14 percent for Blacks and Latinos year to year. What’s particularly significant about this company is that 20 percent of their senior managers come
from outside the organization, yet they do not require diversity at all in their
executive-recruitment slates. By comparison, the DiversityInc Top 50 average 25 percent of senior managers coming from outside the company, but 90
percent require diversity in their executive-recruitment slates.
NO CEO/ERG RELATIONSHIP
While the CEO of Company A does have a leadership position at a
multicultural nonprofit, he has little exposure to employee-resource
groups, which would have been essential in helping him overcome the
misstep he made. He meets with the groups only once a year, while 44
percent of DiversityInc Top 50 CEOs meet with ERG leaders more than
twice a year. Although ERG leaders have rotational spots on the diversity council, this CEO does not chair the council personally, unlike 30
percent of DiversityInc Top 50 CEOs. The council does not set diversity
goals (usually demographic percentage increases) for the company,
unlike 90 percent of DiversityInc Top 50 executive councils.
His lack of visible support for diversity management carries forward
into the company’s communications, both internal and external. The
company’s website does not clearly articulate its diversity commitment
and, while a message from the CEO does appear after clicking on
“diversity,” the information is general and includes almost no detail about
employee-resource groups. Internally, the ERGs are predominantly only
found at corporate headquarters and their presence is not widespread in
remote locations, where hourly workers are predominant. The inclusion
of hourly workers in ERGs is a challenge for many retail/consumer-packaged-goods companies, especially since their employment may
be more transitional, but innovative solutions are occurring. Some
labor-intensive companies have chosen to only include these workers
by inviting them to attend non-shift events but not allowing them to be
full members of the employee-resource groups. Others have had more
success allowing hourly workers who assume leadership positions at
employee-resource groups to be excused from shift duties and to be
full-fledged group members. There is initial data indicating this also
improves promotion and retention rates of these employees.
In our 12 years
of assessing
companies
through the
DiversityInc Top
50, we have
never seen
a company
improve its
diversity-
management
efforts and,
subsequently,
its human-
capital results,
without
visible CEO
commitment.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THIS COMPANY
Document to the CEO the benefits of personally chairing the diversity council and using
the council to set diversity-management goals (companies that do this increase racial/ethnic/
gender diversity, especially at upper ranks, 10 percent on average).
Increase CEO interaction with ERG leaders to four times a year and ensure these meetings
include discussion of corporate culture and customer insights.
Examine best practices of other organizations to increase ERG membership across
the company and make ERGs more central to both human-capital and corporate-
communications efforts.
