Why doesn’t DiversityInc extend an invitation to the federal government agencies to participate in the DiversityInc Top 50 Survey as corporate America does in sharing best practices for diversity management? It is much needed and I am sure that if they did, it might ring the alarm and move some mountains.

Answer:

We used to have a DiversityInc Top Federal Agency competition, but there is a consortium of Equal Employment Opportunity officers who decided to not participate, so after a few years of struggling along to get participation, I dropped the effort.

Of the dozen or so agencies that did participate (yours was not among them), results were not on par with the corporate sector. In my opinion, other than in the U.S. Navy (and currently, the U.S. Marine Corps), there is little leadership involvement. Read Retired Admiral Mike Mullen: Trust, Candor & Reliability for more on diversity in the military.

I don’t know how many times I spoke at federal agencies where some under-assistant-deputy-secretary-something-or-other introduced me and then ducked out so he didn’t have to hear my talk (and it was almost always a “he” and I could feel their disdain for the dog-and-pony-show diversity events that stood in for actually doing something).

I’ve observed that diversity management for federal agencies is much about face and little to do with actual work, accomplishments or accountability. Management is squirreled away in the EEO offices, where the leaders of EEO have very little interaction with people who actually run things and there is nothing more than compliance work going on. There is no “CEO commitment” among the majority of agency heads.

Old-School & Overwhelmed?

In my observation, President Obama’s executive order “Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce” has resulted in no substantial change in behavior. I get the impression that most of the old-school federal executives are waiting to see what the presidential election will bring.

I must have had hundreds of visits to dozens of agencies over the years; I’ve been struck by the awkward and stilted manner that people interact with senior management. There’s a lot of pointy hierarchy and obsessive, starchy regimentation. I’ve never seen those attributes connected to productivity—and, indeed, I have the impression that if half of the federal workforce quit tomorrow, most Americans wouldn’t know the difference.

I had to laugh out loud when I read in The New York Times about the investigation into Google causing “one of the biggest violations of data protection laws that we had ever seen.” Michael Copps, who last year ended a 10-year term as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, said regulators were overwhelmed. “The industry has gotten more powerful, the technology has gotten more pervasive and it’s getting to the point where we can’t do too much about it,” he said.

Here’s the best part: Aside from admitting that his agency couldn’t keep up, the fine for the “biggest violations of data protection” was (hold on to your hats) $25,000. With that stunning level of organizational accomplishment, do you think someone’s going to care about diversity?

Innovation From Diversity Management

In a meeting in Washington, I heard the best explanation for why things are the way they are: A very wise man posited that you can’t help but avoid hiring 2 percent incompetent people every year. But if you don’t fire anyone, 2 percent becomes 4 percent, which becomes 6 percent—and soon, the incompetents are running the roost and figuring out how to squeeze out the competent people.

I won’t out you or the agency you work for, but it’s been in the news quite a bit lately; it has fallen behind the times and is now a drag on the budget. This is a management issue, and diversity management falls into that category.

Your “alarm bell” idea isn’t going to “move any mountains” until the first “mountain” gets scooped into bags marked “fertilizer” and trucked away by someone in authority. There is no perceived reason for change, so no change is happening.

There is no such thing as a trickle-up diversity effort. Your wistful desire for change at your agency is not matched by a perceived business reason or accountability to improve effectiveness via diversity management, which would have all sorts of benefits.

These include organizational effectiveness, higher-quality recruiting, improved productivity, meritocratic promotions, improved supply chain, multi-culturally competent interaction with citizens (marketing and sales of your agency’s services), nuanced understanding of problems and opportunities, etc.

Watch the video below to learn how cultural competency through diversity management helped Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, No. 13 in The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity, save millions in marketing costs. The company, along with nine others, presented innovations at our Innovation Fest! diversity event.

All those things that corporations know are a competitive edge lead to innovation, a subject which around which your agency has consistently lagged.

Good luck to you.

Luke Visconti’s Ask the White Guy column is a top draw on DiversityInc.com. Visconti, the founder and CEO of DiversityInc, is a nationally recognized leader in diversity management. In his popular column, readers who ask Visconti tough questions about race/culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability and age can expect smart, direct and disarmingly frank answers.

