Does Diversity Give Your Company a Competitive Edge?

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Here's the lead article from this month's Diversity Insight.

[url]http://employmentlawpost.com/diversity/2010/06/20/maintaining-your-competitive-edge/[/url]

Has diversity given your company a competitive edge? We'd love to hear your story.

Still Need Coffee

While we don't have a diversity program at our company, per se, we do a pretty good job in my opinion. It doesn't hurt that we are in the 3rd largest metropolitan area in the US, or that our company has a wide array of job positions, but I have seen that at times, having a diverse employee population has been really helpful.

For example, when we tried to reach more of the Spanish-speaking market, we found an employee who happens to be bilingual and had her translate all our marketing materials into Spanish....for free! Aside from language services, some of our employees have innate skills that our American-born employees don't have. Our top negotiator (he negotiates medical bills with providers) is from a culture where bartering is the norm - haggling was a way of life for that employee prior to coming to America, and it definitely shows in his performance rankings. He has innate negotiation skills that definitely give us a competitive advantage.