Denny's Approach to Diversity

CASE STUDY

Denny’s Approach to Diversity

Human Resource Management

05/12/2013

Denny’s Approach to Diversity

Diversity plays a huge role in companies today. “The term "diversity" is used broadly to refer to many demographic variables, including, but not limited to, race, religion, color, gender, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, age, education, geographic origin, and skill characteristics.” (What is Diversity) Being diverse can help a company avoid lawsuits, increase employee morale, and increase awareness amongst the employees of the company.

Denny’s is a company who came under scrutiny and was involved in a multi-million dollar lawsuit in which they lost. The lawsuit was brought on because of discrimination and lack of diversity within the company. The suit was brought about because 18 African Americans were asked to pre pay their bill before being served. (Crisis Communication Strategies) Denny’s realized something was wrong after having to settle this suit. In order to correct this problem, Denny’s provided a great amount of diversity training for its employees.

Denny’s also looked at its structure and realized that the third party recruiting company they were using had diversity issues of their own, which led to Denny’s diversity issues. This third party company was limited to only certain types of people. This led to a non-diverse candidate pool, which ultimately led to the problems Denny’s was having with its workforce. Denny’s learned that they needed to recruit from different areas to enhance the diversity amongst their employees.

With Denny’s change and approach to diversity, they have been able to attract more minority visitors and their sales have increased. Hood-Phillips stated, “Given