The post Ask the White Guy: What Is Wrong With the Federal Government? appeared first on DiversityInc.

The six CEOs and eight senior executives at our event demonstrated how their personal passion and commitment to diversity have become a critical factor in making strategic business decisions. In many cases, this helped gain traction within senior leadership and generated measurable results in workforce diversity, while sometimes improving market share.

The two-day event featured two panels with six chief diversity officers—one focused on best practices for executive diversity councils and the other on using compensation to drive diversity-management results. Additionally, DiversityInc Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Barbara Frankel presented exclusive advice on what companies need to do to improve their DiversityInc Top 50 rank.

Watch all the presentations from this event via the players below or view our YouTube playlist. Videos of all the speakers will be posted throughout the day.

Also, be sure to save the date for our upcoming 2013 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity Announcement Dinner, April 23–24, 2013.

How New York City Drives Diversity Results
R. Fenimore Fisher, Deputy Commissioner, Chief Diversity & EEO Officer, City of New York
How does the City of New York drive diversity metrics and results? Find out from a world-class diversity expert.

Diversity in the Workplace: Leadership Counts
Jorge Benitez, Managing Director – North America, Chief Executive – United States, Accenture
This CEO really values work/life issues. He tells us how he includes spouses and encourages family priorities.

Panel: Best Practices on Executive Diversity Councils
Debbie Storey, AT&T; Rhonda Crichlow, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation; Michelle Lee, Wells Fargo 
Three companies with the best practices—and results—on diversity councils talk about CEOs chairing the councils, setting goals and accountability.

Building a Strong Diversity Brand
John Bryant, President and CEO, Kellogg
The CEO of Kellogg tells us why his company has invested so much over the last two years in its diversity-management efforts.

Workplace Diversity: The Personal Connection in Leadership
Forest T. Harper, CEO, INROADS 
The son of migrant workers, who went on to be a top Pfizer executive, talks about how INROADS helps Black and Latino college students become corporate leaders. Click here to download the presentation slides.

Corporate Diversity at the Top: Q&A With Luke Visconti
Steve Howe, Area Managing Partner – Americas, Ernst & Young
The U.S. head of Ernst & Young discusses how corporate values drive business decisions at his firm

Diversity & Inclusion: Accountability & Your Business Future
Thomas F. Zenty III, CEO, University Hospitals
The CEO of this Cleveland hospital system tells us how outreach to Blacks and Latinos is driving hospital growth.

Workplace Diversity: Using Leadership to Save Lives & Talent by Creating Inclusive Workplaces
Dr. Eliza Byard, Executive Director, GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network)
The head of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) tells you about young lives saved through the help of corporations like yours.

Panel on Diversity Metrics: Using Compensation to Drive Results
Maruiel Perkins-Chavis, Marriott International; Joy Fitzgerald, Rockwell Collins; Chad Johnson, Sodexo
Three companies with the most effective diversity metrics tell you what’s on their diversity scorecards and how they link goals to compensation.

Corporate Diversity: A Personal Story of Why Corporate Values Matter
Michelle Lee, Executive Vice President and Northeast Regional President, Wells Fargo
This exec shares her remarkable story of how and why she became a banker and the challenges she faced as the only young, Black woman in her management-training program.

DiversityInc Benchmarking: Tips on How to Move Up on the DiversityInc Top 50 List
Barbara Frankel, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor, DiversityInc
See our tips on the best ways to answer questions on The 2013 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity survey. Click here to download the presentation slides.

The post 8 CEOs Prove the Intersection of Diversity, Engagement & Innovation appeared first on DiversityInc.

Executive Diversity Councils: Best Practices From Kellogg Company, Comcast Corporation.

The greatest change that we’ve observed among executive diversity councils is the increasing number of CEOs chairing the council: This is true for 54 percent of DiversityInc Top 50 companies with executive diversity councils, up from 32 percent in 2005.This sends a strong message throughout the organization that this is a business priority and that the council is driving actual results (not just setting strategic direction).

