Managing a Diverse Workforce 93the quality of team problem solving (Cox,
2001; Naff & Kellough, 2002; Page, 2007).
San Francisco ’ s Asian & Pacifi c Islander
Wellness Center learned that Burmese
refugees were starting to move to Oakland,
California, and many of them had HIV/AIDS.
The charity, which serves Bay Area Asians
and Pacifi c Islanders who have HIV/AIDS or are at risk for the diseases,
had staff members and volunteers who were fl uent in Samoan, Visayan,
Tagalog, Nepali, and many other languages, but not Burmese. The Well-
ness Center knew little about the Burmese — only that they had fl ed a
military dictatorship and were being resettled by church groups and the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The agency reached
out to the new arrivals and discovered it needed someone with expertise
in dealing the HIV/AIDS patients. It recruited a Burmese woman and
trained her as a case manager. She was able to offer direct assistance to
Burmese refugees, providing them with health and safety information,
accompanying them to medical appointments, and giving other types of
aid (Berkshire, 2007).
When the Wellness Center sought to hire more Burmese case man-
agers, it found many qualified applicants. According to Lance Tome,
the executive director, acquiring what he refers to as “ cultural compe-
tency ” required an innovative approach to hiring: “ There are a limited
number of people who have the knowledge and experience to fi ll these
positions.... What we ’ ve learned to do is train from the ground up ”
(Berkshire, 2007, p. D13).
Another example of a nonprofi t that is making a conscious effort to
become more diverse is the Jewish Board of Family and Children ’ s Ser-
vices in New York City. The agency fi rst offered services to poor Jewish
families and immigrants one hundred years ago and now provides ser-
vices to more than seventy thousand clients annually, from all racial, eth-
nic, economic, and religious backgrounds. Many clients today are people
of color, and large numbers speak Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Hebrew,
Creole, Yiddish, and other languages. The staff of more than two thou-
sand employees is also racially and culturally diverse and represents a
range of professional and paraprofessional disciplines (Greene, 2007).
Because of its original sectarian mission to serve the Jewish commu-
nity, its name, and the way it was perceived in the local community, the
organization saw that it needed to address diversity and multicultural-
ism in order to improve its competence in serving a culturally diverseEvidence is growing that
managing diversity leads to
greater service effectiveness,
effi ciency, and productivity.