DiversityInc - May 2011

INTHIS ARTICLE

CINDY BRINKLEY
Senior Vice President
and Chief Diversity Officer
AT&T
No. 4 in the 2011
DiversityInc Top 50

SUZANNE SKIPPER
Principal
Deloitte Consulting LLP
No. 8 in the 2011
DiversityInc Top 50

MAE DOUGLAS Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer Cox Communications No. 20 in the 2011 DiversityInc Top 50

LINDA JIMENEZ
Chief Diversity Officer and
Staff Vice President,
Diversity and Inclusion
WellPoint
No. 36 in the 2011
DiversityInc Top 50

DONNA JOHNSON
Chief Diversity Officer
MasterCard
No. 31 in the 2011
DiversityInc Top 50

JACKIE JENKINS
Chief of Staff,
SE Business Operations
Aetna
No. 19 in the 2011
DiversityInc Top 50

JAE REQUIRO
Internal Diversity and Inclusion
Process Manager, Corporate
Social Responsibility, Toyota
Financial Services
Toyota Motor North America
No. 46 in the 2011
DiversityInc Top 50

MEGHAN O’BRIEN
MCNAMARA
Director of Diversity
Aetna
No. 19 in the 2011
DiversityInc Top 50

72 DiversityInc

s the data demonstrates, DiversityInc Top 50 companies increasingly think you need a generational group—and almost all of them start with a group aimed at millennials. Keep in mind that at all of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies, these groups are open to everyone, so older workers often join these groups to gain insights into their younger coworkers.

The key focuses of the groups are talent development, retention/ engagement, communication and innovation/customer outreach. All of the companies interviewed are reporting increasing success in all three areas.

“It’s really important that companies have a value proposition to attract, to retain, to develop your employees. And this proposition needs to be across all generations,” says Brinkley.

Two companies that have strong generational outreach but have chosen not to have formal generational ERGs are Deloitte, which has pioneered generational research, and Cox, which creates diversity councils that span various demographics, including age.

Suzanne Skipper, a
principal in Deloitte
Consulting, says Deloitte
decided against creating distinct
ERGs but instead chose to “bake into
all of our ERGs those sorts of activi-
ties that the Gen Y’ers are going to
identify with. For us, it was about
integrating and creating meaningful,
purposeful organizations and struc-
tures, like blogs and social network-
ing, to drive engagement.”
Mae Douglas, executive vice
president and chief people officer at
Cox, says age is integrated in all of
their nine local diversity councils,
but Cox chooses not to have groups