In our web seminar on diversity councils, Kellogg Company Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion Mark King and Comcast Corporation Vice President of Administration Karen Dougherty Buchholz discuss the strategies and goals their companies used to create and implement effective executive diversity councils—and how they keep their council members accountable for results. (Kellogg Company is No. 49 in the DiversityInc Top 50 and Comcast is one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies.)

Kellogg President and CEO John Bryant serves as chair: The nine members of Kellogg’s executive diversity and inclusion council (EDIC) oversee the company’s 12 diversity councils from its respective business divisions.

Comcast’s Joint Diversity Council oversees diversity strategy of 14 councils: Comcast/NBC Universal also leverages an external diversity council for additional guidance.

In this web seminar, you will learn:

• How to create clear diversity-council objectives
• Why resource-group members should be included on the council
• When meeting size and frequency can impact council effectiveness
• How to promote your executives’ diversity leadership throughout the organization

This 90-minute diversity web seminar is available to DiversityIncBestPractices.com subscribers. Click here to watch.

Visit our web seminar library to view our full archive of web seminars.

The post Executive Diversity Councils: Best Practices From Kellogg Company, Comcast Corporation appeared first on DiversityInc.

In the 1,620-word article 3 Case Studies: Why Companies Decline on the DiversityInc Top 50, DiversityInc offers three comprehensive case studies from companies that were once ranked as diversity leaders that have since fallen off the list. These are detailed examples of what NOT to do, including having a lack of visible CEO commitment and not holding executives accountable for sustainable results.

Each company case study is broken down into easy-to-follow sections: the situation, what happened, the results and the solutions. All identifying information, including each company name, is excluded from the case studies. However, their actions provide valuable insights.

 Readers will learn:

• Why follow-up with employee-resource groups is critical to business results
• How decreasing the amount of executive compensation tied to diversity results could impact human-capital metrics
• How maintaining a diverse succession pipeline ultimately improves recruiting, retention and promotions throughout all levels of an organization

Read 3 Case Studies: Why Companies Decline on the DiversityInc Top 50 at DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

The post Why Companies Decline in the DiversityInc Top 50 appeared first on DiversityInc.

Voss visibly and proactively has sought to build an inclusive environment where workers are encouraged to share their ideas openly. His efforts at holding executives accountable for diversity and inclusion results have sparked a cultural transformation that’s contributing to increased revenue and an improving stock price.

Voss shares with DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti his viewpoints on the importance of employee input, the need for accountable and proactive leadership to generate buy-in for diversity and inclusion, and why successful succession planning should go beyond if “someone gets hit by a bus.”

For more on CEO commitment and best practices in diversity management, read “CEO Commitment: Why Visibility & Accountability Matter” and “KPMG’s CEO Reveals How to Be a Strong Diversity Leader.”

Luke Visconti: Ameren’s website states: “We believe that the full utilization of all human-resources potential is critical to achieving the highest human potential and to best serve our countries and communities at large.” Why do you feel that way?

Tom Voss: Our most valuable asset is our people. We’re trying to do as every company is—the best job you can with the resources you have. You can’t afford to be dismissing people’s ideas. We found out as we invest in our diversity efforts that it’s been helping our company get better.

We had a long way to go. We had areas in our company that had absolutely no diversity. We had people who weren’t hearing or seeing people who were different than them.

Eight years ago, I recognized this and said this is important for our future success. We had to make that investment.

Visconti: Can you think of a day that you had an epiphany that led you to think more inclusively about people?

Voss: Back when those Clarence Thomas hearings were going on, the idea struck me that there could be people in the workforce feeling mistreated. I didn’t want that to happen to my department at that time.

I made sure that the people working for me feel like they’re treated fairly, that they can progress and openly express their feelings.

There was another event when I was in high school. I was going out to a restaurant after a prom. Some of our friends were African American. They couldn’t go in those restaurants. I thought that was just unbelievably unfair. I couldn’t conceive that there would be an issue like that.

Art & Economics

Visconti: You have in your bio one long paragraph on the different not-for-profits that you have been leader of. One that stood out was Dance St. Louis.

