USE SOCIAL
NETWORKS TO
CONNECT WITH
EMPLOYEES
MAKE THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIVERSE
SUPPLIERS A PRIORITY
LESSON 3
ANDERSON BANKS: [We are
thinking of] utilizing a Face-
book approach, internally. We
would set up a site where all
of our employees could go
in and put up their profile. So
you know about their exper-
tise, you know about their
background, you know about
their hobbies, you know about
key clients and industry. So if
you wanted to connect with
that person on any of those
dimensions, because you
might want to mentor or want
to coach, you’ve at least got
a starting point to begin the
conversation ... It would be a
way of increasing the points
of connectivity.
LESSON 2
LESSON 1
YRIZARRY: We’ve just added, in
2007, supplier diversity to our
short-term incentive-compensa-tion impact. We have to learn how
to reduce costs and expand opportunity to a diverse base of suppliers—and when you consolidate a
lot of contracts and you’re trying
to contain your cost, you often end
up leaving behind some smaller,
and often diverse, suppliers. We’re
working very closely with our business groups as they’re challenged
to think about ways to consolidate,
to think about synergies and alignment, to make certain that
we understand that as
we grow, let’s grow the
pie. What often happens is the
pie stays the same for the supplier-diversity group, and we’ve got to be
able to expand the base so it’s not
just shifts, so you take away from
this business and you move it here.
We spent over $2.5 billion last
year with diverse suppliers and
we’re continuing to grow it. We
have commitments for year-over-year growth, but that commitment
is in the context of real strong
pressures to bring down costs and
bring up value for the shareholder.
It’s being able to say there are
other attributes to the supplier,
including diversity, and we want
you to think about diversity when
you’re making this decision—and
that doesn’t lower the quality or
necessarily increase the expense.
LANDMAN-GONZALEZ: Around
the supplier piece, we’ve put into
place those numbers that we all
have about what is world class.
Our purchasing department is at
19 percent of our total spend right
now [percent of total procurement
budget spent with minority- and
women-owned businesses] and
their commitment is to continue
