Case Study| The Law Offices of (DSG)

Contemporary Management

Presented by: Ghada Mehana

Class: 69H

To: Dr. Hesham SADEK

The Law Offices of Dickinson, Stilwell and Gardner (DSG)

1- Problem Definition

The diversity efforts in the Law Offices of (DSG) was not considered a high priority by the firm owners

and senior management. Since the firm was founded in 1963, it didn't focus on the workforce diversity

and specifically, the "Race and ethnicity"

which are important types of diversity. The firm is located in El Paso, Texas where big Hispanic community is there.

Recently, the firm decided to change its culture and consider diversity while hiring new employees, it hired two
Hispanic employees one of them was brought as a partner, but this created many instability issues within the
organization as the current employees feel that the new partner will work on replacing them with other Hispanic ones.
As we are examining the case of diversity in the workplace, the following figures are showing the diversity statistics in
the US labor market as of June 2012.

1- The U.S. workforce is becoming more diverse, (64 percent) in the labor force are non-Hispanic white; (16
percent)

are Hispanic; (12 percent) are African American; and (5 percent) are Asian. This figure also shows that there are

more Hispanic men and African American women in the labor force than Hispanic women and African

American men. Currently 97 percent of U.S. companies fail to have senior leadership teams

that reflect the country's ethnic labor force.

2- Justification for the Problem

Employees who are working on organizations that have no policies and procedures in place that

promotes diversity and protects minority employees from discrimination in the workplace can be more

resistance to change and will have interpersonal issues that will definitely affect their productivity and

will lead to a high turnover within the organization.

3- List of Alternative course of action

a- Develop organizational policy

b- Continuous diversity training
c- Be transparency in raises and appraisals

4- Evaluate Alternatives Develop Organizational Policy

- Organizations should work to create policies that promote diversity in the workplace and help employees
feels included and important.
- Having clear policies in place for diversity issues and situations will make it clear to employees what the
expectations are and accordingly everyone will feel secured.
- The policy should highlight that employee evaluation is based on the accomplishments and that gender, race,
ethnic, age background has nothing to do with succeeding and reaching the high levels at the company.

Continuous Diversity Training

- Organizations should provide the adequate training to teach the employees how to work together and benefit
from each other's experiences and differences.
- The training should also explain the legal implications of diversity in the workplace,
- Diversity training should draw attention to company policies and culture of respect which are essential to
create a healthy work culture.
- Organizations should encourage employees to participate in regular surveys to measure the effectiveness of
diversity policy, Diversity training is one of the best ways to receive anonymous feedback from employees.
Be transparency in Raises and Appraisals
- Be transparent and post the job title for each role with the average package range, communicate with the
team clearly the KPI' s and explain how an employee can reach the high-performance salary range.

5- Conclusion & Recommendations

Although maintaining diversity in the workplace is challenging but also there are solutions to create harmony within
different teams. Diversity in the workplace requires a commitment from every level within the organization. There are
many benefits that a clear climate of diversity can bring to the organizations, Organizations that have more diversity in
their office will have increased collaboration, higher employee engagement and higher productivity as different
workers have different skills, ideas, and perspectives they will bring.

In contrary, lack of diversity in an organization can unintentionally create an unfriendly environment and will lead to
higher turnover.

In light of the above, the organizations should focus on creating a culture where individual differences are respected
and all employees are treated equally and receive the same opportunities for growth and advancement and that the
employee growth and continuation in a company is based on the accomplishment and not the gender, age, ethnic, race.