Voss: I have two daughters. They competitively danced. People came and said, “We’re looking for a board member for this group called Dance St. Louis.” This was 15 years ago, long before I was a CEO. It always has something, some nationality thing—either Spanish or Brazilian or something—tied to it besides the traditional things that you would normally see. It’s been truly a community thing, something for everybody.

Visconti: You have been involved with the local St. Louis economic-developmental agency with this perspective of diversity. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Voss: About a year ago, I came on as the chairman of the Regional Chamber & Growth Association. Right after I came on, the executive director announced that he was going to retire.

This year’s been about looking for someone suitable to replace him, a national search. The search committee made sure that we had a first set of candidates to choose from.

The first set of candidates wasn’t diverse. It was just all white males. They interviewed, got down to five and said, “We like this group, but we want to see some non-traditional candidates—some female and minority candidates.”

We regrouped and got about a group of 10, and then they interviewed back down again. It’s been a process that’s ensured we get a diverse candidate pool.

Proactive Innovation

Visconti: Ameren’s mission is a secure energy future. How do you see diversity and inclusion fitting in with that?

Voss: “Secure” has a lot of different ways you can look at it. We think our job is not to just react to things but be proactive—like getting ahead of electric cars and getting ahead of energy conservation.

To figure out those things that require an innovative workforce, you need a diverse workforce that is operating at a very high level. Diversity plays such a key role in that. We really can’t afford to have people holding back good ideas or for good ideas to be dismissed.

Visconti: Can you give me some examples of where you’ve seen that in action within the company?

Voss: At amerensolar.com, you’ll see a very sophisticated analysis of various solar technologies. I didn’t come up with that idea. That was our people who figured out how to make that very attractive, easy to learn.

We just signed a contract with the local supplier, Peabody, with ultra-low sulfur coal that did not require us to install very sophisticated environmental controls for at least five years. It saves our customers 30 percent rate increases in the future.

Visconti: What do you see coming up in the future?

Voss: We have been a very traditional organization and done things the way they’ve always been done. With the challenging environment—rules, deregulation and everything that’s going on in the market now—we just can’t be our father’s utility company anymore. We have to be better.

We went through this exercise with our senior managers, asking how much time they were being proactive/reactive. They were spending about 80 percent of their time being reactive. I said, “Where do you think that should be?” They said “80 percent should be proactive.” We have to consciously set aside time to be thinking about how to make this business better.

A New Culture of Accountability

Visconti: You have a very robust diversity-management structure. You have a diversity council, resource groups, mentoring. Do you see that as being integral to this general movement of being more proactive, innovative?

Voss: We didn’t push our employees into doing things they didn’t want to do. We gave general diversity training and gradually introduced forums. They were pushing their management: “Get on board with this.”

I was surprised at how well our employees embraced this concept of diversity through the organization. We just had to feed it. Every year incrementally we keep making it a little better—keep ratcheting it up.

Our managers have done a good job of putting accountability in performance appraisals and putting in pools of applicants and hiring standards. I think we’re really getting it.

Visconti: We were talking about accountability for achieving representative results with your recruiting. I pointed to the vice president of human resources and said, “You can’t expect him to solve everything. You have to be responsible.” The heads of your divisions nodded together as if it had been rehearsed. How did you build that understanding?

Voss: Just a few years ago, we didn’t have enough minorities in our entry-level jobs and we were blaming our HR department. We said, “Why don’t we take accountability and get it fixed?”

What you’re seeing now is an organization that’s been really transformed from a cultural initiative. That’s really what’s held us back from being a truly great company. We’re fixing that now.

In 2006, we had a bunch of storms that came through: We had a deregulation in Illinois and near-bankruptcy issues there; we had the governor and attorney general fighting for one thing or another.

We were sitting back saying that none of this was our fault. We were in that situation until our culture was at rock bottom and we really didn’t know how to get out of it.

We got on to this idea to bring in this training to look at our culture of accountability, and it changed the way we do business. It fundamentally changed our company.

The diversity stuff started a few years before that. There were a few of us who were proponents for this. When we started working on our culture, there were a few of us who saw how this fit in and that if we embraced this, it would make us even better. The two just meshed together and got us in a good spot.

Once we accomplished it, we saw all these other things. Safety and diversity were so important that we embraced them, and we could do something about those.

