Beyond the recruiters, interviewers and hiring managers, where does your company stand in its overall cultural competence? In Part Two (read Part One here) of our three-part series, we are defining Stage Two of three stages of organizational cultural competence development – from cultural destructiveness to cultural pre-competence to cultural competence.

For each stage on the spectrum, descriptions are offered related to workplace culture, systems and practices. As you are reading these, ask yourself: Where does my organization stand in its overall cultural competence? How does it exist at the organizational, or system, level rather than the individual interviewer or manager level?  Let’s continue…

Stage Two: Cultural Pre-Competence

  • The organization acknowledges that diversity exists, and its intentions are genuine; however, it still operates from a sense that “our way is the best way.” For example:
    • Qualified diverse individuals are recruited into the applicant pipeline, but they are not hired for key positions within the organization.
  • Staff may be culturally diverse, but still judged by standards of the dominant culture in the organization. For example:
    • Employees of diverse backgrounds are hired, but their ideas are not considered.
  • Recruitment and hiring are focused on meeting Affirmative Action (AA) and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) goals. For example:
    • The message from HR is that there is a need for greater effort to diversify the applicant pool. This is translated by a hiring manager to, “We need to hire an African American person.”
  • Some attempts are made for diversity recruiting and hiring. For example:
    • Attempts to reach out to community organizations for recruiting purposes are made occasionally by a recruiter and/or manager.
    • When a recruiter recruits, screens, and passes a qualified diverse applicant on to a hiring manager, the hiring manager may refuse to interview and/or hire that applicant because he or she is from a certain diverse background.
    • One or two people on an interview team speak up to hire qualified diverse applicants, but are outnumbered by others with excuses for not hiring them.
  • There are attempts at general diversity training for employees, but there is no focus on organizational change. For example:
    • Upper management feels that by sending employees through diversity training, they have done enough to address diversity issues in the organization.
    • After diversity trainings, there is no follow up on what was learned and no accountability assigned for change.

One Perspective of Cultural Pre-Competence

Tom, a Vice President of Marketing and Hiring Manager at a corporation and European American, shared his perspective about the recruitment and hiring strategy of an organization at which he previously worked. They were attempting to diversify their workforce and were willing to lower their standards to do so. Since lowering standards is never a wise choice, their attempts were unsuccessful.

“Success was not high with people of color at [my last organization]. We would frankly stretch and be very happy to compromise our standards trying to get people of color to come. For example, if we were recruiting someone who was not from a diverse population, we would use a standard that would say, ‘Are they excellent? Are they premier in terms of building a business?’ When we were trying to get a diverse population, we would probably ask ourselves something like, ‘Do we think they can make it in the system?’ If the answer was yes, then we would do everything possible to try to talk them into coming. But the end result was . . . we never were very successful in building the diversity and maintaining it.  They usually moved on to something better.”

Integrating diversity and inclusion into the organization beyond employee selection will affect employee retention, customer relations, and future diversity recruitment and hiring efforts. Watch for Stage Three in my next blog.

More examples of cultural pre-competence and organizational cultural competence development can be found in the book Integrating Diversity into Recruiting, Interviewing and Hiring and in the on-line training courses on the same topic. A step-by-step process to help your organization develop a strategic diversity and inclusion action plan is outlined in the book Diversity Assessment and Action Plan Workbook.

 

 

Copyright © 2022 Lila Kelly Associates, LLC. Not to be reprinted without written permission from Lila Kelly. Management Consulting and Integrating Diversity into Recruiting, Interviewing, Hiring and Retention – Since 1992. This article includes excerpts from Lila Kelly’s online training courses and books at DiversityIntegration.com. To stay up to date on all the latest from Lila Kelly Associates, LLC & DiversityIntegration.com subscribe to our newsletter.