When longtime national diversity leader
PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC) fell off The
DiversityInc Top 50
Companies for Diversity list in 2005
after three straight years on the list, the
accounting giant’s diversity team did not
complain about the survey or refuse to participate in future rankings. Instead, PwC
considered the fall an opportunity to examine why it no longer was ahead of the curve.
The self-reflection and subsequent work paid
off; PwC, one of the 25 Noteworthy Companies
last year, is No. 6 on this year’s list.
Changes in the methodology this year also
helped PwC and other companies at the top—
an increased emphasis on CEO commitment,
the requirement that companies on the Top
50 be strong in all four areas measured
(CEO commitment, human capital, corporate communications and supplier
diversity), and examining companies
within the context of their industries
and employee skill sets.
One of PwC’s biggest challenges,
says Jennifer Allyn, director of gender
retention and advancement, “and one a
lot of the companies on [the] list have,
is being so large and decentralized,
how do you get the message out about
how seriously the company is taking
this? What we learned from the [Top
50] debrief was that other people were
doing it better.”
A critical insight gleaned last year
was that leaders’ commitment to
diversity needed to be more visible.
Among the company’s most important and high-profile communication tools is U.S. Chairman and
Senior Partner Dennis Nally’s
“Weekly Wrap,” which is sent to the
firm’s 2,000 partners. The e-mail,
which Allyn says is “like The New
York Times internally—people are
always lobbying for column-inch
space,” helped PwC spread its message among senior leaders.
“We really redoubled our efforts to get
more of that real estate and, in fact, [Nally]
dedicated an entire ‘Wrap’ to diversity—
and there is never one issue with a single
theme,” Allyn says.
All of the diversity news included
in the “Wrap” made its way to the
company’s remaining 27,000 U.S.
employees through the company-
wide “PwC Update.” Those
communications are key at
PwC because the company’s
large work force is spread out
among 61 U.S. offices—
and many work at clients’
headquarters. “You can do
an event in the office, but
at any given time half the
people aren’t there,” Allyn
says. “It’s an enormous chal-
lenge to make people feel con-
nected to what PwC is.”
But it’s a challenge that PwC is
tackling head-on. Leaders are becom-
ing so committed to diversity—in
large part because of Nally’s fre-
quent and forceful communications,
says Chief Diversity Officer Chris
Simmons—that they increasingly are
bringing up important diversity points
without Simmons’ prodding. He was
on a conference call recently talking
about holding a women’s event and a
senior executive asked how the team
would address the issues of lesbians and
women of color. “This is a 50-something
white Irish guy saying this,” Simmons
says. “I didn’t have to say a word.”
It Starts at the Top
Ivan Seidenberg, who started his telecom-
munications career 40 years ago as a
cable splicer, is chairman and CEO of
Verizon Communications/Wireless, No.
1 on The 2006 DiversityInc Top 50
Companies for Diversity list. The Bronx
native “is very aware of the dynamics of
an urban environment surrounding diver-
sity,” says Magda Yrizarry, Verizon’s vice
50
Approach 2006 TOP 50
COMPANIES
FOR DIVERSITY
A
Top -Down
BY T.J. DEGROAT
ILLUSTRATION BY CATHY GENDRON