We measure how we interact with our customers and have gotten dramatic improvement in those scores, both in the phone center and one-on-one contact in the field. We’ve been trying to tie this all together, not only improving the company’s bottom line but the way we serve our community.

There was hesitation and there were things like “Is this political correctness?” When they saw it starting to take off, we started seeing that the community was noticing what we were doing nationally and thought, “This is working. If I don’t get on board, I’m going to be left behind.” They started embracing it more and more.

When we opened our employee-resource groups, all of our senior leaders took responsibility of being a sponsor for one of those groups, seeing that this is going to help us be better.

Visconti: Sharon Harvey Davis is your chief diversity officer. Why did you put a strong woman like her in that position?

Voss: Sharon now works for me directly and she doesn’t make it easy at times. She pushes the organization sometimes into uncomfortable areas for a very conservative company. That’s what we need. That’s one of the contributors to making us successful in this area.

We’re looking for those leaders who are pushing us to say good enough isn’t going to do it. We’ve got to get to excellence in our operations, excellence in our culture.

We’re just getting started. We got a long way to go. The ultimate is that maybe we won’t need a diversity manager someday, that it’s just so much into our culture that it’s our way of doing business.

Visconti: Do you see it being integral to your ability to innovate?

Voss: Absolutely. You want people to feel free to express themselves, that it’s safe to throw out ideas. We’ve pretty much hit a culture where you’ve got to be 100 percent sure this is going to work before you said anything about it. That just stifles creativity, innovation and growth.

Visconti: You grew up in that culture and you evolved it. What inspired you to do that?

Voss: I just didn’t see it working long term. The world changed. It’s gotten so much more about communications. You could not operate the way we were. We had to turn around a fundamental culture, and that takes a while.

If you looked at our past performance, some of it leveled off and could have started going into decline if we hadn’t turned it around.

Getting Ahead With Succession Planning

Visconti: When you see the future of your diversity and inclusion efforts applied to the footprint of your generational community customers, is there something that you intend to help lead the region?

Voss: I’d like to see us put some more emphasis on talent development—getting higher graduation rates out of high schools and colleges. That’ll bring in employment because people know we have a highly educated workforce that’s ready to go.

The whole idea of supplier diversity, innovative minority-owned businesses and nurturing them along, helping them out—I think that only makes the whole area prosper more.

I lived here. I want to make this a better place for everyone. Diversity efforts are going to be key.

Visconti: You have an interesting succession: You have who’s going to be the next CEO.

Voss: If you look at our company history, I don’t think we’ve done succession planning very well. We’ve done “If somebody gets hit by a bus, who’s going to fill that spot?” That’s not what you want to do. What you want is leadership development, a plan where you look at the leaders of your company, figure out who key people are and start investing in them through special or rotational assignments. We didn’t do that before. Each group kind of had its own leaders who kind of kept them to themselves.

Now we’re sharing them. We’re sitting down every year and looking at all of our talent and saying, “We can put them anywhere in this company. Let’s start doing it.”

We just did an organizational change where we put one of our leaders of corporate planning into a field-operations job. The idea is that it’ll help further his development. He’ll bring great strategic planning to that organization.

When we have an opportunity, we’re going to look for our best talent and then help them develop.

Visconti: You’re factoring diversity into succession planning. How are you assessing that?

Voss: When you get down to this pool of candidates that you think are your high fliers, one thing you want to make sure of is that it’s a diverse group. And if it isn’t, then we’ve got to do something more dramatic to make sure it is.

Part of our values now is diversity. It is so well embraced by our employees. If someone was in that position who hadn’t embraced the work we’re doing, or isn’t belonging to one of these ERG groups, or isn’t sponsoring one of them, or isn’t doing anything in the community in this area, I think that would take him off the list.

For more on succession planning strategies, read “Increasing Diversity in Talent Development.”

Creating Experiences, Making Changes

Visconti: Can you give an example of lives that have been changed because of these experiences?

