Air Guard Touts Diversity

Air Guard Touts Diversity

amaxwell@govexec.com

In an effort to curb discrimination, the Air National Guard has launched a new effort to enhance diversity in its workforce.

Air Guard officials say the project, called People Potential 2000...and Beyond (PP2000+), is designed to give all Guard members an equal chance for advancement.

PP2000+ consists of five phases. During Phase I team members built a model of the Air National Guard human resources system using computer simulations. In Phase II members developed solutions to the problem of getting more minorities into leadership positions in the Guard. Phase III was a conference involving the Guard's Human Resources Quality Board in April. Strategies developed at the conference will seed Phase IV, in which state and unit commanders will participate in creating action plans. The last phase will involve measurement of the system's success.

PP2000+ was developed in response to the Hudson Institute's Workforce 2000 report, released in 1987, which predicted that by the the year 2000, 85 percent of the net workforce growth will be attributed to minorities, women and immigrants. Only a small minority of new entrants to the labor force will be native white males, according to the report.

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