Design Studio18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDTeNewsBrief: Hot Topics in Diversityhttp://multibriefs.com/briefs/ASHHRA/ASHHRA.xmlenCultural and gender diversity is a laudable goal, especially for organizations' C-suites, which have traditionally lacked variety in this respect. Many health care leaders associate a diverse leadership team with improved patient satisfaction, more successful decision-making, achieved strategic goals, better clinical outcomes and stronger financial performance. Yet, despite the beneficial connections, only about 25 percent of health care leaders feel minority executives are well-represented in their organization's management, according to a recent WittKieffer survey.18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb4fc2b7af751The Supreme Court's ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, expected in June, will determine the future for countless Americans. Health care reform debates have elevated the plight of millions of uninsured Americans to the national consciousness. However, the physician workforce that would be needed to care for millions of newly insured people deserves equal attention.18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb4168f4cc5d2In health care, a diverse staff can provide great value in meeting the needs of patients from a wide range of cultures — a lesson that carries over to other industries.18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb41e76614bb3What's one frequently overlooked source for successfully recruiting of candidates from traditionally underrepresnted popualtions? Resource groups. DiversityInc asked companies that scored highest in the recruitment and retention areas on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity for their best practices—and 98 percent use their resource groups as key talent-acquisition sources.18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb4f91b565294As the United States grows more culturally diverse and we hear more languages spoken around us, clinical medical education has had to evolve as well. And with national population growth, particularly in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, which are popular with medical students, those students must not only know their jobs, but also need to know their hospitals. 18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb4fb15a69275In the workplace the concept of diversity is usually defined by race, color, religion, sex or national origin, with disability sometimes overlooked as a component of a diverse workforce. For entrepreneurs willing to open their doors to disabled employees, some private companies and government entities are working to make the process easier.18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb41a9aa17e76When applying to medical school, applicants are asked whether they consider themselves to be disadvantaged, which usually means meeting specific criteria as defined by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Those requirements include living in underserved areas and belonging to certain groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in medical education. However, there are other minorities in medicine whose circumstances are not always reflected in AAMC statistics. 18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb4fb99b6dcd7The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received more complaints of workplace discrimination from workers in Texas than from any other state last year, with 10 percent of all complaints filed there. During the 2011 fiscal year, nearly 10,000 of the record 99,947 federal charges of workplace discrimination received by the EEOC were filed in Texas, according to the report.18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb41f4a8c4088For women and their careers, it's often not about what they do but how they look. More proof of that came recently. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made headlines around the world not for anything she did but because she appeared without makeup on a trip to Bangladesh. 18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb41fc84bfde9Diversity is the crucial element for group creativity. Innovation teams tasked with creating new products or technologies or iterating existing ones need tension to produce breakthroughs, and tension comes from diverse points of view. This is the opposite of groupthink, the creativity-killing phenomenon of too much agreement and too similar perspectives that often paralyzes otherwise great teams. We've all been on these teams. Everyone is just like us — say, marketers or engineers. Consensus comes quickly, and only later, when we fail and wonder why, do we realize that the easy agreements and shared conclusions doomed us from the start.18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb42067e924810A new McKinsey report shows that U.S. companies with the highest executive-board diversity had returns on equity 95 percent higher and earnings margins 58 percent higher, on average, than those with the least executive diversity. How does this kind of bottom-line analysis affect the push to increase workplace diversity?18 May 2012 10:12:38 CDThttp://multibriefs.com/ViewLink.php?i=4fb4198cce3f011