DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti recently interviewed Thomas F. Zenty III, CEO of the Cleveland-based hospital system. (University Hospitals is one of the 2012 DiversityInc Top 5 Hospital Systems.) Zenty discussed the dramatic impact of the Affordable Care Act and how the hospital’s diversity efforts in the workplace and the community are helping it survive. Read this article and other CEO interviews in our digital issue, and sign up for DiversityInc magazine.

Zenty spoke on this topic at DiversityInc’s event last month, Diversity-Management Best Practices From the Best of the Best. Click here for video of his talk.

Luke Visconti: What is the intersection of solid diversity-management initiatives and the reduction of healthcare disparities?

Thomas F. Zenty III: Many studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between people of diverse backgrounds being willing to seek care and knowing that people who look like them will actually be providing that care. So the intersection between diversity and disparities is rather significant. We want to make certain that we’re doing everything that we can to make sure that people of color will be able to work in our organization, hold positions of leadership—caregivers, clinicians and support staff—in order to make people of all backgrounds, colors and faiths feel comfortable coming to University Hospitals to receive the world-class care that we provide.

Visconti: How is diversity and inclusion a competitive differentiator for a hospital?

Zenty: There is no better way to gain the pulse of what’s happening in the communities that we serve than by having people who live and work in those communities actively engaged with us at every level. From an employee perspective, it’s critically important that we have people of diverse backgrounds who will bring skills, talents, perspective in order to help us to do a better job as we look to achieve our mission. We think it’s critically important for diversity to be well represented across our entire health system at every level, be it gender, religion, race, color. In fact, we’ve recently reached out to the Amish community because one of our hospitals has a very large Amish population, and we realized that we did not have a member of our board who was of Amish descent. As a result, we added a new Amish board member to our hospital, and he’s brought a lot in terms of a better understanding of the Amish community and the healthcare needs of that community.

The point is we need to look into the community to better understand who are the communities that we serve? Who best represents those individuals within those communities that we serve? And how can we engage them at every level, either as employees, as members of the board, as leadership-council members? And we want to make sure that we’re engaging everyone in the communities that we serve.

Visconti: You’re very personally involved in the community. Why?

Zenty: It’s critically important for an organization of our size in a community of this size, as the second-largest private employer in Northeast Ohio, to make certain that we’re going to be focused on diversity at every level within the communities that we serve. Our organizational values include excellence, diversity, integrity, compassion and teamwork. And diversity is one of the key components of the cornerstones of the work that we do every day in taking care of our patients and meeting our mission. As the leader of this organization, it’s critically important for us to be actively engaged in community activities to make certain that we’re not only aware of what’s happening in the community, but play a leadership role in advocating on behalf of many different agenda items. One of the key ones, though, is in the area of diversity in Northeast Ohio.

Visconti: University Hospitals has a 100 on the Corporate Equality Index, the Human Rights Campaign’s index of equality for LGBT people. Why is that important to you?

Zenty: The LGBT community is very important to us for all the other reasons that I stated in all the other populations that we serve. They’re very much a part of our community. We want to make certain that they’re recognized and represented. They have actually recognized us for our work in this regard, which we’re very pleased about.

Visconti: Your chief diversity officer reports directly to you. You also have hands-on interaction with people who are responsible for delivering results in diversity management. How important are these two things?

Zenty: It’s critically important that the chief diversity officer reports to the chief executive officer. Donnie Perkins is our chief diversity officer and does an excellent job in the role. However, it’s also important to note that we have a very close working relationship with Elliott Kellman, who is our chief human resources officer, because so much of what we do in workforce planning and workforce development is structured around the importance of diversity at every level in our organization.

In our organization, we selected the top 24 people from within our health system to be part of an education-and-training program in conjunction with Case Western Reserve School of Business. We’ve engaged 13 physicians and 11 non-physicians who were at senior levels in our organization who we feel have the potential to grow and develop in the years to come within University Hospitals’ health system. They were selected on the basis of their accomplishment. They were selected on the basis of diversity. They were selected on the basis of their ability to grow and develop within our organization. It’s an 18-month program, but we’ve seen great success thus far. One of those individuals has already been promoted to a new senior position that was recently created in our organization.

