In today's corporate environment, it is becoming increasingly important for companies to recruit a diverse workforce. This is especially true in team environments. The fact that so much of today's business is based on the innovations developed by project teams, the management level of corporations must be thoroughly trained in recognizing and understanding the benefits associated with diverse workgroups. In this report, the significance of diversity training for corporate managers will be discussed and analyzed. In today's competitive market, the only way to accomplish a competitive advantage is to assemble a diverse workforce (Salomon 2003, 37-44).
In the article, "Turn diversity to your advantage" from the August 2003 issue of Research-Technology Management, Mary F. Sloan and Joan M. Schork state that "for corporations to be competitive in global markets they must take advantage of the benefits of a diverse workforce" (Salomon 2003, 37). The article shows statistical evidence that both women and minorities combined only represent a small portion of the doctorate level workforce (Salomon 2003, 37). Several studies, performed by the Industrial Research Institute, showed that women involved in senior management leads to increased overall financial performance because women tend to be integrators with a more collaborative team-building approach (Salomon 2003, 38-39). In addition to race, gender, and age, there are many other categories, including personality type and sexual preferences, which give teams a wide variety of perspectives that increase team performance (Salomon 2003, 37). For those that choose to be skeptical, the fact that most U.S. corporations have a diversity policy should verify that it must be profitable to have a workforce that is not only qualified but diverse as well. The article also shows that in a number of recent studies, performed in the past decade, the data that is most consistent in terms of management strategies shows significantly better performance for companies with diverse senior management teams (Salomon 2003, 38).
