Work force diversity: employee attitudes and perceptions

Summary form only given. Approximately 45 percent of all net additions to the US labor force in the 1990s will be nonwhite and almost two-thirds will be female. Half of the nonwhite additions will be first generation immigrants, mostly from Asian and Latin American countries. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important for companies to encourage workforce diversity in order to better compete in the future. This study was the first stage of a process to evaluate the status and to measure the progress of one organization regarding managing diversity. In this report, a survey was developed with the following objectives: (1) to estimate employee attitudes toward diversity; (2) to estimate employee perceptions of the company´s support for diversity; (3) to track, over time, the effectiveness of diversity training programs; and (4) to compare employee attitudes with those of employees of other companies. To accomplish this, an anonymous survey was developed and distributed to a random sample of 200 employees. The results were compared with published national results by John P. Fernandez