But at the other end of the spectrum, we’re also concerned that we don’t have enough people of color in our management ranks. So we put together a mentorship program, which will include people at the senior administrative level who will choose people who have promotional capability within our organization, who will be working with each of us to make sure that they will be given the opportunity to grow and develop within our organization in both non-management as well as in management roles, so that we can encourage more people of color to get actively engaged as supervisors, managers, directors, vice presidents.

Visconti: How are you holding your senior team accountable for diversity-and-inclusion results?

Zenty: Our senior team is very actively engaged with Donnie’s leadership in making certain that we are focused on diversity at every level within our organization, looking at the healthcare needs of the people who we serve, making certain that our employees are given equal opportunity for promotion and growth within our health system, making certain that people who are in middle management have opportunities to grow into senior-management roles, and making certain that we are focused on doing everything that we can to prepare the next generation of leader who will be people of color and of diverse backgrounds. Likewise, it’s important to mention that our board has been focused on diversity over the past many years. And I’m pleased to report that the Council on Economic Inclusion has awarded us for two years in a row recognition for the diversity of our board. If we receive it a third year in a row, we’ll go into the Hall of Fame, and we’re hoping that that will be achieved. This actually starts at the top, beginning with our board, and then filters throughout our entire organization.

Visconti: What do you see as the greatest challenge facing University Hospitals? And how does diversity and inclusion factor into the solution?

Zenty: The greatest challenge will be how to address the changes that we’ll be facing under healthcare reform. One of the key things that we will focus on in the area of diversity is to make certain that the 32 million more Americans who will now have access to healthcare insurance that didn’t have it before, that they will be well represented both within the communities that we serve as well as well represented in the patient populations that we care for. We have a number of very strong specialty clinics that will focus on the needs of specific elements within our population. But we want to make certain that as we see this influx of new patients arriving, we clearly understand what their needs will be—which is more than just episodic acute-care needs, but the continuum of care of services that we’ll be able to provide to them in the years to come.

Visconti: I found University Hospitals’ website to be exemplary in its ability to communicate your mission, your values, how diversity ties into all of this, your corporate citizenship, your engagement with the community. Why is it so important to communicate this?

Zenty: University Hospitals really wants to be a leader in the area of diversity. We’ve been in existence since 1866. We’ve been a very active and vibrant part of this community for that same period of time. And we want to make certain that we’re going to be leaders in the area of diversity—to set the example, to set the tone toward diligently making great things happen in the world of diversity, and to make certain that we’re going to focus not only on the needs of our patients, but also on the needs of those within our organization, to make certain that everyone will be able to realize their fullest potential.

The post Interview With University Hospitals CEO Tom Zenty: Diversity Leader, Innovator, Community Citizen appeared first on DiversityInc.

We honoring companies in six areas we have noted in the past three years—Community Development, Talent Pipeline, Working Families, Global Cultural Competence, Resource Groups and Diversity-Management Progress—plus one new area: Supplier Diversity. View previous DiversityInc Special Award winners.

These companies demonstrate through their data and their documented achievements measurable results that positively impact both their business goals and their employee/community populations.

Additionally, Dr. Cornel West spoke at the Special Awards dinner. Dr. West is the author of Race Matters and Democracy Matters and is a professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Global Cultural Competence

Ernst & Young
No. 6 on the DiversityInc Top 50 list
Accepting Award: Steve Howe Jr., Area Managing Partner – Americas

As a truly global company, Ernst & Young understands how crucial the understanding and respect of local cultures is, while staying true to the values of inclusion so core to this company. Cultural-competence and harassment/discrimination training are emphasized throughout the organization, as is talent identification and development for underrepresented groups, particularly women globally.

James Turley, chairman and CEO, told DiversityInc last year that it’s best to tailor a company’s initiatives by geography so diversity strategies remain central to local customs and beliefs. Once established, diversity leaders can then look to incrementally push the boundaries.

