Value of Diversity in the workplace Paper - Essay Example

This is an issue which came to light when the organization I was working for as a sales manager, implemented a new software which gave detailed breakup of sales figures, not only territory wise and sales man wise, but was able to capture the demographic profile of the end customers. An intriguing fact was thrown up in the very first demography wise report that the percentage of Hispanic customers was markedly low. As the target customer base for the product was Hispanics, it was extremely confusing for us.

All our advertisements and campaigns had focused on them and we had been more or less achieving our targets. Looking at the demographic analysis of our customer base we realized that we had been way off the mark as far as the targets and the results were concerned. The potential turnover was huge considering the Hispanic population count in the territory. We could have had double the turnover and did not know what we were doing wrong or what more we could do to include the target population. This put question mark not only the results but also on the efficacy of the funds spent on the campaign, which did not achieve the desired results, and as a corollary, the achieved results would have been there even without this added expense.

It was a classic case of blind leading the blind. We had got somewhere but did not know how and it was not where we wanted to be in the first place. The days that followed were very critical for all of us including the advertisement agency hired for creating awareness about the product amongst the target population. Numerous brain storming sessions took place; we tried out all the tricks in the book to come up with a credible hypothesis of what had happened and the best way forward but could not come up with any plausible conclusion.

There was a Hispanic salesman on our team. He was very quiet, conscious of his "different' background and mostly kept to himself. It was obligatory for all the team members to be part of the brain storming sessions so they would come resentfully, even the ones from mainstream community did so with reluctance so much participation was not forthcoming. They attended out of duty. It was at one such session that this person of Hispanic background hesitatingly raised his hand and came up with an observation.

What is told us was very startling and very simple. He told us that he had discussed this issue with his mother who did not could not read or write English. She said that she and her friends would love to buy the product if only there were instructions in a language they could understand, not just in English. Needless to say it was this simple observation which solved the fundamental issue and not only target population base was tapped, but our turnover doubled.This opened the eyes of all the employees towards the benefit of diversity in workplace.

We realized that without diversity we might never have stumbled upon the solution. Where earlier our organization was not conscious about the diversity (nor was there ever any problem of discrimination), this incident brought diversity into focus and now diversity is pursued as part of our vision statement.