Rising to the Diversity Challenge

MDI CEO Ella Koscik Creates Diversity Forum

Atlanta, GA (August 23, 2002) - If Ella Koscik has her way, diversity will soon be a fully integrated component of every company's operations. Evidently, many senior business leaders agree and are willing to invest in that belief through the establishment of a new diversity forum dedicated to promoting diversity programs in corporate America. This is NOT, however, a soft and emotionally driven approach to diversity but rather a practical one. It all comes down to enhancing bottom line performance through serving unique and diverse markets. In fact, recent statistics suggest that by the year 2010 over 50% of the US buying public will be non-caucasian. According to Koscik, "Those businesses that cannot or will not react and respond to this change in the marketplace will begin seeing a real economic shortfall resulting from those decisions."

Diversity initiatives are commonly misunderstood as just more affirmative action programs or feel good internal relations programs. The approach advocated by Koscik and the representatives of Home Depot, Federated Systems, AFLAC, Scientific Atlanta, Cingular, GE, Six Continents Hotels, Accenture, BellSouth, and UPS who recently participated in the local forum is anything but impractical.

These companies are interested in serving the needs of a diverse community of consumers by hiring and procuring from companies that value diversity programs. According to Koscik, "at MDI we are currently able to demonstrate that 17% of our spending is conducted with diversity clients." What is significant in this is that many companies are pursuing goals of only 5%.

Koscik should know the value of diversity spending. As co-CEO of MDI she has grown her business from $1M in annual revenues to in excess of $40M in the last 6 years. She has done so with a relentless pursuit of diversity. "As an employer and consumer of other business services we have made no sacrifices in the quality and value of our resources through our diversity efforts," says Koscik. From that experience comes a larger vision of advocating this message to a marketplace that fails to meet diversity compliance. On August 21 of this year Koscik met with representatives in a local forum to brainstorm key principles in building effective diversity strategies. These committed diversity leaders are all interested in supporting diversity initiatives and creating a platform for learning. As a result of the forums efforts the following three key initiatives were identified:

• For Diversity programs to succeed it is important to appropriately identify the specific leverage points within the business where a diversity plan can positively impact the bottom line. For example, in a cost driven environment aligning diversity initiatives with procurement will elevate the visibility and impact throughout the entire organization.
• Focus on different mechanisms that diversity leaders can pursue to sell the value of diversity initiatives to senior leadership. Specifically, pursue ways to tie diversity initiatives to positive press, public relations, and increased profitability.
• Generate unique ideas for getting organizations on board and excited about diverse cultures of employees (food days, education about unique cultures).

Each diversity initiative has an internal and an external focus. The internal focus relates to more conventional efforts like EEO compliance. External efforts may include percentages of spending with female owned and minority owned firms. Each dollar spent with a diversity client represents credit towards those efforts. In this way it becomes very simple to measure the ultimate effectiveness of diversity efforts.

As a result of this recent forum the participating organizations have asked Ms. Koscik and MDI to take a central role in sponsoring and driving additional opportunities for future meetings and discussions. The intention is to create real world approaches that will yield positive social and economic results for involved businesses. Randy Walton, President of Strategenesis, Inc. who coaches and consults with senior executives and business leaders agrees, "What is smart about this approach to diversity initiatives is that it ties doing the right thing to doing the profitable thing. That is a true win-win situation."

About MDI Group
MDI Group is a premier IT Workforce Solutions provider with more than 20 years expertise in finding 'best-fit' IT talent for mid-sized to Fortune 500 clients nationwide. Offering IT Staffing Solutions and Contingent Workforce Management, MDI Group has recorded profitable growth every year since it was established in 1988. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, MDI Group has also been named one of Atlanta's 40 best places to work. To learn more about MDI Group, please visit www.mdigroup.com.

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