DiversityInc - November/December 2008

The DiversityInc L e^Toss^pComo⁵panies fon⁰r Diversitsy^® Lea

Diversity Training and Mentoring

100%

88%

aren’t more mandatory courses for becoming a parent—but it’s one of the most important jobs that any person can play.

80%

70%

60%

40%

42%

37%

30%

20%

15%

0%

Has
mandator y
diversity
training

Diversity training is offered monthly

of managers par ticipating in mentoring prog ram

Has
measurable
goals for
mentoring pairs

Diversity Inc Top 50

We also have a 20-year-old coaching program open to anyone who has been in the company one year or more. It has engendered such a loyalty among people that we have a reunion every year and people come back for it.

48%

We have mandatory training
and we have to offer it in a
variety of different ways and
media. It’s an expense that
we just routinely budget and
plan to deliver in different
types of ways and it is part
of the overall curriculum in
all of our leadership train-
ing that we deliver in the
company. Everything we
deliver training-wise has the
diversity element.

Bottom Quarter

Weathers: We focus on whether you have the ability to step into someone else’s shoes. When I think about that behavior from a diversity perspective, it doesn’t get any better. For example, for a partner, we ask if your leadership ability is impacted by your ability to expand your cultural competence. So the more you know about a particular culture and how you as a leader are impacting it, the better leader you will be [and] the farther you will go in the organization.

at IBM is the core and creates the right kind of environment that motivates and aligns people to the objectives of the organizations.

Hamilton: We just adopted new competencies, including two competencies on people leadership that are basically coaching and inclusion. The higher you go in the company, the more stringent the requirement on you to be a coach and be inclusive or you will not get the compensation commensurate with your position, be it your base pay or merit increases, the bonus that we pay every year or the long-term incentive program.

Hughes: We have mandatory training, and we’re comfortable with that word. We have mandatory training that’s broader in terms of what we need to teach our people for them to carry out their roles, and that training is key to the propositions that we take to our clients. If you want a diverse work force, then we believe that you need to equip the individuals that may not have come from a diverse environment to be able to understand how to interact and collaborate and work successfully. It’s kind of like becoming a parent—unfortunately, there

Jimenez: Education and training are crucial, not just for the associates but also for the leaders and managers of the organization. We can’t do the things that we’ve always done; we have to be more innovative and creative.

GOLD-STAR ANSWER

Barry: We really emphasize mentoring. We have a reverse-mentoring program, which actually has younger or more junior members of our employee population—primarily women and diverse employees who are mentoring our senior executives around the ways in which they