I’m work­ing on a project to assess cor­po­rate diver­sity ini­tia­tives in the county where I work and live. That infor­ma­tion will then be used to fur­ther other work I am doing. My crys­tal ball says that with the excep­tion of a hand­ful of For­tune 500’s and the 30+ gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors that have oper­a­tions here — there won’t be much to look at.

I live in small town USA but I don’t accept that as an excuse.

I pre­dict I’ll find that the major­ity of the com­pa­nies with some type of diver­sity ini­tia­tive address only the most com­monly thought of areas — and that very few orga­ni­za­tions have a def­i­n­i­tion of diver­sity that extends beyond race, gen­der, eth­nic­ity and sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion. Now, I am not say­ing those are not impor­tant — no, not at all. In fact, those par­tic­u­lar aspects of diver­sity have largely still not seen equality.

There’s sim­ply more to a well rounded diverse workforce.

The pur­pose of this let­ter is to restate for all of the super­vi­sory per­son­nel of the IBM Com­pany the pol­icy of this cor­po­ra­tion regard­ing the hir­ing of per­son­nel with spe­cific ref­er­ence to race, color, or creed. Under the Amer­i­can sys­tem, each of the cit­i­zens of this coun­try has an equal right to live and work in Amer­ica. It is the pol­icy of this orga­ni­za­tion to hire peo­ple who have the per­son­al­ity, tal­ent and back­ground nec­es­sary to fill a given job, regard­less of race, color or creed. If every­one in IBM who hires new employ­ees will observe this rule, the cor­po­ra­tion will obtain the type of peo­ple it requires, and at the same time we will be afford­ing an equal oppor­tu­nity to all in accor­dance with Amer­i­can tra­di­tion. - T. J. Wat­son, Jr. (Sep­tem­ber 21, 1953)

The idea that every cit­i­zen has a right to live and work seems so basic yet still to this day is unachie­ve­able and Utopian. I don’t know if Wat­son was con­cerned only with ‘race, color and creed’ or if that was just a string of col­lo­quial speech - but what­ever, it was a damn good start on inclu­sive employ­ment prac­tices in its day, issued in fact one year before the U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in Brown vs. Board of Edu­ca­tion and over a decade before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It cer­tainly put IBM on the map of cor­po­rate diver­sity lead­er­ship forever.

But like I said, today it isn’t enough. Today, it isn’t only skin color and one of the gen­ders that float ‘diver­sity’ — and it’s not only about the other EEOC pro­hib­ited employ­ment poli­cies and prac­tices either:

Under the laws enforced by EEOC, it is ille­gal to dis­crim­i­nate against some­one (appli­cant or employee) because of that person’s race, color, reli­gion, sex (includ­ing preg­nancy), national ori­gin, age (40 or older), dis­abil­ity or genetic infor­ma­tion. It is also ille­gal to retal­i­ate against a per­son because he or she com­plained about dis­crim­i­na­tion, filed a charge of dis­crim­i­na­tion, or par­tic­i­pated in an employ­ment dis­crim­i­na­tion inves­ti­ga­tion or law­suit. — Equal Oppor­tu­nity Employ­ment Commission

It’s much more than that, and though it isn’t done for philo­soph­i­cal or Utopian rea­sons (it’s done for mar­ket share and money), lead­ing com­pa­nies know that each indi­vid­ual brings to work each day a unique set of char­ac­ter­is­tics and cir­cum­stances along with their skills and tal­ents. They know that broad­en­ing the back­grounds, expe­ri­ences, cul­tures and attrib­utes of their employ­ees helps to cre­ate a brand that will appeal to a very broad con­sumer and client base. And it cre­ates more oppor­tu­nity for more peo­ple. And that’s exactly what my plan for world dom­i­na­tion is. And that’s good.

Here is a list of the var­ied attrib­utes that com­pa­nies who lead in work­force diver­sity embrace today to include but also move above and beyond Fed­eral man­dates, as iden­ti­fied through Universum’s 2011 My Future Career Sur­vey given to col­lege stu­dents and pub­lished by Diver­sity Employ­ers. Def­i­nitely some­thing to think about and assess how many beyond what the law requires are respected in your work­place and places that you do business.

• Age
• Cit­i­zen of a for­eign country
• Dis­abil­ity
• Dual/multi cit­i­zen­ship (US and other countries)
• Edu­ca­tion
• Eth­nic­ity
• Gen­der
• Inter­na­tional work experience
• Lan­guage skills
• Life expe­ri­ence
• Mar­i­tal status
• Multicultural/multiethnic back­ground
• Nation­al­ity
• Par­ent­ing experience
• Per­son­al­ity
• Phys­i­cal disability
• Reli­gion
• Sex­ual Ori­en­ta­tion (GLBT)
• Socio-economic back­ground
• Veteran/military expe­ri­ence
• Work expe­ri­ence in dif­fer­ent industries
• Work func­tion
• Work style

The results of stu­dent employer per­cep­tion for 2011 are pub­lished by Uni­ver­sum in a Top 100 list.

So, how does the com­pany you work for stack up?

P.S. IBM remains a leader in work­force and sup­plier diver­sity today though expan­sion of the def­i­n­i­tion of ‘diver­sity’ and inclu­sive employ­ment practices.