Companies that most effectively market diversity-related awards make the connection between the awards and talent development or customer populations:

PricewaterhouseCoopers, No. 1 in the DiversityInc Top 50, has an extensive awards page accessible through the About Us tab on its homepage. The page is divided into three sections that highlight awards related to the firm’s talent: Top Employer, Diversity/Inclusion and Women. Some of the awards featured prominently include:

• Ranking No. 1 on the DiversityInc Top 50 and ranking on five of DiversityInc’s other lists: No. 1 on Companies for Recruitment & Retention, No. 1 on Companies for Executive Women, No. 5 on Companies for Global Diversity, No. 6 on Companies for LGBT Employees and No. 8 on Companies for Asian Americans.
• Receiving a 100 percent rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index from 2006–2013.
• Receiving the 2012 NABA Corporate Partner of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Accountants, a key industry-related partner.

Kaiser Permanente, No. 3 in the DiversityInc Top 50, promotes its diversity awards in the News Center section of its website. For example:

–Debby Scheinholz, Vice President of Consulting, DiversistyInc

The post Ask DiversityInc: What Are Best Practices for Leveraging Diversity Awards & Lists? appeared first on DiversityInc.

CEO Commitment

Strategies include:

• CEOs personally holding executives accountable for diversity results (supplier diversity included)
• Meeting with resource groups
• Chairing the executive diversity council

Human Capital

We measure race/ethnicity and gender representation of the workforce and management in this section. Strategies include:

• Top levels contain a small number of people, so year-to-year improvements in representation are very beneficial.

Corporate Communications

Companies that rise in the DiversityInc Top 50 make the most year-to-year improvements in this section. Strategies include:

• Mentoring and resource-group participation are critical areas. Companies that rose in the ranking from one year ago averaged increases in mentoring and resource-group participation of 21 percent and 27 percent, respectively. Companies that dropped in the ranking saw average declines in mentoring and resource-group participation of 24 percent and 32 percent, respectively.
• The availability of mentoring and resource-groups company-wide, and having measurable goals and executive participation in each program.
• The percentage of total philanthropy allocated to multicultural groups is also important

Supplier Diversity

• Companies rank higher as procurement spend with Tier I and II women and minority-business enterprises increases.

–Shane Nelson, Director of Benchmarking, DiversityInc

The post Ask DiversityInc: What Makes a Company Rise in the DiversityInc Top 50? appeared first on DiversityInc.

DiversityInc has compiled a collection of best practices from religiously inclusive workplaces and data from the DiversityInc Top 50 to help your company navigate the cultural competence and legalities of religion in the workplace.

Ask DiversityInc: How Does Your Company Handle Religious Holidays?
When allowing employees to celebrate the holidays with tasteful decorations and celebrations, how do organizations make sure that those who don’t celebrate are not offended?

Best Practices on Religiously Inclusive Workplaces
Employers must provide “reasonable accommodations” for employees’ religious practices, per Title VII. But what exactly does that mean?

Religious Discrimination in the Workplace
A leading discrimination attorney provides advice on EEOC/Civil Rights laws and how to best mitigate religious discrimination at work.

Laws on Religion, Dress & the Workplace
What’s permissible and what’s not? We spell out the legal precedents for you.

Ask the White Guy: My Managers Are 95% White, Christian–Do I Have a Chance?
What can a person do if they’re in a company where the in-crowd goes to a certain church?

Ask DiversityInc: How Can Diversity Management Measure Religious Inclusion?
Can religion be represented/highlighted as a primary diversity metric in an overall assessment?

Ask the White Guy: What About Religious Expression?
How much religious expression in the workplace is acceptable? CEO Luke Visconti discusses the difference between proselytizing and religious expression.

Ask the White Guy: Are Traditional Christian Values Part of Diversity?
Does diversity management mean ignoring those who hold traditional Christian values?

The post Holidays at Work: Culturally Competent or Offensive? What You SHOULD Know appeared first on DiversityInc.

Q: How do o

A: Before we answer this question directly, we’d first like to address the issue of religion in the workplace. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits workplace discrimination based on religion, national origin, race, color or sex. Companies abide by this policy, but the more progressive ones create inclusive environments in which employees are encouraged to integrate their mandated religious practices into their day-to-day jobs. This helps companies build loyalty, raise morale and productivity, and reduce one of the hidden costs of ignoring religious diversity: absenteeism.