Ernst & Young has global resource groups for professional women, LGBT employees and Black professionals in several countries. The groups have executive sponsors and meet during the workday.

Ernst & Young is a founding member of WEConnect International, a corporate-led nonprofit that helps to empower women business owners to succeed in global markets. The firm is working with WEConnect on development of a national certification process for women-owned businesses in India, while its employees in Canada and the United Kingdom are actively involved with WEConnect.

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Community Development

Wells Fargo
No. 33 on the DiversityInc Top 50 list 
Accepted Award: Michelle Lee, Executive Vice President, Northeast Regional President

“Wells Fargo is only as strong as the communities we serve,” the financial-services company states. The company’s commitment to the Black, Latino, Asian, American Indian and LGBT communities is remarkable for the depth of its efforts to reach suppliers, youth and low-income people. Sixty-five percent of the executives in the top two levels of the company sit on the board of a multicultural nonprofit. Some examples of its philanthropy:

• In 2008, Wells Fargo achieved its goal to lend $1 billion to Black-owned small businesses and extended the goal to $2 billion by 2018.
• In 2010, Wells Fargo provided $61.1 million in grants to nonprofits focused on community development in distressed communities, including affordable housing, homeownership counseling, financial education, workforce development and job creation.
• The company has an online financial-literacy program in English and Spanish and teams with local Latino organizations to host free, bilingual programs on money management.
• Wells Fargo is a founding sponsor of the Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund. Since 2004, the bank has given $500,000 for scholarships for college-bound students from underrepresented Asian and Pacific Islander communities interested in pursuing careers in banking and financial services.
• In 2010, Wells Fargo invested $219 million in 19,000 nonprofits nationwide.

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Working Families

Eli Lilly and Company
No. 29 on the DiversityInc Top 50 list
Accepted Award: John Lechleiter, Chairman, President & CEO

This company has become a model of workplace flexibility for its employees. As Lechleiter stated: “Lilly recognizes the critical importance of work-life integration tools to address the diverse needs, expectations, lifestyles and work styles of employees allowing them to be the most effective.” Globally, Lilly offers a number of programs, varying by location, to assist employees in maintaining work/life flexibility. These include flexible work arrangements, personal leaves, onsite health services/fitness centers, onsite childcare, campus credit unions and dry cleaners, and family-support programs.

Flexibility is a productivity tool that allows for adaptation of how, when and where work is completed. Supervisors discuss with their employees the needs of the individual and the work group, as well as the types of flexible work arrangements that are appropriate for a particular position. For employees, flexible work schedules are about lower stress levels, better health, a stronger focus on work while working and greater trust—all leading to loyalty, inspiration and innovation. For Lilly, flexibility is about being able to recruit and retain the best talent in a competitive marketplace, preparing for the changing environment and reducing the cost structure related to absenteeism, and healthcare—all leading to improved levels of engagement, which drives productivity.

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Diversity-Management Progress

Kellogg Company
No. 49 on the DiversityInc Top 50 list
Accepted Award: John Bryant, President & CEO

Kellogg’s progress in all four areas we measure in diversity management has been considerable in the past year and shows every indication of sustainable forward motion. This progress put Kellogg on the DiversityInc Top 50 list this year, in the highly competitive consumer-packaged-goods industry.

The effort starts at the top. President and CEO John Bryant chairs the Executive Diversity & Inclusion Council and has instituted the first linking of diversity-management goals, both quantitative and qualitative, to executive compensation. The council reviews on a quarterly basis the company’s hiring, promotion and turnover activity reports and addresses trends with recommendations and actions.

Bryant and four of his direct reports serve as the executive sponsors of Kellogg’s six resource groups. The company’s resource groups are available to all U.S. employees and are utilized for recruitment, mentoring, talent development, retention, diversity training, marketing and community outreach.

The company’s supplier-diversity program, in existence for more than two decades, has experienced an almost six-fold increase in spending in the last 10 years and now supports more than 200 vendors owned by Blacks, Latinos, Asians, American Indians, women and veterans with disabilities. The company recently added businesses owned by LGBT people to its supplier database and will begin tracking them this year.

