Thesis on "Workforce Diversity a Diverse Workforce Can Benefit"

Thesis 4 pages (1257 words) Sources: 3 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Workforce Diversity

A diverse workforce can benefit almost any company. The shifting demographics of America almost demands that firms wishing to sell to a broad spectrum of the American populace must embrace workplace diversity. One example in my past experience clearly illustrates this.

The company I was working for at was a wholesaler selling a wide range of household products throughout the state. We were located in an area that one would describe as fairly normal America, and the demographics of our company reflected that. We had a proportionate gender mix, but the company was largely Caucasian but for a few Latinos and African-Americans. Our demographics were consistent with our immediate area, but not with those of the entire state.

The problem the company had was that while our sales were growing, they were not growing in proportion with the state's population, which we took as a reasonable estimate of the growth in the market since we were marketing everyday items. Thus, we determined that we were losing market share. The sales team was struggling to figure out why this was. It was speculated that maybe because we were losing share to Wal-Mart or other box stores.

Ultimately, we learned of the reason through experience. One of our more talented reps, a woman we'll care Mary, went to go visit a fairly large new store in an inner-city neighborhood. She returned from an unsuccessful visit and reported that the store's buyer did not, as she put it "give her the time of day." This happens in sales, so little was thought of it until a few months later. A territory shift put the store in the territory of a new rep who we'll call Ron. Ron had not demonstrated much success in his short time on the job, but he was able to sell a good range of products the store. He reported that the friendly buyer and owners were Arabs. They had specifically commented on the fact that Mary had been sent previously and how they were unimpressed.

While we were able to land that account, it clued us into something that we had failed to notice before. As a company, our accounts generally reflected the demographics of our sales force, rather than the demographics of our target market. We had very few customers from the wide variety of ethnic communities in the larger centers of the state. It was costing us market share and profit.

We determined that the company would be better able to capture that lost market share if we understand the demographics of the target market better, and reconfigured our sales force to those demographics. Ron won the account because Arabs are hesitant to do business with women. Mary had not failed at all -- she had not been given a chance. Nobody within the company liked the idea in that circumstance, but we realized that the scenario translated across a wide range of ethnicities. We simply had little knowledge of the business practices of many of the different groups that exist in our state.

In order to better reach our target market, we realized that we needed to develop cross-cultural competencies in our sales group. This was not something that was going to be easy in a workforce that was relatively lacking in diversity. Aside from the rudimentary information available on the Internet, we had no basis for building this crucial knowledge. In order to do so, we would need to improve the diversity of the workforce. This would not necessarily need to be within the sales team, but anywhere within the company so long as the knowledge could be disseminated to the sales team through our internal communication channels.

This is not a guaranteed solution. There are drawbacks. For one, it… READ MORE

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