Ahmad is a department head in ABC Technology Company. Similar to some other technology companies, ABC Technology Company has received some criticism for a lack of diversity. Recently, departments across the company have not had as much success hiring females or those from various minority groups. This past week he lost one of his top engineers; in her exit interview she indicated that a major reason that she was leaving the company was that she had dealt with offensive comments, questioning of her coding ability due to her being female, and two different team leads for two different projects she had worked on indicating that they were not sure that she was the best “fit” for their teams. She interpreted this to mean that they felt she was disrupting “the boys club.” Ahmad has worked with this individual on a number f projects and has great respect for her abilities and work ethic. Thus, he believes this is more evidence of the need for his company, and his department in particular to do more to ensure that everyone feels appreciated and that they are able to acquire and retain as much human capital talent as possible.
While ABC Technology Company has taken some important steps in fostering an improved climate for diversity such as increasing the diversity of its board, creating some STEM-based education programs to promote coding among female students, and implementing annual diversity training, Ahmad feels that these implementations have been circumvented in many ways by current employees, and thus not been as effective as they could have been. In particular, he feels that many managers have undercut the effectiveness of the diversity training through some of the ways that they have presented the training, and indicating that employees can continue to do work during the training since it is not as important as the current projects that they are working on. Similarly, the company has now included a section on fostering a climate of inclusion and respect as part of the performance appraisal process, but Ahmad has heard that many managers are simply giving everyone an average rating in this area and not emphasizing it in their performance review discussions with employees.
Ahmad feels strongly that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. He knows that for his department to be successful, they need to be a more attractive employment opportunity for people such as this employee that recently left. They simply cannot continue to lose or fail to attract talented individuals and expect to continue to be successful. He knows that being successful in this area will require not only working on this issue with his constituents, but with his fellow managers as well.
What do you think Ahmad should do at this point based on his observations to improve the diversity climate in his department and organization as a whole? What advice would you give to Ahmad at this point (and why)?