Diversity

I did a seminar for a medical organization in another state on diversity in health care. I began my talk by specifically saying that what I was going to talk about is a difficult topic, but it might not apply to every facility in the room. Then I began the presentation, and one of the first things I said was that different people have different perceptions of what's fair and what's not, and that the perception of the people in the community is always more important than the perception of the people in the facility, and that it's also important to address the perception of your employees if you want to be an effective manager.

About 10 minutes into my talk this one lady in the audience raises her hand, and when I call on her she states that maybe issues of diversity are a problem in the area that I live in, but in her area this wasn't the case at all. Me being me, I questioned her further on this. She said her facility had "lots" of diversity. I asked her about management and she said her facility had "lots" of minorities in management. I pressed further and asked how many management level positions were there at her particular facility, and she said 25. I asked what the percentage of minorities out of that number were and she said "Oh, at least 5%." So I said, "In other words, you're saying there's maybe 2 or 3", giving her the benefit because her figure would mean there was 1 ¼ minorities. She didn't say anything to that, so I asked her if that was representative of the population in her community, and she said yes.

This other woman in the audience raised her hand at that point, so I called on her. She said "I happen to live in the area that this woman's facility is in, and at least 35% of the population there is black, and I've been in this woman's facility and they don't come close to having that many minorities in her hospital." And of course an argument almost broke out, so I stepped in and pointed out how one of my points had been proven by this interaction. What we had was someone from the facility with one point of view, and someone from the community with another point of view. Then I followed up on that by reiterating the rest of that original point, that being it's always more important to recognize the point of view of your customer, in this case the potential patients in the community, rather than believe everything is going okay. This is what looking at the topic of diversity is all about.

Those who know me personally will recognize that I can come at this particular issue from a unique point of view. Health care is the one industry where women have a better opportunity to be equal with men in management positions, with the possible exception of the CEO spot, but even there, health care has more female CEOs than any other industry in America. Once you step away from the gender equity in health care, though, most businesses are deficient in coming close to matching the demographic populations they serve, if they serve any number of minority clientele. Many certainly aren't matching the diversity of their communities.

So, what kind of numbers are we talking about anyway? In the Syracuse region it equates to at least 25% of the population being associated with some type of minority group. This figure is enough to highlight the fact that there are significant demographics which justify the reality that some of our businesses are failing their respective communities in their hiring and marketing practices. It's inherently unfair to make up the difference by putting minorities in only non-skilled positions such as housekeeping or the cafeteria, and it's inherently bad business if one doesn't market to 100% of the population in their area.

This talk about diversity isn't only about minorities, though. How many of you have anyone with physical handicaps working for you? How many of you have handled the issues of sexual orientation in a proper fashion? How many of you have ever addressed the possible class issues of your employees as it pertains to their economic background differences? How many of you have ever addressed possible conflicts because of religion? How many of you have addressed issues of the differences in physical stature between your employees (heavy, skinny, tall, short, bald, etc)? How do you address the issues of age within your department? And then, take it one step further; how do you present yourself to these same groups of people for your business? Do you even see them; is it intentional? This topic of diversity it more widespread and vast than most people realize.

Finally, the most important question; do you treat everyone the same, or treat everyone fairly? It's an important distinction because the reality is that every person can not be treated the same. No two people are alike, which means that each person will react differently to the same stimulus. It's important to project the image of fairness as well as the image of equality. What do you think the community you're serving really thinks of you and your business? Do you have the guts to ask? Diversity issues are tough to deal with, but one I personally had to deal with on a daily basis when I was still working in hospitals. I was tough enough to deal with it; are you tough enough to at least consider the diversity issue in your business and life?