• Nine years ago, only 42 percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 had floating religious holidays, compared with 74 percent in 2011 and 78 percent in 2012. Sixty-six percent of all participants in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 survey had floating religious holidays. To put these statistics into perspective, a “Religion and Corporate Culture Survey Report” by the Society of Human Resource Management found that just 28 percent of 513 respondents offered paid leave for days that are not part of their regular holiday calendar.
• Seventy percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies have onsite religious accommodations, such as prayer rooms, compared with 32 percent eight years ago.
• Twenty-eight percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies have religion-based resource groups versus just 5 percent eight years ago.

For more information on religion in the workplace, visit DiversityIncBestPractices.com to read “Best Practices on Religiously Inclusive Workplaces.”

These statistics are important when it comes to handling holiday celebrations. Official holidays in the United States are predominantly Christian. This means that most of the holiday celebrations will be of Christian background. Celebrating other religions during this time can get tricky. Religious holidays should be good educational opportunities—we value differences instead of homogenizing them. So celebrating—and offering cultural-competence training—on religious holidays is critically important. Here are some suggestions to ensure your company’s holiday celebrations are inclusive of all religions and run smoothly.

Proactively Accommodate

Some issues are constants, such as wearing religious attire or the need for time off for observance. Other issues, such as celebrations, occur once or twice a year. Thinking through what policies will work for your organization and making sure all employees know which accommodations are available before they have to ask are critical.

Implement a Process & Clarify It

Employees are often uncomfortable asking for what they need. Implement a process for requesting celebrations and make it clear. Train managers to respond to requests appropriately and make sure everyone knows HR is a resource.

Get Help

If you have a religious resource group, utilize it to educate your employees about all religions. If you don’t have a religious resource group, go to the one place that is sure to have people from different religious backgrounds: your other resource groups. Bounce ideas/requests off of members and gain valuable insights.

At American Express, No. 14 in The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity, there are longstanding religious groups for Christians, Jews and Muslims. All three groups are encouraged to educate their colleagues about their culture and share their traditions. The groups host events around the holidays. While the company has no formal policy regarding office decorations, all employees are encouraged to express themselves in a manner that is respectful of those around them.

Surveys

Use surveys to gain critical feedback on implementing or expanding celebrations. Incorporate questions specific to religious celebrations in your diversity surveys. Gather, analyze and share responses with key stakeholders and constituencies.

The post Ask DiversityInc: How Does Your Company Handle Religious Holidays? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Q: I’ve been giving our current diversity advisory council some thought, and it prompted a question that I’d like to get your perspective on. Have you seen companies utilize their resource-group leaders as diversity advisory-council members?

A: As resource groups have matured, they have literally earned a place at the table. That table, increasingly, is the executive diversity council. [Watch our diversity web seminar on resource groups for insights on the growing importance of these groups.]

We’ve heard from a number of companies that they are creating rotational spots on their executive diversity councils for one to three resource-group leaders. These spots usually last two years (although we’ve seen one- to four-year terms), and in some cases, the resource-group leaders are not voting members of the councils. When executive compensation is directly tied to company-wide diversity goals set by the council, the resource-group leaders usually are excluded from that. For more on resource-group leadership and selection, read DiversityInc’s exclusive resource-group research.

Their purpose on the council is twofold; they give the council insights into the middle layers of the organization and specific insights from their own affinity groups, which are incredibly valuable in determining business-related strategies to reach more employees, customers, investors and suppliers from these groups. The council experience is also a major talent-development initiative for the resource-group leaders and exposes them to interactions with the senior-most executive in the company. Kathryn Collins, former vice president of associate recruitment and inclusion & diversity, jcpenney, explains more about resource-group structures in the video below.

We started asking the question of what percentage of The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity has resource-group rotational positions on their executive diversity councils in the 2011 survey. The answer was 34 percent. We expect to see that percentage increase this year. The percentage of CEOs of DiversityInc Top 50 companies who meet regularly with resource-group leaders (defined as specific small-group meetings, not speaking engagements to large audiences sponsored by resource groups) is 88 percent, twice what it was five years ago.

So you see specifically where the trend is and why. You can get more information on this from our diversity web seminar on diversity councils, featuring IBM and jcpenney, and our recent roundtable on diversity councils, featuring KPMG, American Express and Aetna.

For more on the benefits of resource groups, read How Kraft Increased Promotions of Women in Sales by 39%. In the roundtable, Kraft’s Vice President of Diversity Jim Norman explains how resource groups not only helped the company increase its retention of Black, Latino, Asian and women employees (as shown in the video below) but also promote more women into its management ranks.

