DiversityInc recognized the unique diversity-management achievements of eight leading companies at our Diversity-Management Best Practices From the Best of the Best event and Special Awards Dinner in New York City, where CEOs and senior executives of these leading companies told the audience how commitment to diversity management is building their business.

Recognizing Results: Diversity-Management Strategies That Worked

We honored companies in eight areas of diversity management:

• Talent Pipeline
• Global Cultural Competence
• Working Families
• Supplier Diversity
• Community Development
• Resource Groups
• Diversity-Management Progress
• Executive Development

Congratulations to our 2012 Special Awards recipients. Read more about how each company demonstrated measurable results that positively impacted both their business goals and their employee engagement at DiversityInc.com/2012specialawards.

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Talent Pipeline

Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
No. 13 in the DiversityInc Top 50
Accepting Award: André Wyss, President

“I believe [our Disability Mentoring Day, Multi-Cultural Teen Corporate Mentoring Program and Suburban Cultural Educational Enrichment Program] provide an overview of our commitment to participating in and supporting meaningful programs at the intersection of community-based outreach, philanthropy and education. They say it takes a village to raise a child. We believe that NPC has an important role to play in that responsibility.”

Novartis understands the need for a diverse workforce and pipeline to senior management, both for cultural competency in its product development and marketing and for the most innovative workplace solutions. The company has been actively donating and volunteering to help youth from underrepresented groups reach their full potential, including direct involvement from its most senior leaders. >> Read more

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Global Cultural Competence

Ernst & Young
No. 6 in the DiversityInc Top 50
Accepting Award: Steve Howe Jr., Area Managing Partner – Americas

“Global cultural competence—for us, it’s critical. It helps us seize opportunities all that much better, and we believe that driving multicultural teams is a must. Diverse teams need that inclusion ‘glue’ to hold them together. We pride ourselves on true globalization and delivering high-performance teams, as well as exceptional customer service. All three require inclusion. We set a tone at the top. … It’s a business imperative.

As a truly global company, Ernst & Young knows how crucial the understanding and respect of local cultures is, while staying true to the values of inclusion so core to this company. Cultural-competence and harassment/discrimination training are emphasized throughout the organization, as is talent identification and development for underrepresented groups, particularly women, globally. >> Read more

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Working Families

Eli Lilly and Company
No. 29 in the DiversityInc Top 50
Accepting Award: John Lechleiter, Chairman, President & CEO

“Helping employees integrate work and life is more important than ever as we look for ways to continuously improve productivity. … Early in my tenure as CEO, I made a decision to cut back on our flexible work programs, and our employee engagement suffered. [Bringing those programs] back is one of the best decisions I’ve made.”

This company has become a model of workplace flexibility for its employees. Globally, Lilly offers a number of programs, varying by location, to assist employees in maintaining work/life flexibility. These include flexible work arrangements, personal leaves, onsite health services/fitness centers, onsite childcare, campus credit unions and dry cleaners, and family-support programs. >> Read more

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Supplier Diversity

Marriott International
No. 21 in the DiversityInc Top 50
Accepting Award: Arne Sorenson, President & CEO

“Diversity and inclusion is deeply rooted in our company’s purpose. It includes opportunities to build a career, own one of our hotels or do business with us as a supplier. … We are very proud of our partnerships. They have made us successful and, in turn, we enjoy watching these businesses grow and investing in their communities. In 2011, these suppliers totaled 17 percent of our total spend, and we will continue to reach higher.”

Marriott has a long and rich history of creating community wealth by using local minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MBEs and WBEs) to build and service its hotels, especially in urban areas. Marriott’s Tier I (direct contractor) third-party certified spend is 7.8 percent with MBEs and 9.5 percent with WBEs, more than 25 percent higher than the DiversityInc Top 50 average for MBEs and more than double the DiversityInc Top 50 average for WBEs. Marriott also spends 1 percent of its Tier I procurement with vendors owned by LGBT people, one of the highest percentages we’ve seen. >> Read more

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Community Development

Wells Fargo
No. 33 in the DiversityInc Top 50 
Accepting Award: Michelle Lee, Executive Vice President, Northeast Regional President

“Reinvestment is an integral part of our culture, and it’s one of the things I enjoy most about my job—giving back to our communities, engaging as a volunteer and serving on nonprofit boards. It’s my responsibility at Wells Fargo as a leader. Last year, we invested over $213 million in 19,000 nonprofit organizations, and 165,000 Wells Fargo team members are involved in community-development activities across the country.”

The company’s commitment to the Black, Latino, Asian, American Indian and LGBT communities is remarkable for the depth of its efforts to reach suppliers, youth and low-income people. Sixty-five percent of the executives in the top two levels of the company sit on the board of a multicultural nonprofit. >> Read more

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Resource Groups

Dell
No. 26 in the DiversityInc Top 50
Accepting Award: Steven Price, Senior Vice President, Human Resources

“I’m really proud of the work our company has been doing around diversity and inclusion because it’s authentic. It’s core to who we are as a company. Our purpose is to bring technology solutions around the world that help everyone. No one grows and thrives alone; we all need relationships. That’s why our resource groups are so important … to develop a sense of community.”

In the past two years, Dell has placed a major emphasis on increasing employee participation in its resource groups, creating and expanding global groups, and using these groups to further its business. Dell has seven global resource groups. Three have chapters outside of the United States: WISE (Women in Search of Excellence) in the Asian Pacific Japan region and Europe, the Middle East and Africa; PRIDE (for the LGBT population) in Brazil, and True Ability (Employees or Family Members of Employees with Special Needs/Disabilities) in Brazil. >> Read more

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Diversity-Management Progress

Kellogg Company
No. 49 in the DiversityInc Top 50
Accepting Award: John Bryant, President & CEO

“As we look at the Kellogg Company we have a very special bond with our consumers: Every day people bring our products into their homes and feed their children. Our goal is to help us understand our consumers so well that every day we’re in an even better position to bring our best to those consumers. And to do that, we need not just a diverse organization, but an environment which is inclusive, where the ideas of that organization can come into our products, so we can create even better products for our consumers.”

Kellogg’s progress in all four areas of diversity management that we measure has been considerable in the past year and shows every indication of being sustainable. This progress put Kellogg on the DiversityInc Top 50 list this year. >> Read more

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Executive Development
Kraft Foods
No. 7 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50
Accepting Award: Mark Clouse, President of U.S. Snacks Business Unit

“One of the hallmarks of Kraft is a belief in healthy dissatisfaction. The world in which we live changes on a daily basis: If you stop moving forward, you’ll find yourself behind. … Any program of diversity that’s built into a company needs to understand that it starts from day one and travels with those individuals throughout their career. The representation of the collegues working with us will reflect all of the countries working with us.”

Talent development and the use of diversity training, resource groups and mentoring to maximize potential have been priorities for Kraft Foods in recent years—and the results are impressive. Following a recent split into two separate entities, the resource groups and talent-development initiatives will be even more critical to the companies’ ability to connect with its increasingly multicultural consumer base. >> Read more