Voss: As our leadership team has gotten involved in these ERG groups, I can tell you a number of them have come to me and told me they see things a lot differently. Last year, my wife and I hosted a gala for Doorways, which helps people with AIDS. At the gala, there’s a large number of same-sex couples. Our company’s culture hasn’t been used to dealing with that. I encouraged a bunch of my vice presidents to come—strong encouragement. When they came, they enjoyed it. In fact, they told me it was a very warm experience.

I thoroughly admit that the upper management has not been overly diverse, although we do now have a woman president who runs one of our segments. I do believe that those people truly believe in the concepts of diversity and know that we have to continue to work on those areas.

I think Sharon did a great job of laying it incrementally, nudging us a little further each day and each year. We had people at one point in time taking a personal commitment at one of our leadership meetings to the concept of diversity as we did to safety.

She’s been very straightforward—never went overboard, though. She pushed at a pace that people could accept and just incrementally kept doing things. In the beginning, awards, celebrations and non-threatening things, and then she gradually moved into performance appraisals, training and setting goals and measures for us in promotions and hiring.

Visconti: How did you manage this so that the push-back from middle management didn’t overwhelm the effort?

Voss: We trained all employees from the bottom and actually got them engaged, then kept them engaged through our forums. They were pushing their management too. The very visible support that I had always given to it helped people as well.

They kept the thing under control so people couldn’t push back very hard because they knew that that was unacceptable to the way I was moving this organization. They knew if they did not want to be a part of it, I often told people, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person; it just that you don’t belong here.

Visconti: You do have some areas and some generating plants that are not very homogenous-looking. How did it work there?

Voss: We have rural linemen who are out in areas where all you do is hunt and fish and put up wire. There is this diversity of thought even among a group of same people.

Little towns, they have some of the biggest prejudices. They might not be Black and white but they might be this side and that side of town. You have to get those people saying, “It doesn’t matter. When we come to work, we’re going to do the best we can do.” There are always those prejudices. If you break them down, you’ll be a higher-performing group.

It all comes down to performance. It’s not just the right thing to do—it’s also good business. It’s really about making the company better.

Visconti: Going back to the website, the words are essential. To describe diversity and inclusion on the homepage sends a very clear message.

Voss: We feel that way. I thoroughly believe that. Our performance has improved the last couple years. We’ve performed financially better; operationally, we’re performing extremely well. It’s starting to show on the stock market. I think it’s on its way up, and I’m committed to it.

It isn’t just about doing it for diversity’s sake. This is all about making our business better. I think employees feel better with this effort going on. I think they’re proud of the company.

Many times, people have come up and told me that they are glad the company has this kind of attitude about diversity that is accepting people’s differences. You can’t do a lot about things that happen off the job, but we can make this a better atmosphere here.

The post How Ameren CEO Tom Voss Improves Workplace Diversity appeared first on DiversityInc.

Diversity management often needs a push from the top. How can senior executives be held responsible for results, and how can you get middle managers to buy in to diversity goals?

Billie Williamson, recently retired Americas inclusiveness officer at Ernst & Young (No. 6 in The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity), said CEO and Chairman Jim Turley truly exemplifies a commitment to diversity management. 

“He was on the bandwagon even before it was popular to be committed to diversity and inclusiveness. Jim has spent a lot of time listening. Instead of thinking he knows everything, he spends a lot of time talking with people all around the world,” Williamson told participants at the DiversityInc CEO Commitment networking lunch, held during a DiversityInc event in Washington, D.C.

The session allowed diversity leaders to share their best practices for diversity management and devise innovative strategies for more successful and sustainable diversity-management initiatives.

In this 1,383-word article, “CEO Commitment: Why Visibility & Accountability Matter,” readers will be able to gain valuable insight into several diversity-management best practices in relation to CEO commitment, including:

• Why CEO commitment needs to be visible and personal to be most effective
• How CEOs can hold direct reports accountable for measurable progress with diversity-management goals
• When CEOs must meet with senior management and ERG leaders to discuss diversity progress
• Why real listening/communicating skills are invaluable for diversity-management leaders

Diversity-management leaders and senior executives from Applied Materials, Caterpillar, Prudential Financial (No. 9 and the 2011 Top Company for Community Outreach), Kraft Foods (No. 7) and Kaiser Permanente (No. 3 and the 2011 Top Company for Executive Development) contributed to the conversation by sharing stories of how their own CEOs demonstrate their diversity commitment  and how leaders are held accountable.

