My name is Tina Ruiz, I grew up in Simi Valley California, a predominately white community, best known for the acquittal of four officers during the Rodney King Trial.

While I was growing up I never heard the word “minority” and I was never told that I was a “minority.” The first time the word minority was introduced into my vocabulary was when I entered the workforce. As it turned out, I was hired into a position that was identified for “affirmative action”, a phrase that I had never encountered. Imagine my surprise when I began to hear words like, affirmative action, minority, points, goals, quota, etc. I also began to hear words like, unfair advantage, reverse discrimination and other pros and cons of affirmative action.

Article by Tina Ruiz
Senior HR Manager
The Cheesecake Factory
www.thecheesecakefactory.com

I decided it was my duty as an ethnic female to understand what all these terms
meant and try to understand the perceptions that came along with the terms.
That’s when I started my journey into understanding Diversity and its importance to the workforce, our society and Corporate America.

My first introduction to a formalized version of Diversity was Diversity Training, of course. I can still remember the title of my first Diversity video, “Champions of Diversity.” Although I was impressed by the message in the video, I still wondered, “Why do we have to educate people about being tolerant of others? Shouldn’t that just be? We’re all grown and should know these things – right?”
The next thing that caught my attention was when I over heard a hiring manager tell his recruiter, “please don’t send me anymore resumes of “those type” of individuals, I have already hired two.” Wow, lucky I was one of the two.
That was when I asked to be on the Diversity Training Committee. I felt I could make a difference. I also realized that along with Diversity Training came the opportunity to get people to embrace and become synergistic with change, as Diversity and change compliment each other.
Training in a white collar, engineering firm was interesting. I came head to head with individuals who were hesitant to accept that the demographics of their company were changing. One individual even told me in an aggressive and upset manner, that in 10 years, he, a white male, would be the “minority.” He had rights too and he felt they were about to be violated in the reverse. That’s when it hit me, Diversity isn’t just about race, gender or color – it’s about age differences, cultural differences, religious differences, sexual orientation differences, and etc. This shed a whole new light, and I realized, training about Diversity is one thing, but
living and cultivating it in your workforce is another.
Is Training Enough?
Training on Diversity is always a great first step. However, in order for an organization to truly get the most out of their homogenized workforce, they have to go beyond this. It has to be a culture that is lived and embraced by each individual starting from the top down. The top down sounds like a cliché, but honestly, if your CEO and/or President of the Company doesn’t embrace core diversity tenants, then “Diversity” is merely a program, a part of a mission statement, or a really nice phrase painted on a wall.
The company that I currently work for, The Cheesecake Factory Inc., goes beyond training, we start with right from the beginning, at the interview process our goal is to make sure we hire the best people possible. We hire on the basis of three areas of consideration; skills, knowledge and natural talents. Of these, we believe
natural talents are the most important attribute, as skills and knowledge can be taught. We believe it’s best to hire an individual for the talents they posses that best align with the position. That’s only achievable if you open your criteria as wide as possible, and allow for the criteria that matters the most, the best person we can What Diversity Truly Means – Ruiz – 1-15-08 2 bring on board for our company. Our manager interviews are conducted over the phone, and in some cases, we have hired a manager sight unseen. Since we’ve taken this approach, we have as a natural by-product, hired a more diverse workforce. And that’s good for everyone. It’s always best in any organization to have a diversity of thoughts, backgrounds and experiences. We are committed to holding out for talent, and talent alone. It’s what we believe differentiates us from our competition, and our diversity is part of that advantage.
Diversity, it’s not only about differences, but about accepting each other’s differences and being able to revolutionize an organization for the better. As our world speeds toward Globalization it is easy to see how embracing change and other’s differences can create a new economy, business, world, and the best place to start is in the workplace!
Tina Ruiz is a Senior Human Resources Manager for The Cheesecake Factory Corporation. Tina has over 17 years of diversified HR experience with companies such as Rockwell Int'l, Countrywide Financial Corp., Amgen and Seagate Technologies. Tina’s expertise is in human resources strategy, management/employee coaching and resolution consulting, and employee/management training.

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