The post What Your Resource Groups Are NOT Telling You appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question on diversity management: We’re looking to post employee polling questions on our diversity and inclusion website. Do you have tested questions that might be probing and relevant to our company?

Answer: Diversity-management questions on employee surveys are a key way to gain critical feedback on the impact of your company’s diversity initiatives. All of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies include questions specific to diversity in their employee surveys. These questions also serve to increase knowledge of engagement and awareness.

The DiversityInc Top 50 companies also use these questions to drive specific diversity-management results, such as increasing participation in mentoring and resource-group programs.

Take Sodexo, No. 2 in The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity. The company uses employee-engagement surveys to measure the effectiveness of its IMPACT cross-cultural mentoring program. Participants are polled twice throughout the one-year program—at the midway mark and at the end. Questions are designed around engagement, job satisfaction, performance and retention.

Results showed that the top three intangible benefits of the IMPACT mentoring program for mentees and mentors were increased communications, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. More than three-quarters of each group attested that the program increased their desire to stay with the company. Sodexo also uses results from the surveys to constantly refine its mentoring programs. For more about Sodexo’s mentoring program and results from its employee-engagement surveys,  read Mentoring Roundtable: How Mentoring Improves Retention, Engagement & Promotions. Also watch our mentoring web seminar.

For one DiversityInc Top 50 company, diversity surveys increase awareness of and participation in its resource groups. This company surveyed employees in its resource groups and those not in its resource groups. On a year-to-year basis, employee engagement increased considerably more for those in resource groups.

Start by creating specific questions to gauge the effectiveness of your diversity-management programs, such as mentoring, resource groups and diversity training. Asking questions around the importance of those programs to one’s career development is critical. For mentoring, you want to focus on the relationship between mentor and mentee and if the programs are easily accessible. Finally, look to gain perspective from employees on whether the mentoring or resource-group programs are effective in recruiting, advancing and retaining talent at the company.

Ask DiversityInc is a forum for companies to pose diversity-management questions to our expert team of benchmarking analysts. Our analysts base their responses on 12 years of data collected for The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity survey. If you have a question, please email us at askDiversityInc@DiversityInc.com. 

The post What Diversity-Management Questions Should Be on Employee Surveys? appeared first on DiversityInc.

By Shane Nelson

Q: What are the top drivers of employee engagement?

A: Employee engagement can be a barometer of how well diversity efforts have been implemented. In the workplace, high employee engagement leads to increased retention rates and higher productivity, which helps to drive down costs of replacing employees and lost productivity. In the marketplace, high employee engagement leads to better customer satisfaction. So how can organizations retain their talent and empower them in the marketplace? Here are three ways our data demonstrates that diversity helps increase employee engagement.

Senior-Management Accountability

The CEO and his/her direct reports serve as ambassadors for employee engagement. Engagement of senior management is often contagious, reverberating throughout the entire workforce. Our research shows that when the CEO and his/her direct reports are held accountable for diversity-management results, it sends the message that diversity is a business imperative. The benefits of accountability are twofold. The company benefits from increased employee engagement across the board, resulting in positive results such as an increase in the diversity of recruits or diversity of those promoted, or even increased diversity of senior management.

Sodexo is proof of these goals working. In the DiversityInc article Linking Executive Compensation to Diversity Goals,  the company notes that it links 25 percent of senior-executive pay to diversity goals and 10 percent to 15 percent for all bonus-eligible managers. The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 averages 12.2 percent, up from 11.5 percent in 2011. Encompassing the diversity goals are process metrics that impact behavior change and outcomes, such as being a mentor or executive sponsor of a resource group. There are representation goals, such as recruitment and promotions, that are based on the availability of women, Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans and American Indians for the area and the position. Dr. Rohini Anand, senior vice president and global chief diversity officer, cites Sodexo’s employee-engagement scores, which have gone up dramatically and have been driven by increased scores mostly from women, Blacks, Latinos and Asians.

Resource Groups

For the DiversityInc Top 50, resource groups  serve as a key measurement of employee engagement. Participation in resource groups gives employees many advantages in navigating their careers. Participation in resource groups promotes career growth by exposing employees to the right people and the right projects. Ninety-six percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies have senior executives leading resource groups. Participants have the opportunity to showcase their talents to senior executives and in many cases are exposed to a senior executive they might otherwise not have come in contact with, and vice versa. This kind of exposure creates bidirectional engagement.