“Jim goes to a lot of high-level client meetings, and we talk about diversity and inclusion,” said Williamson. “It’s a real privilege for us to get to be involved with our clients and talk with them about diversity and inclusiveness and share the things that we’ve done well.”

Read  ”CEO Commitment: Why Visibility & Accountability Matter” at DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

The post Diversity Management From the Top: Why CEO Commitment Matters appeared first on DiversityInc.

To show you what NOT to do, we offer three case studies of companies we’ve studied for more than a decade. All were early diversity leaders and had recurring spots on the DiversityInc Top 50 list. All have fallen off or down in the list in the last two years. They come from three very different industries, demonstrating that loss of initiative—or changing priorities—occurs everywhere. The names and revealing information about these companies have been disguised, but the lessons learned from their actions are quite apparent.

Case Study No. 1: Non-Technical, Consumer-Facing and Business-to-Business Company

The Situation: A decade ago, this large company was considered an early diversity leader, with its strong work/life benefits, high rates of hiring and promoting women, and frequent public verbiage about having an inclusive corporate culture. It was a mainstay on the DiversityInc Top 50, achieving a very high rank one year. The chief diversity officer, who came on right about that time, joined many diversity-related organizations and was a visible face of corporate diversity in the mainstream press. Although the CEO was not making personal statements about his commitment to diversity, he was holding senior leaders accountable for results and meeting with leaders of the employee-resource groups. Representation in the workforce and lower management was racially diverse, especially compared with the industry averages, but there remained a gap at the top levels of management.

What Happened: This company in recent years has fallen off the DiversityInc Top 50 as its representation of all groups, including women, has declined relative to the other companies participating and in its industry. The main reason for the decline: a change in CEO resulting in reduced efforts/accountability. This company, like many others, was hit hard by the economic turbulence in the last three years. The chief diversity officer, who did not speak of diversity in business terms, could not maintain diversity as a business imperative. The company has even removed the diversity section from its homepage.

Because the CDO did not track participation in employee-resource groups or have metrics for mentoring and supplier diversity, there was no way to assess what was working and what was not—and what ramifications it was having on the bottom line. The chief diversity officer did not have frequent access to the CEO or to his direct reports, reporting in two levels down to the head of HR. The CDO was viewed strictly as a staff person whose business advice was not considered.

The Results: As other companies innovated and added diversity-management practices (and the DiversityInc Top 50 changed to reflect the importance of these new practices), this company actually dropped best practices. The CEO no longer met with employee-resource groups or signed off on supplier-diversity goals. Alternative career tracks for employees with long-term family concerns weren’t offered. Management participation in formal, cross-cultural mentoring declined dramatically.

Those results were reflected in the company’s representation numbers, which showed an even more precipitous decline in racial and gender diversity at the top ranks as well as sharp gaps in retention when examined by race/ethnicity. While the company was downsizing, Blacks and Latinos were leaving at a rate triple that of whites.

The Solutions: This company’s corporate culture has been changing dramatically in the last three years because of downsizing, acquisitions and a refocus on core business vital to its survival. This is, therefore, the perfect time for a reassessment of the role of diversity and a new chief diversity officer, a senior line-of-business executive who would have significant credibility with the CEO and his direct reports. In the case of this company, whose corporate culture is being reformulated, an external CDO could be very effective, bringing fresh business-oriented perspectives to the table. Or a CDO from within the company who has been heading a business unit or has had major P-and-L responsibility would bring new credibility to the diversity efforts. CDOs from this background are becoming increasingly valued at DiversityInc Top 50 companies and usually are in three-year rotations, often leading to major promotions afterward.

This chief diversity officer also should report directly to the CEO. Consider this: Five years ago, only 15 percent of chief diversity officers reported directly to the CEO and almost all reported to the head of HR. Today, 30 percent report directly to the CEO and less than half report through to HR.

