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.

Diversity and inclusion awareness—and the use of mindfully chosen words—holds the antidote to dissolving stereotypes and slurs.

Former NBA player John Amaechi discovered the power of words when he first was called the N-word—a kid with a mullet yelled it out of a passing clunker car as a college-aged Amaechi walked across campus.

It was an incredible shock for the emerging basketball talent, and it caused feelings of incredible doubt. “I felt that they were looking at me and they didn’t just see someone bouncing a ball—they saw something more than that,” Amaechi told attendees as they listened with fascination at DiversityInc’s Special Awards dinner in Washington, D.C. “This is part of the power of this type of speech.” Watch the full-length video or a video clip below.

He linked this painful memory to when Kobe Bryant used an epithet about gay people on camera this past April—a particularly personal moment for Amaechi as the first pro-basketball player to publicly come out as being gay. “We have to be very careful with hate words because when powerful people say them, there is despair.”

Despite negative slurs, Amaechi, a psychologist, would rather focus on the positivity of words and their ability to be antidotes to hateful speech. This, he says, is the greatest driver for diversity and inclusion at organizations. For more on stereotypes, read ‘Blacks Should Not Be Satisfied With Food Stamps’: The Danger of Stereotypes and Jeremy Lin & Racism: 3 Ways to Stop Dangerous Stereotypes.

His mother, a doctor in the United Kingdom, taught him that words can be used for good. He jokingly says how she was like a Star Wars Jedi when it came to words, such as making him clean his room. Laughing aside, Amaechi believes a certain psychology lies at the heart of diversity and inclusion, and gaining an education in words can bring people a sense of unity and hope.

“It’s amazing how many different ways you can call someone [the N-word] without actually saying the word,” he said, “so we have to be more sophisticated, too.” That sophistication can be manifested every day among employees.

“In a world where diversity [and inclusion] is important, sometimes people wonder about all the initiatives you can do for diversity, but what you can really do is teach people to really be there when they are talking,” says Amaechi. This becomes the opportunity for an understanding that goes beyond stereotypes.

For more on stereotypes, read Challenges in Diversity Management: How Do Stereotypes Affect Us? 

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From left: John Veihmeyer, Susan Story, John Strangfeld, Carolynn Johnson, Michael Ward, Luke Visconti, Edward Hurley-Wales, Barbara Frankel, Chuck Columbus, Rod Adkins

DiversityInc recognized the unique achievements of eight companies at our Nov. 9–10, 2011, event in Washington, D.C. CEOs and senior executives of these companies explained why developing excellence in these areas is critical to their business goals and how and why they have personally been deeply involved in their diversity-management success.

The areas we honored—Community Development, Talent Pipeline, Executive Development, Global Cultural Competence, Working Families, Employee-Resource Groups and (two winners) Diversity-Management Progress—were chosen because they have a significant impact on corporate success and sustainability and because excellence can be demonstrated through measurable results. These companies are overall diversity leaders, as demonstrated by their positions on The 2011 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity and 25 Noteworthy Companies lists, but in each of these cases, they have also shown extraordinary achievements. 

The winners are listed below. Click the links for more information on each company, why it won and the video of its leader’s acceptance speech:

TOP COMPANY FOR EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT: Kaiser Permanente

TOP COMPANY FOR GLOBAL CULTURAL COMPETENCE: IBM

TOP COMPANY FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: Prudential Financial

TOP COMPANY FOR WORKING FAMILIES: ADP (Automatic Data Processing)

TOP COMPANY FOR TALENT PIPELINE: KPMG

TOP COMPANY FOR EMPLOYEE-RESOURCE GROUPS: American Express

TOP COMPANY FOR DIVERSITY-MANAGEMENT PROGRESS: Southern Company

TOP COMPANY FOR DIVERSITY-MANAGEMENT PROGRESS: CSX

The post Our 8 Top Companies for Diversity Excellence appeared first on DiversityInc.