scholarly writing about recruitment and retention of diverse board members
According to the National Council of Non-Profits, equity, diversity, and inclusion matter for non-profit organizations. The council for non-profits stands with other organizations to advocate and uphold equity and justice while at the same time denouncing cases of racism, exclusion, and intolerance. Embracing diversity, inclusion, and equity as organizational values is one of the best ways for organizations to make positive outcomes flourish. Based on this, the council urges each of the non-profit organizations to continue articulating their own values and letting the same values guide them. Besides, organizations are requested to use the board meetings and staff meetings to advocate equity and diversity values while at the same time examining their effectiveness in the organization.
According to the article, ensuring diversity in an organization can result in many benefits that include initiating actions, while in other organizations, inclusivity and diversity have been essential in boosting the quality of decision-making. Besides, a diverse workplace is known to encourage people to become more creative, more diligent, and hardworking. In addition, recent studies have indicated that employing more diverse staff in an organization can help in fostering enhanced motivation among the employees. Another benefit of diversity and inclusion in an organization is that when employees, donors, board members along with other stakeholders who help shape the organization values and activities, a unique perspective is introduced into the non-profit organization, which is beneficial in that it influences how the organization approaches its mission in a more inclusive and innovative manner.
For example, LOAM is a non-profit organization that operates in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri, working to improve educational outcomes and access for underprivileged students in rural communities. All three regions that the organization works in, are characterized by a diverse population regarding the socioeconomic organization, culture, and ethnicity. Based on this, LOAM’s mission objective needs to be in line with what they do, and this can only be achieved by hiring a diverse workforce to help balance the inclusivity of all the said groups. When this is done, the objectives of the organization will be easily fulfilled. In the case of LOAM, the organization has a very diverse client base and relatively diverse staff. By this, it means that the organization’s leadership does not reflect the diversity of the client it serves, an aspect that has been attributed to poor retention for employees. Based on this, LOAM needs to take some drastic measures to improve employee retention in the company to help solve the problem of diversity and inclusion, which will eventually help oversee the mission objectives achieved in a more inclusive and innovative manner.
steps LOAM should take to address retention and diversity challenges
When employees from different backgrounds are allowed to flourish in an organization, the non-profit organization benefits from diverse skills, ideas, and engagement. Besides, the retention rate among the employees is also perceived to rise, which is what LOAM lacks. Based on this, there are various recommendations that can be used by LOAM to help enhance their diversity and also their retention rate of the employees.
One of the recommendations is educating the leaders who sit on the board. The organization’s executives and managers are instrumental in the diversity and inclusion efforts, as, at the end of the day, it is the leaders who are at the frontline with the organization’s employees. The experiences of the leaders with the employees play a crucial role in retention in that it dictates whether it will make or break the diversity and inclusion initiatives set by the organization. One of the key fields that leaders of an organization need to be trained on includes training on unconscious bias, which occurs when employees make judgements regarding people based on race, gender, and other stereotyping factors without realizing that they are doing it.
Unconscious bias may be one of the problems that LOAM is facing in that most of the employees hired are stereotyped based on their age, gender, and even race. Based on this, it makes them uncomfortable to extend their stay in the organization, and this compels them to make an early retirement decision. Taking on this, even if the organization has hired a diversified workforce, it would not be able to keep them happy. Training the employees on the unconscious bias helps make them aware of this form of bias and helps in driving home the significance of modeling inclusive behaviors, including engaging in active listening and encouraging other employees’ points of view during such activities as performance reviews and meetings, and other interactions.
After training the employees regarding the identification and elimination of unconscious bias in the workplace, organizations should perform periodic evaluations for its employees to ensure that the managers and other executives have opportunities to learn how to better manage diverse workgroups. Real-life talks about handling a diverse workforce should be among the topics that should be highly encouraged to the managers as they are involved in the supervision of employees of all types, including those with disabilities. After conducting training and evaluation, leaders in an organization such as LOAM should commit themselves towards diversity and inclusivity as the organization cannot achieve this milestone by itself. Even when policies are developed, it is the duty of the leaders in the organization as well as the employees to implement them. When this happens, diversity and inclusivity in an organization’s workforce will be achieved, and so the objectives as well will be attained in an innovative manner. It is also important that the managers and employees be responsible for their respective departments’ environment as stereotyping begins in the departments before it grows to the larger organization. A conducive departmental working environment can help welcome new employees and make them feel at home, which will eventually help retain more employees.
Another recommendation that LOAM can adopt in its bid to retain a diversified workforce is the celebration of the employees’ differences. In a diverse organization, one of the best ways to show that the employees’ backgrounds and traditions are respected is to invite the employees into celebrations aimed at sharing experiences and cultures in the workplace. For example, LOAM may take their newly hired employees from the four regions it is actively involved in an event meant to celebrate and showcase what their cultures offer, such as food desserts, which is a great way of appreciating diversity. Every employee from a different background may feel unwanted if they are not allowed to practice their personal beliefs such as religion and also fashion. The two are sensitive when it comes to a population’s culture, and therefore it is important for a diverse conscious organization to provide room to accommodate such differences. Doing this is a way of appreciating the employees, which makes them feel at home. They develop a sense of belonging as they perceive that their welfare as diverse populations in the workforce is taken care of, which increase the retention rates of a diversified workforce.
In conclusion, I feel that the above strategies, which include training the employees and managers of unconscious bias and celebrating the employees’ diversity by retaining their traditions, are some of the best ways that LOAM as a non-profit organization should use in improving diversity and retention.