In Why You Need Global Resource Groups, four companies’ diversity leaders reveal the measurable results they’ve seen and why this diversity-management initiative now is crucial to achieving sustainable growth.  

 The panel, moderated by DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti, was featured at our spring 2012 event: Eugene Kelly, worldwide director, Global Diversity and Inclusion, Colgate-Palmolive (No. 10 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50); Jennifer Christie, chief diversity officer and vice president, Executive Recruitment, American Express (No. 14); Sarah Siegel, human resources, social learning developer, Center for Advanced Learning, IBM (No. 17); and Lisa Mink, executive director, Global Diversity and Inclusion, Dell (No. 26). 

Two of the companies featured, American Express and Dell, were last year’s and this year’s recipients of DiversityInc’s special award as the Top Company for Resource Groups. IBM, which last year received DiversityInc’s special award as the Top Company for Global Cultural Competence, is the leading company globally in pioneering LGBT resource groups. 

Read Why You Need Global Resource Groups on DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

The panelists analyzed how global resource groups provide several benefits: 

• Corporate Values But Local Control: The groups provide insight into local culture for improved inclusion at regional offices and improved adherence to local values—for example, respecting laws that oppose “out” behaviors by LGBT people, as Siegel recounts in the full article. 

• Getting Global Groups to Communicate and Share Ideas, Challenges: Global resource groups allow employees the ability to discuss priorities and implementation electronically and plan regular virtual meetings for optimal communication. 

• Work With Other Companies in Region to Share Ideas: The ability to form intercompany networks and gain insights from benchmarking against external factors provides a business advantage.

Additionally, the panelists noted that their companies have leveraged global resource groups to expose local resource-group leaders to senior management; define goals for the groups; encourage employee participation; and increase innovation. These items are further detailed in the full article, accessible by logging into your DiversityIncBestPractices.com account. 

Kelly cites Colgate-Palmolive’s Global Innovation Fund, presented at our February Innovation Fest!, to allow the company to compete effectively in a global market. He gives an example of a recent meeting with the head of the Asian resource group, who was reporting out to a global division president who wanted to know how a product was impacting the Asian dentists in the United States. “They’re going to come back with insights, but they’re also going to have recommended solutions,” he says. 

Read Why You Need Global Resource Groups on DiversityIncBestPractices.com. 

For more on global diversity, read our research: Why Is Global Diversity So Difficult?

The post Are Global Resource Groups Worth Your Investment? 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.

There will be 10 corporate speakers in a one-day, information-dense program designed to give you ideas and action items to take home. No consultants, no sales pitches, no nonsense. We’ve vetted the ideas and speakers. Our full syllabus is below.

The presenting companies are: Colgate-Palmolive, Kaiser Permanente, Kraft Foods, Toyota, Sodexo, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, AT&T, McGraw-Hill, WellPoint and Capital One.

Innovation Fest! is sponsored by AT&T, CVS Caremark and Sodexo.

Click here to pay only $349, which includes a nice lunch with innovation-focused speaking guest James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds.”

All presentations will be available online after the event.                                           

Best regards,

Luke Visconti
Chief Executive Officer
DiversityInc

Innovation Fest Syllabus

8:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast, Networking Session

10:00 a.m.–10:05 a.m. Introductory Remarks
Luke Visconti, CEO, DiversityInc

10:05 a.m.–10:30 a.m. Innovation: Colgate-Palmolive, Global Innovation Fund
Eugene Kelly, Worldwide Director, Global Diversity & Inclusion

10:30 a.m.–11:00 a.m. Innovation: Kaiser Permanente, Diversity & Health Film Series and Foreign-Language Interpreters
Tina Martelon, Senior Diversity Consultant, and Marcella Kutek, Diversity & Inclusion Manager

11:00 a.m.–11:30 a.m. Innovation: Kraft Foods, JumpStart, Developmental Training for New Employees
Jim Norman, Vice President, Talent Acquisition, Diversity & Inclusion

11:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Innovation: Toyota, “ICARE” Associate Volunteer Program & Putting Workers With Disabilities on the Line
Elena Sacca Smith, Community Relations Manager, and Jae Requiro, Internal Diversity and Inclusion Process Manager, Corporate Social Responsibility, Toyota Financial Services, and Toyota Motor North America (TBD)

12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m. Lunch
With speaker James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds”

1:00 p.m.–1:30 p.m. Innovation: Sodexo, Diversity Business & Leadership Summit
Texanna Reeves, Vice President of Corporate Diversity, and Betsy Silva, Senior Director of Diversity Learning, Consulting & Networking Groups

1:30 p.m.–2:00 p.m. Innovation: Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Ethnic ERGs and Marketing
Kellie Molin-Kenol, Director, Diversity & Inclusion

2:00 p.m.–2:30 p.m. Innovation: Supplier Diversity, AT&T, Power Up Training for Suppliers
Marianne Strobel, Executive Director, AT&T Global Supplier Diversity

