Stonewall's Diversity Champions

Stonewall's Diversity Champions

To what extent does the experience of Stonewall's Ð''Diversity Champions' initiative demonstrate that business-led action to promote diversity is an effective means of reducing disadvantage at work?

Introduction

Ð''Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual people have been working together successfully since the beginning of time. What is different today is that many people now openly live out their sexual orientation.' (Zuckerman & Simons, 1996, p.1).

Like any minority group, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) have had to overcome barriers to gain acceptance within society. Whilst sexual orientation was beginning to be included in equal opportunity policies in the late 1980's, the Conservative Government Ð''showed little support for these "gay-friendly" developments' (Colgan et al, 2007, p.594) and called attention to this with section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which Ð''prohibited local authorities in England and Wales from "promoting" homosexuality' (Stonewall, 2007a). A group of men and women who had been active in campaigning against this legislation then went on to found Stonewall in 1989, aiming to create a lobbying group to be able to prevent such attacks on lesbians, gay men and bisexuals (Stonewall, 2007b).

As indicated in the case study, Stonewall established the Diversity Champions initiative in 2001 in order to promote understanding and good practice around issues of sexual orientation in the workplace.

The Business Case for Diversity Management

The approach to equal opportunities (EO) is that of behavioural change (Liff, 1999, p.66), which although seemingly acceptable, does not go any way to changing peoples attitudes or beliefs. Liff explains that there is little in the approach that attempts to increase the understanding of the problem or commitment to its solution. However, Liff also argues that EO concentrates understanding and expertise. This makes the assumption that the expertise is somehow centralised to a core group of people. How diversity management is different is that it is, in part, about educating all employees, which presumably would give all staff that expertise. Some organisations continue to see EO as Ð''the right thing to do' (Robinson & Dechant, 1997, p.21), but then wonder why their fleeting efforts do not generate the outcomes they'd desired.

Kandola and Fullerton (1994, cited by Liff, 1999, p.67) assert that equal opportunities and managing diversity are radically different. They assert that people must be understood as individuals and that Ð''equality comes from recognising and addressing the needs and potentials of individuals'.

However, as they point out the Ð''potentials' of individuals, this may appear to indicate the traditional liberal approach of focusing on the equality of opportunity, rather than the equality of outcome (Kirton & Greene, 2006, p. 119). They do later conclude though (1998, cited by Kirton & Greene, 2006, p. 124), that managing diversity is

Ð''founded on the premise that harnessing differences will create a productive environment in which everybody feels valued, where their talents are being fully utilised and in which organisational goals are met'

and that individualism is indeed that; not based on their social group. Liff (1999, p.67) adds to this and explains that because of individual differences, they will not Ð''respond identically or to benefit equally from any particular approach to managing people.'

Another strategy is Cockburn's transformative approach (1989, 1991, in Kirton & Greene, 2006, p. 121), where she presents the Ð''long' and Ð''short' agenda, the long agenda being that which aims to transform organisational cultures. This is certainly moving more towards an idea of managing diversity.

Liff's approach to managing diversity (1999, p.71-73) is about Ð''an organisation's commitment to social group equality and the perceived relevance of social group differentiation for decision-making.' One of her four potential positions on this is labelled Ð''dissolving differences', which she describes is a Ð''radical alternative to social group-based equal opportunities.' She notes that people have multiple sources of difference and should not be defined by their social group membership. Using this approach, an organisation would need to adapt in a way that treated these as purely individual differences. She goes on to explain that using this method turns the relationship between equal opportunities and managing diversity upside down, as it suggests that managing diversity is a precondition for equal opportunities, not the other way around. This is because the equal opportunities approach to equality is about decision-making without reference to social groups.

However one chooses to understand diversity management, it appears that all descriptions of it will involve time and resources, including employee commitment, and a long-term organisational culture change, and as Robinson and Dechant (1997, p.29) stress, Ð''the corresponding return on investment may take years.' Those fighting for that commitment must therefore make a strong case for the competitive edge that diversity management will give them.

As the case study points out, Stonewall's Diversity Champions appears to offer help to generate these business benefits whilst also challenging disadvantage at work:

KPMG claim that a diverse environment is good for their business, and Ben Summerskill, Stonewall's chief executive, maintains that diversity makes good business sense.

However, Colgan et al's research (2007, p.601) uncovers the opinion that sexual orientation is Ð''thought to be more "politically sensitive" and a potential "vote loser" or more likely to "provoke a backlash", than other equality strands', such as gender, race and disability. This would suggest that attitudes towards LGBT workers still have some way to go before those organisations see the business benefits of diversity management.

Robinson and Dechant (1997, p.22) identify Ð''winning the competition for talent' as a strong argument for diversity initiatives, and recognise that heterogeneous teams Ð''produce more innovative solutions to problems', a claim that is supported by others' research in this area. (Bowen & Blackmon,