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Do You Need an External Diversity Council?
By Yoji Cole
January 31, 2007
Thirty percent of the companies on The 2006 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® list have created external councils as advisers and regulators who oversee the company's diversity efforts.
The Coca-Cola Co., Deloitte & Touche and MGM MIRAGE are three companies that provide insight into successful strategies of external diversity councils. Coca-Cola is No. 3 on the Top 50, while MGM MIRAGE is No. 40. Deloitte & Touche is one of the 25 Noteworthy Companies.
Often, an external council is convened in response to a discrimination lawsuit. This was the case at Coca-Cola, which started its diversity task force in 2000 in accordance with the settlement of its $192.5-million race-discrimination lawsuit.
The diversity task force has six members and is chaired by Alexis Herman, former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton. Other members include M. Anthony Burns, chairman of Ryder System; Gilbert F. Casellas, partner of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky & Popeo and former chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Edmund D. Cooke Jr., partner of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky & Popeo; Marjorie Fine Knowles, professor at Georgia State University Law School; Bill Lann Lee, former assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice; and Rene Redwood, former executive director of the Glass Ceiling Commission.
Members are paid a stipend for their work, the amount of which Coca-Cola has not made public. (For more about Coca-Cola's diversity efforts after the largest racial-discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history, read the Jan./Feb. 2007 issue of DiversityInc magazine)
"While their initial role has always been to ensure the settlement agreement was complied with, the Coca-Cola Co. met those a long time ago," says Steve Bucherati, director of diversity and workplace fairness at Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola's relationship with the task force was so positive that Coca-Cola's chairman and CEO, E. Neville Isdell, chose to retain the task force beyond its original deadline and through the end of the year.
"Now Coke partners with the task force to help drive our work around diversity and inclusion," says Bucherati. "The way they conduct themselves is like a senior-level advisory council."
Coca-Cola's relationship with the task force was positive because senior leaders willingly worked with the task force. The company made its diversity and inclusion efforts transparent to the task force, and in return, the task force respected the company's effort, says Bucherati.
"Two things they have been good about providing consistent guidance and insight on: One, as you are designing and developing people in diversity-related programs, make sure you are building them with sustainability in mind—how will these programs sustain themselves over time? And two, they've been reminding us how we'll communicate across our population about diversity-related programs—are you communicating, how are you communicating and what are you communicating?" says Bucherati.
Judging how, what and where diversity programs are focused is the accountability factor brought by an external diversity council's respected leadership.
"We deliberately created this board to help with ... more accountability, objectivity, pushing us to do more faster and focus on three goals, which are talent-pipeline management, culture of inclusion and marketplace brand eminence," says Redia Anderson, national partner of diversity and inclusion at Deloitte & Touche.
Deloitte & Touche created its external advisory board more than four years ago. This was a purely voluntary decision. While it is co-chaired by Anderson and Barry Salzberg, U.S. managing partner of Deloitte & Touche, other members on the council are not employed by Deloitte. Members are paid a stipend, the amount of which Anderson would not reveal. The advisory board meets an average of two times per year, plus each member is asked to complete at least one field-office visit to better understand Deloitte's business. The advisory board consults on Deloitte's recruitment and talent-development efforts. It "encouraged" Deloitte to develop its Break-Through Leadership Program that focuses on developing high-performing managers and senior managers of color.
"They aggregated our objectives of where we recruit and focused us on getting talent from non-conventional sources but where we have high populations of people of color," says Anderson. "They helped us realize we need to ... [look] at Hispanic-serving institutions that have finance or business curriculum and they've been helpful in advising us on HBCUs."
While the advisory board's recommendations and advice are non-legal and non-binding, the board's power is derived from its audience. The board provides its recommendations during private sessions with Anderson, Salzberg and Deloitte's chief people officer. And often Deloitte's chairman of the board and CEO attend the regular biannual meetings and the private meetings, says Anderson.
The external diversity council at MGM MIRAGE was not comprised of a who's who of corporate America but a group of experts who provided keen insight into how the hotel resort chain could attract more convention groups of color.
MGM MIRAGE convened an external council focused on its multicultural-market segments. The external council consisted of meeting planners, who represented major emerging market segments, groups and associations that represent the black, gay and lesbian, Latino and Asian-American communities. The group audited MGM MIRAGE's marketing and sales products for each racial, ethnic and orientation group the external council represented, surveyed MGM MIRAGE's in-room videos, and suggested which resources the resort company should make bilingual.
"Now they're our advocates and ambassadors [in the convention market]," says Punam Mathur, senior vice president, corporate diversity and community affairs, MGM MIRAGE.
External diversity councils, if organized with the proper leadership and goals in mind, can provide invaluable insight, networking opportunities and focus to a company attempting to get the most return on its investment in diversity business practices. To find out why Eastman Kodak, one of the DiversityInc 25 Noteworthy Companies, resurrected its external council, read the next issue of DiversityInc magazine, out shortly.
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