Case Analysis

Monitor Company: Personal Leadership on Diversity

Submitted by Group 1, Section 3

Group Members

Neel Jadhav, Anup Dhanuka, , Nidhish Agarwal, Nishaat Farheen, Tanvi Srivastava, Vikash
Rao.

Problem Definition

To develop a work culture that encourages diversity through recruitment, mentoring and
retaining a diverse workforce and channelling it as a competitive advantage for the company.

Environmental Analysis

In the late 80s and early 90s, issues of racism and gender bias were prevalent both in the US and
the world. The effect of these issues was clearly seen in business as the workforce diversity in
form of race, gender was still not prevailing across all the industries. The society during that time
was not completely appreciative of the role of women and African-Americans, Hispanics,
homosexuals and other minorities in business as well as in society in general. Still, these
minorities formed a considerable part of the population and were growing rapidly. Their
importance as a talent pool as well as client populations was growing considerably.

The consulting industry was dominated by major players like the Boston Consulting Group,
McKinsey and in the late 1980’s by newer entrants like KPMG and Ernst and Young. With
increasing competition, the acquisition of talent became a critical factor for sustainability. These
consulting firms employing minority employees and women faced issues of harassment by
clients often and they did not have any measures in place to tackle them. Such behaviour made it
difficult for consultancy firms to maintain the diverse culture in their organisation and this lead
to the low diversity in the work force of monitor Company.

Inspite of social perceptions, the legal scenario was evolving in favour of inclusion. The Chapter
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a legislative action to prevent discrimination by
employers and to promote cultural diversity in the workplace. Employers that were found guilty
of discriminatory practices could face substantial fines in court cases. (Exact fine amounts were
based on the number of overall employees in the company and the degree of malice or careless
indifference shown by the employer. Judgments in these cases allowed for back pay, as well as
additional damages that include, but were not limited to, pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental
anguish and punitive damages. Front pay was often added to make up for loss of job, length of
unemployment and future losses due to the discrimination. In successful cases, legal fees often
were awarded as part of the judgment). This legal environment was also a factor in forcing
companies to bring more diversity in their work force through the improvisation in the hiring
policies.

Social issues facing employees, especially women were that they had additional household
responsibilities which were obstructing them to grow in the organisation. Hence was the reason
that when companies like Monitor were paying on the basis of value added and work done,
women felt no pressure to put in extensive efforts. This created problems for companies who
wanted to build a diverse and high performance workforce.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis of the company’s work culture would provide insight into the factors that are
conducive or troublesome towards developing a diverse workforce.

Strengths

Strong emphasis on empowering individuals to choose own career paths, personal

leadership, initiating creative responses to problems

Merit based compensation based on contribution to the firm encouraging parity

Avoidance of titles and formal hierarchy to encourage an environment conducive to
communication, flexibility and learning.

Employee involvement in policy and decision making through group thinking exercises.

Firm wide acknowledgement of the lack of diversity and agreement on action for
encouraging diversity.

Top management being supportive of employees belonging to minority as seen when
o Rotenberg spoke to the director about the impact of his sexuality on his career.
o Keenness of the director to recruit new minority and women consultants by
developing an external network.

Weaknesses

A homogenous workforce with lack of diversity causing minority employees to not join
and current ones to leave.

A “macho and stoic” or a “red neck” environment that stifled communication.

Lack of a clear growth policy regarding promotions.

Opportunity

Company wide support for a more diverse workforce would make adjustment easier for
employees who are eventually hired.

Monitor could use its reputation to actively seek out and recruit minority employees
which at the moment no other company had, thereby gaining new perspectives, contacts
and businesses with the help of these employees.

Threats

Loss of talented individuals due to a homogenous workforce would hamper the

company growth

Lack of diversity or representation of minorities may cause acceptance of the
company difficult among client belonging to minority communities.

Legal implications may arise due to the changing environment.

