Thursday, January 11, 2018
Carbonite Partners with DiversityWorking.com
DiversityWorking.com, a
career opportunity resource and job search engine for the cultural diversity
marketplace, is pleased to announce the inclusion of Carbonite to
its list of member diversity companies.
Carbonite is a global
award-winning company providing cloud-based data protection for businesses. Its
prestigious awards include, among others: 2017
Gold Stevie Award for Contact Center of the Year; Carbonite Customer Care
Leader awarded Gold Stevie for 2017 Customer Service Leader of the Year; and
2015 and 2016 PC Mag Business Choice Award in Cloud Computing Services.
Carbonite was also recognized as among the Best Places To Work in Maine - Customer Care
Center, in 2015. All these are proof of Carbonite’s core values of embracing
power, simplicity, security and value that guide its work ethics, which in turn
help create a productive, fun and
rewarding place to work.
An Equal Opportunity
Employer that makes its employees’ success a priority, Carbonite – in its
search for talented individual to be part of their vibrant team of Carbonistas -- partners with DiversityWorking.com,
whose mission is to help companies promote their jobs, build their brand and
send targeted and qualified diversity candidates directly to the best jobs
possible.
Find out more about Carbonite here.
Interstate Batteries Partners with DiversityWorking.com
DiversityWorking.com, a
career opportunity resource and job search engine for the cultural diversity
marketplace, is pleased to announce the inclusion of Interstate
Batteries to its list of member diversity companies.
Interstate Batteries, based
in Dallas, Texas, is the leading provider of starting, lighting and ignition
(SLI) batteries, as well as motive and household batteries, with over 12,000
types all in all. For 9 years now, it is the choice brand of technicians for
replacement car battery.
Interstate Batteries has
built a solid reputation for over 65 years for providing products marked with
the company’s service, quality and value.
At the core of its corporate culture are Interstate’s seven values: Love;
Servant’s Heart; Excellence; Courage; Fun; Team; and Integrity.
In addition, an eight value
is promoted – and that is the individual person, special and unique as one’s fingerprint -- all of these build and
encourage a welcoming, respectful, diverse work environment.
In its mission “to glorify God,” Interstate hires the
best talents to be part of their team – but not limiting its search to only
Christians, and so it has partnered with DiversityWorking.com, whose mission is
to help companies promote their jobs, build their brand and send targeted and
qualified diversity candidates directly to the best jobs possible.
Find out more about Interstate
Batteries here.
Sunday, May 7, 2017
New Diversity Challenges in the Workplace
Immigrants
in the U.S. are the bedrock of its economy. Diversity has been one of the
country’s hallmarks, being a nation of immigrants. This has contributed to the
growth and progress of the nation, for as Gary Shapiro wrote for the US News, Immigrating to the U.S. to create a better
life is a mindset that encourages our best and brightest, regardless of their
backgrounds or birthrights, to rise to the top. The diverse histories
immigrants bring with them to our shores contribute new perspectives and great
ideas.
However,
diversity has also been a perennial issue, specifically in the workplace,
despite huge efforts by private, government and business organizations to keep diversity working in the American
society.
Discrimination
and racism remain persistent problems hounding minority job applicants and
employees. The USA Today recently reported that, based on a study
made by the Kapor Center for Social Impact and Harris Poll, toxic workplaces — where harassment,
stereotyping and bullying occur — are driving away women and people of
color, undercutting technology companies' efforts to increase diversity and
costing an estimated $16 billion a year.
This
report describes the situation in the tech field, but these negative behaviors
do occur in other industries, too.
Considering
now the anti-immigrant stance of the current government, what new challenges to workplace diversity
are there that need attention and resolution?
*The
administration’s anti-immigration policy is affecting immigrant workers, many
of whom are employed by diversity companies;
*White
people feel marginalized too, mostly older, non-college whites supported
Trump, for they felt immigrants and minorities were taking jobs away from them;
*
Although not exactly a new challenge, but generational diversity in the
workplace challenges companies to think of new ways to practice inclusion as
part of their diversity efforts
First,
specifically, this is how the Trump immigration policy is impacting one of the fastest growing demographic groups
in the U.S. As of 2016, there were 21 million Asians in the United States.
Their population grew at 3.4 percent
between July 2014 and 2015, with migration responsible for the majority of the
growth.