Senior executives find that new talent and participants are recognized for bigger projects. A resource-group study by Sodexo found that the top two reasons its employees joined resource groups were networking and to enhance professional and personal development. An Aetna employee-engagement study found that while overall engagement of employees increased from year to year, those in resource groups had significantly higher engagement scores than those not in the groups. Measures of manager effectiveness and customer focus also showed the biggest difference between those in resource groups and those not in the groups.

It also helps when a resource group is specifically tasked with increasing engagement and promotions of Blacks, Latinos, Asians or women, such as Kraft Foods. The company started a resource group for women in sales, the Women’s Sales Council, with the objectives of increasing the percentage of women in key sales positions and elevating them in the company. The group convened annually with more than 80 women leaders. Kraft Foods reported increases in promotions of women in sales by 39 percent.

Mentoring

Our data shows that mentoring is a vital component in driving employee engagement.  Companies that excel in diversity management use their formal mentoring programs to identify and nurture high-potential employees. The mentoring programs are formal and cross-cultural, meaning the mentor is of a different race, gender and/or sexual orientation than the mentee. Seven years ago, 10 percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 had mentoring programs with cross-cultural components. Today, 96 percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies include cross-cultural components in their mentoring programs. This ensures that the programs are reaching all races and genders and increases cultural awareness of all, including those at the senior-most levels.

Data from the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 survey shows a positive correlation between having a formal mentoring program and senior-management representation.

For IBM, it starts with identifying talent early. Every year, current executives and those who go through a screening process across the enterprise globally who are identified as having potential for executive leadership go through the company’s Business and Technical Leadership Process (BTL). Candidates are assessed against a set of competencies, including the ability to manage cross-culturally and globally. Leaders are asked to evaluate their own competencies as a part of that exercise, and where they come up needing development, specific efforts and opportunities around both mentor and mentee occur.

Ron Glover, vice president, diversity and workforce policy, human resources, notes, “We want to be conscious that the cross-cultural ones are the ones that tend to evolve into sponsorship types of relationships, particularly if they are at the more senior levels of the organization. But it has to build up the pipeline all the way up from the entry level of the organization, particularly if that’s the path [to] move into senior roles.” Glover spoke at a  DiversityInc roundtable on talent development. Watch the video below.

The post How Do Resource Groups, Mentoring and Accountability Drive Engagement? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Second, we are also in the beginning stages of forming a generational/new professional/young professional affinity group. We’d like some best practices/research on what other companies are calling similar groups. Would you be able to provide us with some information?

A: Forty-four percent of DiversityInc Top 50 companies have generational resource groups. This number is up from 40 percent in 2009. No companies had generational-resource groups in 2005.

The approaches to generational groups vary, depending on the specific needs of your company. When we say varied, we mean some companies have one “generational group” that is focused on generational communications, talent development and planning for Generation Y to step into leadership roles. Some companies have a specific need for on-boarding and retention and may focus their group specifically on Generation X or Y. Some companies might have an aging workforce or concerns around retirement transition, eldercare or succession planning and may focus the group on boomers and beyond. Some companies have both. The most successful groups communicate across generations and don’t restrict membership to one group. For example, a Gen X group would be open to older members who want to learn more about Gen X.

Seventy-six percent of DiversityInc Top 50 companies have a resource group for people with disabilities. This number is up from 70 percent in 2009 and 48 percent in 2005.

Important to the disabilities groups—we have seen—is to have it be inclusive of “friends.” This may increase membership as employees who may have invisible disabilities and/or feel isolated or uncomfortable sharing might be more inclined to join. It is also always important, for every group, to have outside advocates. Advocates help bridge communication gaps and, to an extent, provide additional exposure or credibility.

Also relevant here is a mention of some of the more innovative groups found in the DiversityInc Top 50, including groups for telecommuters, parents, military and caregivers. Caregivers groups and disabilities groups often have overlap and sharing of information. Veterans groups and disabilities groups also have overlap.

The post Ask DiversityInc: How Can We Start Resource Groups Based on Generations, Disabilities? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Q: We are exploring creating a two-tier model of affinity groups—one tier that contains the traditional demographic-based groups (e.g., women’s group, Hispanic group) and another tier that is more based on a specific cause or interest (e.g., the environment group or the employees-with-pets group). Are you aware of any other DiversityInc Top 50 companies that have this multi-tier model for affinity groups? 

A: Several DiversityInc Top 50 companies have alternative or nontraditional resource groups. These groups are becoming increasingly prevalent as companies evolve, but these groups also form out of both interest and legitimate business need. Watch our web seminar on resource groups for innovative types of resource groups.