2:30 p.m.–3:00 p.m. Innovation: McGraw-Hill, Digital Employee-Resource Group
Terri Austin, Chief Diversity Officer

3:00 p.m.–3:30 p.m. Innovation: WellPoint, Empire BlueCross BlueShield Community Ambassador Program
Linda Jimenez, Chief Diversity Officer, Vice President, Diversity & Inclusion

3:30 p.m.–3:50 p.m. Innovation: Capital One, Barriers to Greatness
Rob Keeling, Vice President, Diversity & HR Communications, and Donna Schaar, Project Manager, Diversity Lead

3:50 p.m.–4:00 p.m. Closing Remarks
Luke Visconti

Click here to buy a ticket.

The post DiversityInc Innovation Fest! appeared first on DiversityInc.

Combining an active career in revenue-generating positions and managing a family can be a challenge for women employees. An employer that enables them to achieve work and home success will garner loyalty and increased performance in return. 

In this 1,353-word article, Successful Career Paths for Women in Corporate Sales, seven companies from The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity provide insight into their key best practices to attract and retain women in corporate sales, as well as their significant results. 

These companies—PricewaterhouseCoopers, No. 3; AT&T, No. 4; Ernst & Young, No. 5; Kraft Foods, No. 9; Colgate-Palmolive, No. 10; American Express, No. 13; and Procter & Gamble, No. 25—understand that these positions are usually the way into the top level (CEO and direct reports) and want to make sure women are not excluded. 

Readers will take away: 

• The types of flexible work options women employees want and need
• Why a majority of these companies offer relocation and spousal support
• What research shows about the benefits of cross-cultural mentoring
• How to use employee-resource groups creatively to increase promotions of women
• Why a focus on training and education benefits all employees 

As Kraft Foods’ Valerie Oswalt, customer vice president of business development for Sales & Customer Logistics and the mother of two children, says: “A lot of women feel they can’t have everything—certainly not at the same time. Women don’t have to give up on their dreams. They may not get there as fast, but they will deliver the results.”

 Read Successful Career Paths for Women in Corporate Sales at DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

The post How to Get More Women in Sales appeared first on DiversityInc.

Diversity and inclusion research shows that understanding local cultures is key to creating inclusive workforces globally. But how can companies actually do it? Global diversity is an increasingly complex issue: Organizations must sustain their corporate values, often U.S.-based for multinationals, while respecting local cultural nuances. DiversityInc addressed this issue at our event in Washington, D.C.

DiversityInc Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Barbara Frankel presented initial findings from the DiversityInc Global Diversity survey of 17 countries, which surveyed more than 100 companies in 17 countries (in Europe, Asia and BRIC countries) on global diversity-management challenges and best practices.

Read the complete 1,008-word article Best Practices to Overcome Global Diversity Challenges, with full-length session videos, on DiversityIncBestPractices.com for more detail on how to implement these best practices at your organization.

Key findings include:

• Efforts to value and measure difference, including gender, are challenges in most countries and are illegal in some European countries. Differences are not valued across the board
• Disability recruitments are increasingly government-mandated in some countries (France, China, Brazil)
• Corporate LGBT efforts are rare globally, except for IBM
• Supplier-diversity efforts are minimal outside of the United States, even for gender

Leaders from five of The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity also provided case studies during the two-day event’s sessions. Attendees heard from Ron Glover, vice president of diversity and workforce policy, human resources, IBM (No. 17 in the DiversityInc Top 50) and a panel of global-management experts: Billie Williamson, partner, Americas inclusiveness officer (retired), Ernst & Young (No. 6); Sharon Wright, vice president, human resources, international division, Prudential (No. 9); Hitomi Fukasawa, human resources and general affairs, Dryden Customer Center, Prudential (Japan); Deborah Dagit, vice president and chief diversity officer, Merck & Co. (No. 16); and Eugene Kelly, worldwide director, global diversity and inclusion, Colgate-Palmolive (No. 10).

They discussed the strategies needed to successfully leverage cultural differences among employees and the markets they serve, and how to increase business from a talent and performance standpoint. Their best practices include:

1. Align diversity goals with core business values
2. Communicate those diversity-infused business goals to local regions
3. Be consistent across all regions and management levels
4. Hold leaders accountable for diversity goals

Read the complete 1,008-word article Best Practices to Overcome Global Diversity Challenges, with full-length session videos, on DiversityIncBestPractices.com for more detail on how to implement these best practices at your organization.

The post 4 Diversity & Inclusion Strategies to Overcome Global Diversity Challenges appeared first on DiversityInc.

Listen to how engaging employees through innovation created success for Colgate-Palmolive, from developing a special toothpaste product that thrives in Asia to expanding its women’s network.

For more innovations in diversity management, attend our next Innovation Fest! event on February 5.

The post Innovation Takes Engagement to a Global Level appeared first on DiversityInc.