For
most Asians coming to the U.S., becoming an American citizen is the utmost
goal. American citizenship is the pathway to a
brighter future, not only for themselves, but also for family and
relatives back home. Armed with citizenship, Asian Americans can bring over relatives or get federal
government jobs.
Now
with the government cracking down on illegal immigrants, more so has American
citizenship become like a safe harbor,
free from being deported.
But
for the undocumented who fear that their great American
dream will be taken away from them, the government’s visa crackdown is one nightmare of uncertainty.
So
what happens to workplaces when a great number of immigrants for that matter,
are deported? What challenges does this situation bring about?
As
an example, the restaurant and food services industry stands to lose a lot of
immigrant workers, being a sector said to depend much on the labor of undocumented
aliens: Eleven percent of
all U.S. restaurant and bar employees are undocumented immigrants, according to
the Pew Research Center. At current industry employment levels, that translates
to roughly 1.3 million people.
It
is suggested then that immigrants who work hard, pay their taxes, and abide by
the laws should be assisted in legalizing their stay in the country:
“The
restaurant industry may be the most ethnically diverse industry there is, in
large part because of immigrants who have brought culture, food, and flavor to
our communities and neighborhoods. When these immigrants are hard-working,
tax-paying, productive, law-abiding individuals, we should help them succeed by
providing a path to legalization,” Jot Condi, president and CEO of the
California Restaurant Association said in an emailed statement, the San Diego
Union Tribune reported.
If
most immigrants are to be deported, the restaurant industry will collapse. This
was clearly demonstrated by “A Day Without Immigrants” protest
last February, when most businesses, not only in the restaurant and food
services sector, shut down because their immigrant workers and owners refused
to work in protest of the new government’s anti-immigration stance.
Here
is an excerpt from How Restaurants Hire Undocumented Workers:
Just one day without immigrants cost the restaurant industry a huge hit to its profits, and some experts predict that without undocumented labor, the price of food will increase up to six percent... or worse, that there won’t be enough food for us all to eat due to labor shortages. “Immigrants feed this country,” says Noelle Lindsay Stewart, a former D.C. line cook and the communications manager for Define American, a media company focused on immigrant rights and identity. “They cultivate our produce; they cook our food. The food industry wouldn’t be possible in the way it is without them.”
Other industries that rely heavily
on undocumented workers, based on 2014 data from the Pew Research Center,
include:
*Construction,
with 1.3 million unauthorized immigrant workers;
*Building
services – 300,000;
*Landscaping
– 300,000;
*Agriculture,
crop production – 275,000
Together
with 1.1 million in bars, restaurants and food services, that makes up a total
of 7.9 million illegal immigrant workers.
A
big challenge for workplaces has always been how to balance between employing
immigrants and not running afoul with the law. See this regarding what employers need to know when hiring
foreign workers.
In line with this is also the ever-present challenge
to heed the call to promote diversity
and inclusion.
But
the problem now becomes more complicated with Pres. Trump’s sweeping immigration enforcement directives which
will allow for far more expulsions, and unleash the full force of the federal
government to find, arrest and deport those in the country illegally,
regardless of whether they have committed serious crimes.
Most
people tend to think of diversity mostly in terms of people of color and women
as the oft-marginalized sectors, but as the recent presidential election showed, the white working-class, many of whom are non-college graduates, have also long felt being marginalized. Workplaces in the time of Trump
are faced with the burden of ensuring that everyone feels included, regardless
of race/ethnicity, skin color, disability, gender, sexual orientation, veteran
status, religious and political affiliation, and the like.
However,
with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission having as acting chair someone
reported to have a history of voting against a number of anti-discrimination
lawsuits, the future looks uncertain:
*Would
the EEOC continue to provide an opportunity for victims of workplace
discrimination and harassment seeking redress?
*Would
there be a rise in discrimination against the oft-marginalized sectors: women,
people of color, LGBTs, disabled, and veterans?
*Would
there be freedom to create policies
potentially beholden only to the American workers who put Mr. Trump into office,
as one opinion
article suggests?
Victoria
Lipnic, designated by Pres. Trump to be EEOC’s acting chair, voted against a quarter of the 77 lawsuits
that came before the commission since 2010. Other cases involved discrimination
against African immigrants, a young man with an intellectual disability turned
down for a Salvation Army thrift store job and men who have beards for
religious reasons. Half of her no votes came in disability cases, a news
report by Reveal News shows.
