UKIP .... the BNP for softies...

System

abaxas wrote: »

Since when as a representative workforce been the best one for the business?

Apparently you haven't read any posts in this thread.

markharding557

chewmylegoff wrote: »

the purpose of the positive discrimination is to try to make the workforce of an organisation currently dominated by white males more representative of the population as a whole. it is to correct favouritism towards white males.

This does not make it right,employees should be selected purely on qualification/experience not just to increase the numbers of a certain demographic.

Discrimination is wrong irrespective of who it is applied to.
When i go to see my asian doctor i expect him to be fully qualified and to be competent for his job not to be there because he is asian

Cleaver

abaxas wrote: »

Since when as a representative workforce been the best one for the business?

The studies for this start of thing started a few decades ago, but pretty much every single business and organisation worth their salt is in complete agreement that understanding your users / customer base works, and one of the simplest, easiest, most efficient and cost effective ways of doing it is having a workforce that represents your users / customers.

Tesco appoint Polish people to stock their stores with Polish food.
IBM target people from ethnic minority background so that they can work with specific clients.
Hospitals target a diverse population to give better service to patients.

I guess your opinion may be that this doesn't work. Study after study after study, and pretty much every big company and organisation would disagree with you though.

lostinrates

Cleaver wrote: »

The studies for this start of thing started a few decades ago, but pretty much every single business and organisation worth their salt is in complete agreement that understanding your users / customer base works, and one of the simplest, easiest, most efficient and cost effective ways of doing it is having a workforce that represents your users / customers.

Tesco appoint Polish people to stock their stores with Polish food.
IBM target people from ethnic minority background so that they can work with specific clients.
Hospitals target a diverse population to give better service to patients.

I guess your opinion may be that this doesn't work. Study after study after study, and pretty much every big company and organisation would disagree with you though.

so why are call centres still outsourced?

Cleaver

markharding557 wrote: »

This does not make it right,employees should be selected purely on qualification/experience not just to increase the numbers of a certain demographic.

Discrimination is wrong irrespective of who it is applied to.
When i go to see my asian doctor i expect him to be fully qualified and to be competent for his job not to be there because he is asian

Stop seeing it as people being appointed 'because they are Asian' over people that are white. This is simplistic in the extreme. Look at it as a whole healthcare provision approach.

As I've just said in the post above, pretty much every study on the subject shows that a workforce, especially in public service organisations, that releftects the community is more efficient, cost effective and better for the people that use it.

All doctors should obviously be qualified and competent. That's a given. The next step is that if the studies show what we've discussed above to be correct (and they all do) then it would be beneficial to get group of GPs that represent the local community. Because it's more cost effective, efficient and people feel they get better service.

How you go about doing this is what is up for debate. I think having jobs only open to people from a certain background is a backward step: it's divisive and makes people feel alienated and I think there are far better ways of doing it.

But you understand the simple, fundemental reasons why it's best to have doctors (for example) from different backgrounds, in different places, to suit their community? It isn't discrimination, it's good practice.

Cleaver

lostinrates wrote: »

so why are call centres still outsourced?

Because most people don't really care that much about call centres. You ring one every now and again to cancel a card, find out a delivery time, report a fault etc. You might moan that it's in India and they can't understand you, but you don't really care that much (or at least most people don't).

Take IBM as an example. I imagine that if you want to extend the warranty on your personal laptop then you ring a call centre, which is probably in Asia. If you're a company that wants to sign a long term contract with IBM to get consultancy support then I'd bet any money that the team you work with at IBM has been carefully selected to ensure it matches the ethos, demographics and culture of your organisation. Because on a big, important contract IBM will recognise that making sure their workforce represents and understands their customers will pay dividends.

abaxas

Cleaver wrote: »

The studies for this start of thing started a few decades ago, but pretty much every single business and organisation worth their salt is in complete agreement that understanding your users / customer base works, and one of the simplest, easiest, most efficient and cost effective ways of doing it is having a workforce that represents your users / customers.

Tesco appoint Polish people to stock their stores with Polish food.
IBM target people from ethnic minority background so that they can work with specific clients.
Hospitals target a diverse population to give better service to patients.

I guess your opinion may be that this doesn't work. Study after study after study, and pretty much every big company and organisation would disagree with you though.

What a bunch of racist talk.

People should be targeted for ability. There is a huge difference between saying someone should be employed becasue they are 'polish' than being employed becasue they understand Polish food.

Take for example, french cuisine.

There are lots of english chefs with a larget knowledge of this than their french counterparts. Who is better to run that french bistro?

abaxas

Cleaver wrote: »

Stop seeing it as people being appointed 'because they are Asian' over people that are white. This is simplistic in the extreme. Look at it as a whole healthcare provision approach.

As I've just said in the post above, pretty much every study on the subject shows that a workforce, especially in public service organisations, that releftects the community is more efficient, cost effective and better for the people that use it.

All doctors should obviously be qualified and competent. That's a given. The next step is that if the studies show what we've discussed above to be correct (and they all do) then it would be beneficial to get group of GPs that represent the local community. Because it's more cost effective, efficient and people feel they get better service.

How you go about doing this is what is up for debate. I think having jobs only open to people from a certain background is a backward step: it's divisive and makes people feel alienated and I think there are far better ways of doing it.

But you understand the simple, fundemental reasons why it's best to have doctors (for example) from different backgrounds, in different places, to suit their community? It isn't discrimination, it's good practice.

What a load!

You are saying my local GP (who is indian) should be sacked as this area is 99% white anglo saxon. No way.

He's good, he does his job well, lets keep him working for the community.

misskool

abaxas wrote: »

Quick question, have you ever been the victim of racism?

Just curious.

I have. And?

Cleaver

abaxas wrote: »

What a bunch of racist talk.

People should be targeted for ability. There is a huge difference between saying someone should be employed becasue they are 'polish' than being employed becasue they understand Polish food.

ARGRHRGHGAHGAGHAGHAGGHHHHH!!!!! You are so frustrating, and stop calling me racist when I'm clearly not being any such thing. I would't, and haven't, ever said that employing someone purely because they are Polish, black, a woman or anything else is a good idea. It's a stupid idea.

I'm agreeing with you, they should employ people who are the best. But don't ya just think that Polish people might just be good at sourcing Polish food? So, what would you do if you worked for an English company, in England, that needs to source and sell Polish food for Polish people in England? Well, I reckon I might think that, shock horror, Polish people might be good for that job.

So, like you say above, I'd want someone with skills and experience to the job. So for this job I'd want someone who could speak Polish to deal with suppliers, speak English to deal with Tesco people, good knowledge of Polish food, good knowledge of Polish culture to know what food to sell and then all the usual stuff: IT skills, communication skills, experience in retail, experience in sales etc.

I dunno about you, but I'd be thinking that a Polish person would be a pretty damn good bet for this job. So if I were recruiting I would heavily target Polish people. Hell, on the day of the interview I'd take the best person for the job, but I'd want to make sure we'd advertised in local Polish newspapers and alerted agencies to target Polish people.

Now, you can see the above as racist. You could stick an advert in the paper and simply say: we want the best person for the job. And that's fine. But modern organisations don't work in that way, they are cleverer than that and understand that targetting certain people for jobs is good practice.

I enjoy debating this issue and respect people that think completely differently to this. I'd be happy to discuss and listen to why they think differently. But if you come back with another two lines just calling me racist, I will probably just ignore you.