Diversity In The Workplace

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Pages: 7

Uses of Diversity
“My advice to new diversity officers is to remember that diversity is not only the right thing to do, but also a strategic business imperative. It provides very tangible benefits to your organization, including a deeper and more diverse talent pool; the ability to leverage broader per-spectives, ideas, and experiences; and better alignment with the needs of your clients,” states Kathy Hannan, KPMG’s National Managing Partner of diversity and corporate responsibility (2011). With this understanding and objective, organizations must embrace diversity in all as-pects of their operations to compete in a successful global marketplace. The first step in strategi-cally using diversity to strengthen one’s organization is to diversify
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Many organi-zations advertise diversity on their websites or job descriptions but in actuality they only promote this to preserve their brand in the market. One of the nation’s most fashionable retail store, Aber-crombie & Fitch is an example of a company that claims to encourage diversity but doesn’t prac-tice the actions to support the claims. Abercrombie & Fitch is a successful clothing company that caters to late teens and young adults in their early twenties, specifically Caucasians. Unfortunate-ly, the company has had many discrimination lawsuits filed against them. The most famous and perhaps the most expensive lawsuit was the Gonzalez v. Abercrombie & Fitch case. In June 2003, Eduardo Gonzalez and a few other employees who were of diverse backgrounds filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the company. “I remember how discouraged I felt when I applied for a job at the Santa Clara store and the manager suggested that I work in the stock room or on the late night crew in a non-sales position. I felt it was because I was a Latino,” states Eduardo Gonzales. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission joined Gonzalez on the plaintiff side along with other minority organizations such as Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and law firms as co-counsel. In 2004, Abercrombie & Fitch lost the lawsuit and had to pay $40 million dollars to rejected candidates and to segregated employees due to discrimination. Yet again in June 2015, Abercrombie & Fitch recently lost another employment discrimination lawsuit for refusing to hire a Muslim woman who covered her head due to religious preferences. At one point Abercrombie & Fitch even went as far as to ask its employees to go to college campuses to recruit attractive white fraternity and sorority students as opposed to capable