The
same news also reported that Ms. Lipnic had said she’d like to see more of the commission’s cases come to a vote before
they are brought to court. That means more cases could be killed.
Ms.
Lipnic announced
in her 1st speech she hoped that
EEOC would increase its focus on age discrimination and equal pay issues and on
job creation.
Indeed,
age discrimination is a problem many mature workers experience, so it is only
fair and right that this issue be given enough attention. Not only do mature
workers find it difficult to get a new job, especially when out of work, but
they are also bypassed for promotions. Prejudice and false notions about their
skills and capabilities are a common reason for this.
Which
brings us to the third challenge in the workplace: that of making generational
diversity in the workplace work for everyone involved. And so, according to this article, forward-thinking workplaces are addressing generational differences
through training and open forums.[…] In
addition, companies are also taking action by making impressive changes to
employment policies, performance management programs, recognition programs and
benefits. Their focus is not about pleasing any particular generation but
enhancing the work environment to improve the probability of attracting and
keeping top performers across all generations.
An article by Forbes suggests that diversity and inclusion must be seen as an investment and be
placed where it belongs – in the center of all growth strategies.
True.
Diversity and inclusion have been shown to drive businesses to economic progress.
It is time, indeed, to treat every individual worker as deserving and capable
of work, no matter what their backgrounds, perspectives, beliefs and opinions
may be. More than just merely complying with the law, and meeting quotas, workplaces should do their utmost to sincerely cultivate and keep a just, safe, equitable work environment, sans harassment, racism, sexism, and other ills.
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Will Racism Ever Be Overcome by Unity in Diversity?
One
big obstacle to diversity
and inclusion
is racism. An
important question is whether
racism will ever be overcome by unity in diversity. How can racism be
dismantled?
Racism
is a centuries-old social ill that plagues different societies around
the world, not only in the United States. Racism
may be of different types,
but the most common understanding of it is that of a
“whites vs. blacks” or fair-skinned vs. dark-skinned/black-toned
people” kind of war.
Many
still subscribe to the belief the white race is superior over any
other race, and that comes
at an economic cost. Blacks and other minorities have more difficulty
in their job
search, so they have a higher
unemployment rate than whites
Can
people of color be as prejudiced as the whites? People
regardless of race can be prejudiced, though not necessarily because
they are racist.
Racism
and Racial Discrimination
For
clarity, racism and racial discrimination are defined
as follows:
Racism
– any action or attitude, conscious or unconscious, that
subordinates an individual or group based on skin colour or race. It
can be enacted individually or institutionally.
Racial
discrimination - To treat differently a person or group of people
based on their racial origins. Power is a necessary precondition, for
it depends on the ability to give or withhold social benefits,
facilities, services, opportunities etc., from someone who should be
entitled to them, and are denied on the basis of race, colour or
national origin.
So
back to the topic of racism –
racial supremacy leads to racial purity. Humanity
should not forget the
unspeakable atrocity brought
about by Nazi racism – the belief propagated by Hitler and his
Nazi regime
that the Aryan race is the master race, so must remain pure at all
cost.
When
Hitler and the Nazis came to power, these beliefs became the
government ideology and were spread in publicly displayed posters, on
the radio, in movies, in classrooms, and in newspapers. The Nazis
began to put their ideology into practice with the support of German
scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by
limiting the reproduction of people considered "inferior."
As
put forth, the idea of superiority of one race over another is NOT
innate in human nature. It is just an unfortunate human reality that
there are individuals/groups overcome with delusions of themselves.
And
great suffering it brings to human society when this delusion of
supremacy takes control of the elite who holds the reins of power and
authority over a nation – the
right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all
the rest, to
borrow the words of George
W. Bush.
This
is why the human race has
been troubled for centuries with racial bigotry.
Today,
belief in racial or ethnic purity, based on religious and cultural
beliefs still
persists.
Racial/ethnic purity
is an extremist view, but it
contributes a lot to the current wave of hatred, violence, disunity
in the world. Modern-day
versions of the Nazi's ethnic
cleansing under Hitler
continues to happen in different parts of the world.
Rather,
racism originated with capitalism and the slave trade. As the Marxist
writer CLR James put it, "The conception of dividing people by
race begins with the slave trade. This thing was so shocking, so
opposed to all the conceptions of society which religion and
philosophers had…that the only justification by which humanity
could face it was to divide people into races and decide that the
Africans were an inferior race."
