Diversity in the Workplace.

Willette Bunton, Director, Diversity Task Force, National Partnership for Reinventing Government

We live in an age where understanding diversity is becoming more important that ever. The U.S. Department of Commerce and Vice President Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) recently published a study on diversity in the workplace. The purpose of this study was to determine how government and private industry are addressing the issue of diversity. Interestingly, NPR discovered that a very small percentage of the government agencies and commercial businesses addressed this issue at all.

Society views diversity as a combination of the following elements: race, ethnicity gender, age, religion, disability, and sexual orientation. The NPR, however, elaborated on that theme by defining diversity as the "characteristics and experiences" of each individual in society. Such characteristics would include where you grew up, went to school, and any additional information about you (the individual).

But why is there such a great interest in understanding diversity? One reason is that demographics are changing. Did you know that the average age of the government's workforce is steadily increasing? And this is why the government has recently been interested in hiring people capable of filling the increasingly empty spots. This implemented change, of course, is bringing new types of people, different ways of thinking--diversity--into the workplace.

Initiatives have been taken to educate employees to understand diversity. For starters, diversity training is becoming more available to employees within both private industry and the government. These classes, among other things, encourage communication within the work environment. Communication assists employees to work more easily within a diverse environment. Magazines, such as Next Step, published quarterly, discuss current issues associated with diversity.

Changes in society and the workplace force us every day to work in diversity-filled situations. And with these adjustments, workers everywhere will have to learn to be more sensitive when dealing with this issue. It is also important to remember that communication is highly encouraged as a means to understanding diversity in the workplace.

A. Renee Reaves is an Operations Research Analyst with the Communications-Electronics Command, Fort Monmouth, NJ. She is an active member of the Jersey Devil Chapter of the ASMC.