The most critical factor in this realignment is gaining the support of the CEO. Hard facts demonstrating how competitive organizations have succeeded in growing their consumer base, as well as their B-to-B client base through their diversity-management efforts, are essential. Everything presented to the CEO must be business focused and demonstrable with valid data showing the correlation between increases in diverse representation, employee engagement, productivity and innovation.

Case Study No. 2: Brand-Dependent Consumer-Facing Company

The Situation: A diversity leader for several years, and also a mainstay on the DiversityInc Top 50, has fallen sharply on our list.

What Happened: The company, which had linked 20 percent of senior executive compensation to diversity metrics, decided to eliminate any compensation pay related to diversity because its leaders believed progress would happen intrinsically. A new CEO decided not to continue monitoring or signing off on executive accountability. At the same time, the company eliminated mandatory diversity training for its workforce, determining it was no longer necessary. Its leaders used the phrase “Diversity is in our DNA.”

The Results: Representation percentages in the workforce, new hires and management of Blacks and Asians have fallen dramatically, at a time when competitors, especially in this industry, have seen significant increases. The company is committed to using its employee-resource groups as a means of reaching multicultural customers, but their participation numbers also are declining.

The Solutions: This company needs to take a hard look at its diversity council, made up of its senior executives, and needs to reinstitute and reinvigorate its method of holding executives accountable for diversity results. Recent DiversityInc research on diversity councils found the most effective councils are comprised of the CEO and executive committee, the chief diversity officer, and rotating spots for leaders of employee-resource groups. These councils set company-wide representation goals and directly link the bonuses of all senior executives on the councils to the company-wide results, as well as to the results within their own business units/areas of responsibility.

The DiversityInc Top 50 average percentage of executive compensation tied directly to diversity goals is 10 percent, but the range goes as high as 35 percent. This company should go back to at least the 20 percent compensation-to-diversity bonus it had two years ago and admit its experiment has been a failure. It’s clear that without metrics tied to compensation, numerical improvement won’t happen, just as sales goals would not be met without the commission/bonus incentive so vital to this company’s success.

Additionally, this company needs to recognize the value of mandatory diversity training for its entire workforce to increase cultural competence, which furthers employee engagement. The decline in participation in its employee-resource groups is synonymous with an increasing failure in its culture to engage ALL employees and to make them comfortable in an inclusive culture.

Case Study No. 3: Tech Company

What Happened: Also a long-time DiversityInc Top 50 mainstay, this company’s CEO determined that diversity was a goal that had already been accomplished and an enhanced effort wasn’t necessary, despite the presence of increased competition.

The Situation: This company’s lack of diverse representation at its senior levels didn’t have a major impact five years ago because the other companies faced a similar lack of diversity. But as other progressive companies instituted strong efforts to develop diversity rapidly in their succession planning, this company did not and felt it wasn’t necessary. The company also failed to keep pace with its competitors, which increasingly rely on employee-resource groups as both sources for talent development and to identify gaps in the corporate culture that need addressing.

The Results: Leadership at the top of the organization remains all white and 90 percent men, while other companies on the list have made significant inroads. The 2010 DiversityInc Top 50 average 14 percent Blacks, Latinos and Asians and 24 percent women at the top level—and those percentages increase each year and at a higher rate than companies not on the list.

This company has seen its percentage of employees participating in employee-resource groups cut in half (from 10 percent to 5 percent) while the DiversityInc Top 50 average has increased from 16 percent to 24 percent in the last year alone (and was 5 percent five years ago).

The Solutions: The lack of diversity at the top level—and at the succession-planning level right below the CEO’s direct reports—is sending a clear message to executives throughout the company that they need to go elsewhere if they want a top-tier job. That is creating a spiral effect that inhibits executive innovation to fix this.

It trickles down to all levels, evidenced by the participation in employee-resource groups and the difficulty this company has had finding leaders for its ERGs. Where its ERGs once were responsible for creating ad campaigns that resonated with the Black and Latino markets and directly increased revenue, today they are mostly used to create heritage festivals and attend college fairs.

The company needs to start a concerted internal campaign about the specific benefits of joining an ERG, including leadership-development training, career advancement through exposure to senior executives, and the ability to have your ideas on innovative business solutions heard. Personal videos on the intranet are a very effective way of reaching potential ERG members.

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