DIVERSITYINC LEARNINGS
NETWORKING
& SHARING
Why ERGs Are Business-Resource Groups
How do you use your ERGs to reach the marketplace?
Linda Jimenez
Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President,
Diversity & Inclusion
WellPoint (No. 36)
SOMOS, our Latino group, has been instrumental in helping the business focus
on its marketing campaigns. We
have representatives in our group
that come from Central
and South America,
Mexico, Spain.
When we are
provided the
information
that they want
to translate into
Spanish, we have a
great venue of people
who look at that and
can say [if ] these words will
not resonate with the audience that
we’re looking for.
Resource groups can also help
in terms of religious practices
around healthcare. We talked about
somebody going to the emergency
room—if they are Caucasian, you’ll
have maybe two or three family
members [with them], whereas
if you take an African-American
family in the emergency room,
you can probably expect maybe 10
family members. If you’re Hispanic,
you’ll probably find 10 or 12 family
members with a whole lot of food
in that emergency room.
LINDA JIMENEZ
Jennifer Christie
When you do have mployee-resource groups or diversity
programs that are closely linked to
the business, it’s easier to make the
business case for diversity.
Jason Gong
Manager, Diversity & Inclusion
American Express
LISA GUTIERREZ
One area where I think we’ve had some real success is in the prepaid business. The
business was looking for an opportunity to penetrate some diverse
consumer markets.
An organic way for us to do
that was to leverage our employee
networks; our Asian network, our
Hispanic network and some from
our faith-based network got into
the mix.
We were able to create a
Felicidades gift card, which our
Hispanic network came up
with entirely on their own,
making sure that it was
something that would
be culturally relevant
but also resonate
within the community.
We were able to do
that with SALT, which
is our Christian network.
We were able to do that
with the Asian network during the
Lunar New Year.
Kerri Angst
Our women’s resource group has built a database of team embers who have raised
their hands and said, “I want to
be part of this project with you.”
They’ve built a profile, show-
ing their buying habits, shopping
habits, eating out, household
demographics. When we have a
business unit that says, “We need to
do an in-house focus group,” we’re
able to pull the demographics and
provide instantaneous feedback.
It’s free. If we have a pepperoni
customer, we’re able to pull 25 men
between the ages of 18 and 36 who
usually would eat pepperoni pizza.
Lisa Gutierrez
Executive Director, Global Diversity
Cummins (No. 18)
As of August, we launched five ERGs simultaneously in Brazil in one day. I have
96 now globally. They all have a
requirement of having recruit-
ing, retention, business
enhancement and align-
ing with our diversity
business case. One
specific example
was our African and
African-American
affinity groups. We
were developing our
strategy for the continent
of Africa. We tapped into them.
Many of those folks helped us not
only develop that strategy, but now
they’re leading businesses.
Our Latinos helped to develop
an approximately $2-million
annual business in our Mexico
locations by leveraging cultural
knowledge. We just built in connecting diversity and business as
an automatic. All the affinity-group
and local diversity-council work
plans have to show this connection.
