THE GREATEST RESOURCE
• 98% in the Top 50 have employee groups
• 96% use them for marketing
LESSON 6
• 94% use them for recruiting
• Average annual Top 50 funding per group:
$18,000
we’ve allowed those relationships
to develop and unfurl, and we’ve
actually seen some business coming from it. Our Chinese-services
group invited some very well-
known individuals to come and
learn, and because of the relationships, we were able to connect
partners with people we might not
have otherwise met and started
relationships, which in turn have
yielded some revenue. Now is that
the only reason that happened?
No. But if we didn’t put those
people together in the same place
and make it so they could network
on a social basis, we might not
have done that, or we might not
have done it as soon.
Source: DiversityInc
LESSON 5
GET STRONG
BUY-IN FROM
SENIOR MANAGERS
LESSON 4
LESSON 3
Many of
our partners are beginning to
slowly come around because
you just keep talking to them.
“Come with me to this event.
Bring three people with you.”
That’s what we tell our
business-resource-group lead-
ers, “bring a couple of people
with you that might not or-
dinarily come,” because they
don’t get it. And so they come
and they see, “Oh my good-
ness, there’s the CFO from
Company X—I’ve been trying
to get to him for however
long!” And he’s a friend of this
person that you think is at a
lower level … So now you’ve
got a point of connectivity
that you didn’t have before.
involved in consulting—and a lot
of times I would know nothing
about it, which is fine—but they’re
consulting with their counterparts
at other companies.
So companies reach out to us,
their employee-resource groups
reach out to us and say, “Can you
help us? We’re just starting, we’re
trying to evolve, trying to move
it to the next level—what have
you experienced?” And our LGBT-employee forum, which has been
around for, officially, about eight
years (and unofficially a lot longer
than that), same thing. We just got
a call a couple of weeks ago from a
really major organization, spent a
lot of time consulting with them.
And the value that comes out of
that, for both parties, is just terrific.
I love the fact that our
employee-resource
groups have become so
engaged—that wasn’t always
the case, but they really see such
relevance. They remember what it
was like for themselves as a person
that came in and maybe nobody
was reaching out to them, and it’s
the old give-back, and so now they
reach out to similar employees.
LESSON 2
ANAND: One thing that some of
our employee-network groups have
done—and particularly our LGBT-
network group—is they’ve started
sort of a business-to-business
council. So they have connected
with other LGBT-network groups
in the D.C. area, and again as
we go to bid for a contract with
a particular client, these folks
come up and say, “Hey,
I know somebody there.
I can help you.” It’s been
absolutely incredible.
LESSON 1
LET EMPLOYEE
GROUPS LEAD YOU
BUCHERATI: Some of our employee forums have been really
LANDMAN-GONZALEZ: Part of
each one of the resource groups or
employee networks has a commitment to the communities in which
we operate. They are liaisons sometimes between the not-for-profits or
the community leaders where our
restaurant or support center is, and
that has brought us incredible relevance, branding around diversity
and being a part of the communities that we serve. They know
people or understand
issues better than the
GM or the people at the
support center because
it’s their community.