Force recruiting of minority employees who are not the best fit would cause problems
for both the employees as well as the firm.
Analysis

The workforce homogeneity at Monitor Company was not only due to internal issues but was
also influenced by the prevalent external factors. The internal factors that contributed to it was

Lack of clear role models for minority groups, especially African-Americans, women and
homosexuals. Even though, career mentoring programmes were present to help
employees, they felt that challenges peculiar to minority status were too personal to
present to a PD not did the PDA’s have enough expertise of empathy to deal with these
challenges.

Minority, especially women even in senior positions were subjugated to remarks or
behaviour bordering sexual harassment due to lack of sensitivity or professional courtesy.

The lack of current role models or even representatives from their own community
discouraged new employees to join and the current ones to leave. Acquiring and retaining
minority talent was becoming a problem due to this vicious cycle.

The external issues dominated the lack of diversity were

There was general lack of acceptance of any representatives other than the majority community.
This is quite evident from multiple examples like

The awkward treatment of Liz Martineau by client and colleagues when she was
pregnant.

The biased attitude shown by people towards her girl child.

Lack of social interactions for working women and having to choose between family
and a career.

Caroline’s experiences throughout her career right from her class where 90% students
were male, her being the first woman engineer to be hired by BBN to her tenure on
the US military base in Germany.

Absolute non acceptance by clients of a female consultant in the example of the 55
year old manager who is perplexed about receiving advice from a woman.

The homophobia that was prevalent among the corporate world regarding the gay and
lesbian community.

These were issues which were perception based and so widely accepted that they had become
almost second nature to people. These issues were not ones that could be cleared in one stroke
through rules, memorandums or short trainings but require a long and sustained management
effort. So even though there was widespread consensus and no opposition to having a diverse
workforce at Monitor, these challenges were creating problems for its implementation.

Decision Framework

The main decision framework variables in the case would be opportunity cost, time and
government regulations.

1. Due to its relatively smaller size compared to its larger rivals, Monitor cannot afford to
lose its talent to competition. Hence attrition is a major cause of worry as it would result
in lost productivity, clients and overall profits.
2. In the same way, if the policy of inclusion takes a long time to be employed then the
opportunity costs would be even higher and recovery through regaining those employees
by offering incentives would be time consuming, difficult and costly.
3. Laws promoting uniform opportunity for employees from all background were being
implemented during that period and might cause problems in the future. Also the
acceptability of the firm among minority clients may suffer due to non-representation in
the company.

Options

Since the company itself wants to have a diverse workforce and is taking steps for the same, the
options avaliable are

1. Launch an aggressive campaign to acquire established and experience senior managers

who hail from a minority background. These managers would be directly inducted into
 senior management positions and would be a critical part of the companies long term plan
to have a diverse workforce
2. Design and execute a recruitment campaign to find and recruit fresh minority employees
who would grow in the organization.
3. Continue with current programmes like the “Diversity Network”, Women-at-Monitor and
work on procedures for laying emphasis on recruitment of minorities and helping them fit
into the culture by providing mentors and integrating the diversity network programme
with the PDA.

Recommendations

Considering the fact that the present employees are open to changes and the firm had appointed
two senior management personnel for implementing changes, Option 3 would be the most viable
and suitable solution.

The training on sexual harassment, women-at-monitor, the Diversity network programmes were
all aimed at inoculating sensitivity and changing perceptions of the workforce towards minority
employees. Development of a recruitment plan to find qualified and competent potential
minority recruits would bear fruit in a couple of year’s time. The appointment of current
employee minority guides would help the new and current junior level employees adjust and gel
in a better manner. The firm could also simultaneously look at hiring senior level employees
Jonathan Rotenberg who were famous and well known among the corporate community. The
presence of such employees would encourage new recruits to join and the present ones to seek
them out as mentors.

Evaluating Faculty Comments: An exceptionally well argued case sufficient evidences. Graded
at 9/10. Great! – Colonel. James. TAPMI