When deciding where to work, some students consider a welcoming office environment more alluring than a high salary or convenient location.
Many minority students especially have expressed concern about finding adequate support networks at their jobs. Some employers have tried tweaking their non-discrimination policies, while others have started minority employee groups.
Management professor Louis Thomas recently conducted a study showing that these efforts are beneficial not only for employees, but also for employers. He sent out a survey to gay and lesbian MBA alumni asking them about their income, whether or not they were openly gay at work and how much money it would take for them to leave their job.
He concluded that employees who are openly gay at a "tolerant" workplace earn 12 to 15 percent more than those who are not and that they are more loyal to their employer.
Business firms especially have been working to change their conservative image by reaching out to minority groups.
"A lot of [minorities] who haven't had strong role models [working in business] self-select out of the process," Goldman Sachs Associate Diversity Recruiter Janet Raiffa said. "We want to show them outstanding examples of business leaders and that banks have networks to support people."
But Hugo Najera, program coordinator of La Casa Latina, said that while minority employee groups are important, they may not be the ultimate solution to a more multicultural workplace.
"When you have those kind of entities, it creates the connotation that these people are special cases," he said. "It creates a degree of exoticism and compartmentalization. People must see that life is more complex than putting things in folders and filing them away."
-- Uri Friedman