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Talent Pipeline

Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
No. 13 on the DiversityInc Top 50 list
Accepted Award: Andre Wyss, President 

Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation understands the need for a diverse workforce and pipeline to senior management, both for cultural competency in its product development and marketing and for the most innovative workplace solutions. The company has been actively donating and volunteering to help youth from underrepresented groups reach their full potential, including direct involvement from its most senior leaders. A few examples:

• Each fall, areas of the business and members of the Diversity & Inclusion Councils and resource groups participate in its Disability Mentoring Day. In 2011, more than 100 employees volunteered to participate in the event focused on disability awareness and career opportunities for more than 50 high-school students and 10 college students/veterans who attended. The keynote address was by Rohan Murphy, a double amputee who became a Division 1 wrestler at Penn State University.
• In April 2011, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation brought nearly 150 students from 32 junior and senior New Jersey high schools to its East Hanover campus for its Annual Multicultural Teen Corporate Mentoring Program. Structured activities included a welcome from André Wyss; panel discussions with eight senior leaders; and a mock product-marketing challenge.

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Supplier Diversity

Marriott International
No. 21 on the DiversityInc Top 50 list
Accepted Award: Arne Sorenson, President & CEO

Marriott has a long and rich history of creating community wealth by using local minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MBEs and WBEs) to build and service its hotels, especially in urban areas.

Marriott’s Tier I (direct contractor) third-party certified spend is 7.8 percent with MBEs and 9.5 percent with WBEs, more than 25 percent higher than the DiversityInc Top 50 average for MBEs and more than double the DiversityInc Top 50 average for WBEs. Marriott also spends 1 percent of its Tier I procurement with vendors owned by LGBT people, one of the highest percentages we’ve seen.

Supplier diversity is included in RFPs (requests for proposals), procurement-management compensation is tied to supplier-diversity results, and Marriott provides mentoring, financial education and financial assistance in the form of more favorable payment terms to its suppliers from underrepresented groups.

As an example, Marriott partnered with a U.S.-based woman-owned business to help grow her capacity and distribution channels to provide the design, production and fulfillment of training materials for its managed hotels around the world. Marriott also helped her share her expertise with other women-owned businesses.

Marriott has been honored by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, the Women Presidents Educational Organization and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce for its supplier-diversity efforts.

2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Resource Groups

Dell
No. 26 on the DiversityInc Top 50 list
Accepted Award: Steven Price, Senior Vice President, Human Resources

In the past two years, Dell has placed a major emphasis on increasing employee participation in its resource groups, creating and expanding global groups, and using these groups to further its business.

Dell has seven global resource groups. Three have chapters outside of the United States: WISE (Women in Search of Excellence) in the Asian Pacific Japan region and Europe, the Middle East and Africa; PRIDE (for the LGBT population) in Brazil, and True Ability (Employees or Family Members of Employees with Special Needs/Disabilities) in Brazil.

The groups are available to all U.S. employees. Each group provides a charter of its strategy and mission annually, with a strong value proposition for its members, communities and Dell’s business goals. Programs include a Cross ERG Leadership Series and brown-bag sessions to help members learn software and social-media applications.

Business-relevant uses include:

• GenNext generational group providing feedback into product development and packaging. GenNext offered expertise on the launch of internal social-media vehicles.
• Adelante Latino group developed a process in which Spanish-speaking individuals deliver product briefings to prospective Latin American customers.
• The Asians in Motion group translated materials into languages for customers across Asia.
• The True Ability ERG has been engaged in product development for customers with disabilities.

Top Company for Executive Development
Kraft Foods
No. 7 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50
Accepted Award: Mark Clouse, President of the U.S. Snacks Business Unit

Talent development and the use of diversity training, resource groups and mentoring to maximize potential have been priorities for Kraft Foods in recent years—and the results are impressive.

Kraft’s Vice President of Diversity Jim Norman and retired executive Wayne Canty presented the company’s JumpStart program at our winter Innovation Fest! The initiative helps new managers, especially those from underrepresented groups, understand the corporate culture and the subtle signals of bias that can derail a career. For the video and presentation of this innovation, go to www.DiversityInc.com/innovationfest.

