Spartanburg Water System and Spartanburg Sanitary Sewer District (SWS/SSSD), located in
Spartanburg, South Carolina, along the Interstate 85 corridor between Charlotte, North Carolina,
and Atlanta, Georgia, became concerned in the mid-nineties that its workforce predominantly
consisted of white males, particularly in management areas. Moreover, both females and
minorities accounted for only 10% of promotions and newly hired employees. Since both the
City and County of Spartanburg are culturally diverse, the governing boards of both SWS and
SSSD recognized an immediate need to improve the level of diversity within the utility and also
to bring about change in the workplace culture.
Beginning in 1996, SWS/SSSD embarked on a process aimed at increasing the number of female
and minority new hires and promotions, and perhaps more importantly, implementing a change
in the workplace culture that would allow diversity to be embraced as well as to flourish. This
process consisted of three critical elements:
diversity education/training;
job recruitment efforts aimed at specific groups; and,
evaluating/removing internal barriers that impeded workplace diversity.
Each of these elements was critical in changing long-standing cultural beliefs and behaviors. An
atmosphere open to new suggestions, meaningful dialogue, and change was necessary to effect a
wholesale utility-wide cultural change. More importantly, there was an overwhelming desire to
have the composition of the staff mirror that of the community it serves with regard to race and
gender.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 110 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 4 |
