fellow white employees. There was also a high frequency of complaints coming from the two networking groups of women employees and employees of color. The root cause of these issues rose from the organizations methods of integrating their workforce. One way to remedy the issues in the short-term should be to hold informal employee get-togethers, such as a company barbeque. This would give employees the opportunity to build a relationship on a personal, rather than professional, level outside of the workplace. A long-term action would be to re-administer the original company wide survey to assess what changes have occurred in the workforce as a whole and on an individual level. I will now further discuss the issue with the organizations implementation of their affirmative action plan. Spencer Owens & Co.s root cause of their company issues derive from their methods of integrating a more diverse workforce. This is important because without proper methods the companys employees have become divided and have lost sight of the end goal. For example, the organization has made their staff members attend sensitivity training sessions. Instead of these sessions raising peoples awareness of individual prejudices and institutional racism, sexism, and homophobia (Ely, 2006), they have made these employees turn to one another and point a finger. One example of this is when the companys executive director, Agnes Richards, who happens to be a white female, fired Sahara Johnson, an African-American manager in Human Resources who has a history of tardiness and problems with her attitude. Her firing divided the firm into those who considered her dismissal abrupt and unjust and those who felt it was long overdue (Ely, 2006). I also believe having the organization form networking groups for

    women employees and for employees of color contributed to the companys divide and only exacerbated the original problem. As I continue on I will be discussing further arguments.

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