Diversity Management is the optimal utilization of all the diverse talents of individual employees in favour of customer service, profit and/or results of the organisation. The under utilization of these talents happens primarily (but not exclusively) in relation to the factors gender, religion, age, ethnic background and disability. Diversity is about all the personnel because everybody has an identity and a culture and talents to contribute: white men as well as black women, young heterosexuals as well as older homosexuals and so on. And it is about all kinds of differences. Research shows for example that diversity in education and functions, on the condition that it is well managed, leads to added value for the organisation. .

Seba has determined ten critical success factors for the optimal utilization of diverse talents. You can find them elsewhere on this webpage. The model of the ten critical success factors helps you to look before you leap and choose those factors that are most critical for your organisation. There is no standard approach for diversity. As a basis serves the business case that is specific for your organisation and fits with your strategic policies. The great advantage of the ten critical success factors is that managers who want to start a diversity initiative can see at a glance what factors play a role in that and what accents or focus they can stress on. In our diversityshop.eu you can order the digital Diversity Indicator – always bilingual: Dutch and English - to determine where you are now and where you want to go. Filling out the Diversity Indicator leads to a profile of your organisation and specific recommendations.

Management of diversity takes the differences between people as a starting point and wants to organize companies on that basis. That is in contrast with traditional companies that were organized around the typical wage earner, Mr. Average. Now that less and less employees are average, (personnel) managers and employers are confronted with the question how they can apply the principle 'sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander'. It isn't easy to determine what differences are important or not, neither is it simple to find out how to make the best use of different talents for the organization. Management of diversity wants to increase both knowledge and abilities of managers so that less directly visible competences of employees also get a wide berth.

Yes and no. Yes, a person must fit with the culture of the organization. That culture often has a function for the product or service offered. Therefore an effort of any employee can be expected. No, because there can be elements in that culture that have slipped in it through the years and have become useless. Old, often informal rules can make things unnecessarily difficult for women and non-indigenous workers. The organizational culture itself might need some touching up. We don't mind who join us, if only the vacancies are filled, but women or non-indigenous people hardly apply for jobs in our company.

There are special recruitment channels and bureaus who focus on these groups. That might be helpful, but it is better to study more closely the reason why they don't apply for jobs in your company. For one company seems to get a diverse staffing almost automatically, but others have to put a lot more effort in it. A conscious diversity policy on personnel offers more opportunities for your organization than you maybe suppose.

A simple question that cannot be answered briefly. Basically, apart from knowledge it is a general cultural ability. Managers who have worked abroad can have the edge over less experienced managers: they have probably gained consciousness of their own culture and the culture of others. They know their own prejudices and understand how image forming affects relationships between colleagues. They understand from experience what the influence can be of performing as a 'minority' in a working environment. They create a healthy balance between the formal and informal rules of the organization, so that the company goals are paramount while the differences in talent and approach of employers boost creativity and innovation.

When the job is well done, diversity is included in your competence system from the moment of introduction: the diverse surroundings and cooperation in diverse teams are included in the competence profiles and in the examples of behaviour. A best practice was developed in 2004 in the project Different People where Seba, Social Services Amsterdam and United Restart cooperated. One of the outcomes was the digital competence library of Social Services Amsterdam; you can ask us for it (free of charge) via info@seba.nl. The book Making the Difference of Seba director Grethe van Geffen tells more about the notion of diversity competence (critical success factor 5), consisting of motivation, knowledge and skills. Chapter 7 explains about the relation between competences and diversity (do women or people with specific ethnic backgrounds really bring different competences). It also describes how you can utilize diverse competences in such a way that it leads to added values in teams.

Maybe this will eventually happen, but then we live maybe twenty years from now. Actually organisations still tend to uniformity and a lot of people think that handling differences is difficult, let alone that they can achieve the aim of diversity management: to get more out of a diverse team than could be required from a uniform team. Diversity does offer added value for your organisation but it will not come all by itself.