Its
existence
is said to have stemmed from the long
and complex history of western Europe and the United States that
[...]influenced by science, government and culture—that has shaped
our ideas about race.
Looking
to history, one can see that aside from science, government and
culture, religion also plays a role in the construction
of the idea of race and racism.
Here
is an excerpt from Racial Equity Tools, a website that is
designed to support people and groups working for inclusion, racial
equity and social justice:
During
the reformation (16th Century [1500s] & 17th Century [1600s]), a
key question among Christian
religious hierarchy was whether Blacks
and “Indians” had souls and/or were human. In this time period,
Europeans were exposed more frequently to Africans and the indigenous
people of North and South
America, and the church vacillated between
opinions. The Catholic and the Protestant churches arrived at
different answers to the question at different times, which created
significant differences between the two systems of
slavery.
[...]With the increasing importance of slavery, religion was used
as
a means to justify racist divisions,
classifying people of color as
‘pagan
and soulless’.
However,
[...]
racism does not require the full and explicit support of the state
and the law. Nor does it require an ideology centered on the concept
of biological inequality. Discrimination by institutions and
individuals against those perceived as racially different can long
persist and even flourish under the illusion of non-racism.
Unity
in Diversity
The
concept of unity
in diversity
means 'unity
without uniformity and diversity without fragmentation that shifts
focus from unity based on a mere tolerance of physical, cultural,
linguistic, social, religious, political, ideological and/or
psychological differences towards a more complex unity based on an
understanding that difference enriches human interactions.
How
to Overcome
Racism
Living
out the value of unity in diversity is important for diversity
working
in society. It is one way for people to help destroy racism in our
midst.
Institutional
racism is certainly hard to dismantle, but ordinary people can start
doing better to change the world for the better – and that is
making a conscious effort to reduce racial bias in their own spheres
of influence.
One insight
worth pondering is this excerpt from an article by Nico
Koopman, Vice-Rector for Social Impact, Transformation and Personnel
at Stellenbosch University in South Africa:
To
overcome racial discrimination we need to conscientise one another
about the subconscious pictures with which we live. The words we use
subconsciously betray our subconscious racial pictures and
prejudices. […]
Words are creative.
They can either create a new reality of justice, or perpetuate old
realities of injustice, discrimination and dehumanisation.
*Do
not label people
Indeed,
labeling people is not a bright idea, for it connotes separation. As
the article above shows by an example, calling others on
campus who are not white as diversity students and non-whites is to
perpetuate racist thinking, and making white as the norm.
Likewise,
using black as norm, and calling those who are not black as diversity
students promotes racist attitude.
Classifying
people according to their race or skin color, inspires segregation,
rather than promote unity. All are human; all are of the same human
race, regardless whether one's skin is black,
white,
brown,
red,
yellow.
There is much beauty in diversity – just as seen in Nature itself.
*Understand
where people are coming from
Research
backs this idea of not labeling people. Vox reported last year that
researchers came upon a radical
way
to reduce another person's bigotry. Although the study concentrated
on anti-transgender attitude, it can also be applied to reducing
racial anxiety and prejudices. Researchers found that labeling
someone as racist is not good.
Rather,
empathy is what helps. And
as much as it might seem like a lost cause to understand the
perspectives of people who may qualify as racist, understanding where
they come from is a needed step to being able to speak to them in a
way that will help reduce the racial biases they hold.
*Confront
Your Racial Biases and Prejudices
The
first step toward overcoming a problem is to face the problem, not
denying its existence. Uncomfortable though it can be, acknowledging
your biases and prejudices helps overcome these.
*Expand
Your Horizon by Meeting People from Other Races and Cultures
Ignorance
of others leads to close-mindeness, fear, intolerance and bigotry. So
to better appreciate others, learn more about them by making friends.
Build bridges of friendship, not walls of hatred and fear. Learn to
understand what makes others tick despite their differences from you.
*Put
More Love into Action. Help Others.
Sometimes,
people become too focused on their own struggles, especially those
who have to face discrimination. As a result, they become angrier,
distrustful and weaker. Look for ways of how you can contribute to
your community, school, workplace. Help others in difficulty no
matter what their background is. By doing so, you develop strength of
character and greater understanding of others.
Racism
can be overcome, yes. It make take time. But it can be done. Unity in
diversity is what the world needs, especially in post-election
America where the wounds of political division are needing to be
healed.
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