The following article was written for a business journal in 2001--It's message remains timely and true:

I can’t imagine a better advocate for valuing diversity in the workplace and in life than me, a female twin who has spent a lifetime silently and not so silently declaring that, while I look like that other person, I am not her. If you took the time to get to know me, if you looked beneath the surface features, you would find talents and qualities, strengths and weaknesses, goals and aspirations that are uniquely mine.

And that is precisely what employers must learn to do. Regardless of a company’s size or structure, product, service, or industry, employers must become vision-ary leaders. They must look beneath the surface features of a current or potential employee; purposefully become age/gender/race/ethnicity/lifestyle blind, and see and value the talents, competencies, differences and drive that make a person right for a position. They must consciously choose to see the diversity of their employees’ talents and conscientiously adopt approaches to mesh and maximize those talents for the success of the individual, the team, the company, and, ultimately, the bottom line.

Make no mistake about it. You can put aside the legal, moral, and ethical issues and just look at diversity from a practical, bottom-line point of view. The single most compelling reason for adopting the kind of vision that just sees talent is that it’s just smart business.

A recent Accenture survey of 500 senior executives indicated that attracting and retaining the best talent are among the greatest challenges they face. While the U.S. Dept. of Labor estimates that it costs approximately one-third of a worker’s annual salary to replace him, Roger E. Herman, in his book Keeping Good People: Strategies for Solving the No. 1 Problem Facing Business Today, wisely notes that those figures don’t begin to reflect the true costs associated with high-turnover: decreased operational efficiency, customer dissatisfaction, lower employee morale, etc. Gallup Management Journal indicates that low morale, disengaged workers cost businesses in this country $300 billion annually in lost productivity.

But talent-vision doesn’t just happen. It must emanate from the top and flow throughout the culture of a business in order for meaningful, bottom-line change to occur. As my colleague Deborah Swiss, in her book Women Breaking Through, affirms: “The tone of every organization is filtered through the business outlook, the professional standards, and the values held by its leaders. How women (substitute “people”) are treated begins with the examples set by those who head up organizations.”

Surely one of the best-publicized examples of top-down vision-ary leadership and transformation is Deloitte & Touche’s “Vision 2005” Initiative for the Retention and Advancement of Women. When CEO Jim Copeland announced their commitment to double the number of female partners by 2005, he cited the smart-business motive behind it: “First of all, we have a commitment to building intellectual capital in the organization. We think there’s only one place to get intellectual capital and that’s in the heads of people. If you are going to cut yourself away from that 50 percent, you are limiting your potential.”

The changes Deloitte & Touche implemented to advance women into leadership positions have already benefited morale and retention rates among both male and female employees and have dramatically affected the firm’s bottom line: “Deloitte estimates that reducing turnover at the senior manager level by 1percent is worth about $5.5 million to the firm each year.” (NY Times 6/1/01, Smart Money Invests in Working Women)

To truly maximize the intellectual capital in your business, you must apply talent-vision in the broadest inclusionary context. Ed Ossie, CEO of MTW Corp., exhibits such vision by hiring employees for their abilities, clearly defining job expectations in writing, providing training to maximize their potential, creating a team-work culture, and incentivizing compensation packages. What does Ed Ossie get for valuing and developing his people resources so highly? In an information technology industry that averages 30% turnover a year, MTW’s turnover rate was 6.7% and “revenue growth has averaged 50% a year for the past 5 years.” (Inc. March 2001, Great Expectations)

Regardless of the size of a business, maximizing human talent dramatically affects the bottom-line. Indeed, for the small-business owner, this “best talent/best training” hiring and deployment practice becomes even more critical. When profit margins are tight, financial success demands that you find and keep the best individual for each position. Effective human capital management is so critical to the bottom line that, big or small, employers must be committed to:

Examining their organization's cultural climate across all levels and functions through objective assessment and analysis to determine specific problem areas and

Implementing development practices that will not just engage workers in job functions, but give them a sense of commitment to and empowerment for executing their role in the company’s mission. The Saratoga Institute has indicated that the three key determinants of high employee retention and low turnover are training and development, growth opportunities, and mentoring (ASTD, Sept. 2000). Findings from a Cornell University Study of 136 public companies indicate that companies that develop human capital as a strategic asset are far more successful than those focused on short-term profits (The Futurist July-Aug. 2000). For 575 U.S. based publicly traded companies, tracked from 1996-1998, those that invested on average $1595 per employee in professional development experienced:

24% higher gross profit margins
218% higher income per employee
26% higher price to book ratios
(ASTD Magazine, Sept. 2000)

Big or small, you must learn to exercise talent-vision and training and development to maximize your people resources. After all, it’s just $mart business!

Jackie Pinkowitz, managing partner, FuturAge, can be contacted at jp@futurage.com