Project Proposal

Running head: DIVERSITY OUTLINE

DIVERSITY OUTLINE 7

Diversity Outline

Marie Tomlinson

Rasmussen College

Author Note

This paper is being submitted on August 23, 2016, for Christopher Dixon’s B440/B4220 Section 06 Managing a Diverse Workforce course.

Outline for the Diversity Management Proposal

1) Problem: In Little Rock Arkansas, in the early part of two thousand nine, Walmart was part of a court case, which involved several African American truck drivers. (Associated Press, 2009)

a. African American truck drivers are accusing Walmart of racial discrimination when recruiting or hiring for over the road truck drivers

b. Shipments of needed stock and supplies for the stores will be affected by lack of not having enough truck drivers to deliver the retail stock.

c. An analysis of the factors contributing to the problem:

i. Who does it affect? Walmart’s employees, both current and upcoming.

ii. Where does it impact the business the most? It will impact the business, by lack of sales; employees could lose their jobs, due to lack of product in store.

iii. When did the problem start and how long has it been going on? The discrimination issue has been going on since the late nineteen nineties. (Glater, 2005)

iv. What are the business implications of the problem? The implications for Walmart’s discrimination issue are shown in percentage rate of African American truck drivers compared to other highway truck drivers.

d. Walmart has faced court cases from nearly twenty five different African American Truck drivers seeking a position with the company. It has been determined that nearly three percent of Walmart’s truck drivers are African American compared to the nearly fifteen percent of other truck drivers.

2) Solution:

a. A solution to avoid this in the future would be to hold a, “mass interview” to ensure all candidates are aware of the hiring requirements. The requirements would be to ensure the hiring of qualified truck drivers; the proper CDL license, with the needed endorsements, proper medical certificates, experience, and driving record.

b. The top three criteria for choosing this solution are; less time to interview potential candidates, cost of employee time (executive or managerial) due to the interviewing process, and revenue, since the company would have the experience of new truck drivers delivering the product to the stores to ensure no shortages of supply.

c. Not everyone will feel that a mass interview would work for the particular stores; however it would be more feasible financially.

d. Who needs to be involved in the solution? The ones who need to be involved with making the solution are a various diversity of the executive members or upper management of the stores who are looking to hire new employees.

e. How will your solution make the problem you identified better, or what are the resulting benefits? By incorporating the new solution, the stores would gain more experienced employees who are capable of performing their job descriptions and it would also raise the capital gain and profitably of the stores.

f. Why must the solution be implemented now? The solution should be implemented now to avoid any further legal actions that may arise from discrimination of this kind or even any other legal cases.

3) The plan:

a. In order to implement the new plan, the executive members, along with upper management would need to revise the policies and procedures. Next step would be to inform the current managerial employees along with the up level employees of changes that are coming, so that everyone can be involved with the implementing of new interviewing techniques. Set up training classes, to ensure that everyone involved will perform to the company’s mission and vision statement.

b. The schedule deadline would be within reason. The initial start of planning, incorporating the new policies and procedures, training of managerial employees and all needed employee resources, would be completed within three months.

c. What resources will you need? Where will they come from? The resources that would be needed would consist of financial, and people, including the company’s attorney who would need to review the new policies and procedures for any loop holes, which could potentially cause issues in the future. The resources would come from within the stores since the stores will be utilizing their employees to aid in gain of new hires.

d. Challenges will come with any plan that is put in place. To overcome the challenges with this plan or solution would consist of employees not seeing eye to eye with the interview process and feel that it should be performed on a one on one basis, however by offering incentives to employees who perform well, including the new employees that have been gained through this solution, will aid in the outcome.

e. Suggest a control method for evaluating the success of the plan. In order to show the success of the plan, the company would and should perform employee evaluation on a regular basis. Employee surveys would also show if the plan has assisted in hiring experience personnel and assisting in avoiding any further legal issues.

4) Conclusion:

a. Discrimination no matter what type is very ugly. By implementing the new solution plan and incorporating it in to the policies and procedures of the company, Walmart will benefit by having experienced employees, especially the truck drivers. The new solution plan will actually benefit the current and future employees as well as the customers, since there should not be a shortage of stock or supplies.

b. Walmart’s call to action plan would be to promote access to new technologies that would offer an group facing discrimination the adequate resources to education, measure and eliminate barriers of discrimination within the workplace, put in place the measures to ensure those who have committed the act of discrimination be punished, add steps to better gauge the existence and extent of discrimination within the company, including the administration, incorporate training programs to ensure discrimination is eliminated, and put in place guidelines for the prevention, recording, investigation and prosecution of the individual who has committed the act of discriminating another person (Pillay, 2014).

References

Pilley, N., (2014). Developing National Action Plans against Racial Discrimination.

Retrieved from, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/HR-PUB-13-03.pdf

Associated Press (2009). Judge Oks Wal-Mart race bias suit settlement.

Retrieved from, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/31831931/ns/business-retail/t/judge-oks-wal-mart-race-bias-suit-settlement/#.V7S1Lc6cHL8

Glater, J. D., (2005). 2 Black truckers sue, accusing Wal-Mart of hiring bias.

Retrieved from, the New Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/14/business/2-black-truckers-sue-accusing-walmart-of-hiring-bias.html?_r=0