First evolution. All of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies have resource groups for Blacks, Latinos, Asians and women. This is up from 76 percent five years ago and 34 percent 10 years ago. These groups evolved from social networks, primarily for Blacks and women, to business-oriented groups inclusive of everyone. These groups are currently used for recruiting, on-boarding, identifying talent, talent development, mentoring and diversity-training initiatives as well as market research and building customer and client relationships.

The DiversityInc Top 50 companies also track and promote the successes of these groups. The most effective companies track retention, promotions and engagement levels of members of resource groups versus non-members. Read New Resource-Group Research: Hourly Workers, Finding Leaders, Counting Membership for our detailed research on these cutting-edge best practices.

Second evolution. Increasingly, companies are moving beyond “affinity” and are creating groups around common interest, topic or specific business need—such as Novartis Corporation’s use of cultural resource groups to conduct in-house market research (watch the video above). Here, you see groups forming around generations, religion or veteran status. Of increasing importance are global groups, which did not exist in 2005 but have grown to 60 percent of DiversityInc Top 50 companies today. This rapid growth is likely caused by the changing landscape of business, along with necessity, interest and technology making the world a smaller place. 

Finally, innovation. Most recently, companies have been really pushing the envelope and launching groups to reach either very specific employee populations—such as teleworkers, caregivers or parental groups—or very specific business needs. McGraw-Hill shared how it is driving employee engagement through its Digital Employee-Resource Group at DiversityInc’s first Innovation Fest! 

Clubs aimed at groups such as pet owners or ski teams, however, should not be resource groups because they do not fit the criteria: a targeted and underrepresented group that can be used to further internal and external business goals. 

Groups should have specific and clearly stated vision and/or mission statements, detailed objectives and prioritized action plans. And they must be open to everyone, whether or not that person fits the actual demographic.

The post Ask DiversityInc: Should You Use Multi-Tier Resource Groups? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Q. I read your story about Secretary Clinton pushing for global LGBT rights [www.DiversityInc.com/secretary-clinton]. In your story, you stated: “In the United States, several corporations on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list have led the way in establishing domestic-partner benefits and advocating for same-sex marriage and the end of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.” My question is: How can corporations actually support same-sex marriage?

A. Corporate advocacy of civil rights has a long history in the United States. As recently as 2003, more than 20 corporations filed briefs supporting the use of affirmative action as a factor in college admissions in the Grutter v. Bollinger University of Michigan case before the Supreme Court.

In the civil-rights battle for marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples, several companies have taken activist roles. Most notably:

*Eli Lilly and Company, Cummins and WellPoint, Nos. 29, 18 and 34, respectively, on The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list, have actively battled the Defense of Marriage Act in Indiana, where all three are headquartered. In a 2007 letter opposing the legislation, Eli Lilly’s senior vice president of human resources, Dr. Tony Murphy, wrote: “Given the great lengths Lilly takes to attract and retain top talent from around the world, we oppose any legislation that might impair our ability to offer competitive employee benefits or negatively impact our recruitment and retention. Beyond this, we are concerned that the proposed legislation sends an unwelcoming signal to current and future employees by making Indiana appear intolerant. As a result, we believe this amendment works against Indiana’s stated desire to broaden its appeal to attract new businesses to the state.” Read our coverage on DOMA in Ruling Against Defense of Marriage Act Is Major Diversity Victory.

*Several California-based companies publicly worked against Proposition 8, the amendment that was approved in November 2008 to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in that state. Proposition 8 recently was overturned and is being appealed in the U.S. Supreme Court. Among the companies opposing it were PG&E, No. 1 on The 2012 DiversityInc Top 5 Regional Utilities list, and Levi Strauss. Read our coverage on Proposition 8 in Gay-Marriage Ban Struck Down: Why Your Company Should Care.

Nancy McFadden, PG&E senior vice president of public affairs, made this statement in July 2008 about Proposition 8, according to the Human Rights Campaign: “We are proud to join NO on 8 and Equality California to protect the freedom to marry for all Californians. For years, PG&E has advocated for equality and fairness in the workplace, and across California. In that same spirit, PG&E is honored to be a founding member of the Equality Business Advisory Council and urge our business colleagues to join us as we work to guarantee the same rights and freedoms for every Californian.”

And just this year, several New York–based companies publicly supported the decision to allow same-sex marriage in that state. These companies included McGraw-Hill and Xerox, as well as former Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons, according to the Empire State Pride Agenda.

Progressive companies stand up publicly for their values, even when there’s risk of negative repercussions. 

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