As the company undergoes a split this year into two separate entities, the resource groups and talent-development initiatives will be even more critical to its ability to connect with its increasingly multicultural consumer base.

Essential to that connection are its 10 resource groups, which are available to all U.S. employees, including hourly workers. The groups are used for recruitment, engagement, talent development, leadership training, marketplace research/connections, and diversity training. Resource-group members serve as facilitators for Kraft’s “The Power of Differences” internal training.

The groups’ success is measured through increased referral/rate of hires of people from traditionally underrepresented groups, retention of talent from those demographics, and increased promotion rates.

Almost three-quarters of its managers are involved in its formal mentoring program, which includes group mentoring, mentoring for new hires and traditional one-on-one mentoring. Seventy percent of the mentoring pairs are cross-cultural.

–Barbara Frankel

The post Diversity Management: 2012 DiversityInc Special Awards appeared first on DiversityInc.

Diversity management at Wells Fargo (No. 33 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50) generates community wealth, from which diversity leader Jimmie Paschall gets satisfaction in helping underserved communities.

The big question everyone has been asking Jimmie Paschall for the past few months is “Why?” Why did she leave Marriott International (No. 21), where she headed the global diversity efforts, to become Wells Fargo’s chief diversity officer?

The answer, she says, boils down to one word: “impact.” “I’ve had the privilege of going from one great company to another, but the scope of Wells Fargo’s impact is dramatic,” she says. By way of explanation, she notes that Wells Fargo has 270,000 team members; as of the end of 2011, the bank ranked fourth in assets and first in market value of its stock among its U.S. peers.

“The other thing that was especially attractive to me is the focus on long-term growth and economic development for communities,” she says. “If you look at what financial institutions can do and the lives being touched by Wells Fargo, there are lots of places where diversity and inclusion can play a role. The impact feels infinite.”

For more on diversity management and leadership at Wells Fargo, read Talent Development Takes Wells Fargo Leader From Teller to $100M in Revenue. Wells Fargo is one of 2012 DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for LGBT Employees and is being recognized as the 2012 DiversityInc Top Company for Community Development at our Oct. 11-2 event in New York City. Visit DiversityInc.com/events for information and to register.

Building on Background

Her years at Marriott, where culturally competent customer service is the major emphasis in doing business at all levels, are helping her in her new role. “Mr. [Bill] Marriott would say, ‘Take care of your associates and the customers will come back again and again,’” she says. “At Wells Fargo, team members are the frontline contact with customers. Both are relationship-oriented businesses where people make the difference.”

To increase Wells Fargo’s market share, she says, “we have to have customers take advantage of products and services across business lines. There is going to be a lot of focus on how to make it easier to do business with us.” Similarly, Executive Vice President and Northern New Jersey Regional President for Wells Fargo Lucia DiNapoli Gibbons discussed Wells Fargo’s strategy to gain market share through diversity in the video below.

Her previous work on Marriott’s diversity initiatives, as well as her involvement with the Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities and its “Bridges …. From School to Work” program, gave her a deeper understanding of ways to reach people from underserved communities.

Paschall has a long history of community involvement. In between two stints at Marriott, she was executive vice president of external affairs at Volunteers of America and also is a member of the Executive Leadership Council, which works to build inclusive leadership by focusing on the development of Black corporate leaders in corporate America.

She cites her “ability to work with ease up and down and across an organization. People find me easy to work with and a quick study on how to integrate diversity and inclusion into existing strategies,” she says.

What’s Next in Diversity Management at Wells Fargo

Paschall, who is reporting to Jon Campbell, executive vice president and head of the social-responsibility group for Wells Fargo, says her top priorities will be coordinating the team-member networks and various diversity councils now in place at Wells Fargo to have the most significant business impact. Watch our diversity web seminar on diversity councils.

“There are many hearts and minds within this company working within this sphere of influence,” she says. “The greatest opportunity is to align across a common set of objectives that will support the business goals. There is tremendous activity here. If we can harness that energy within a strategy, we will have a new level of performance.”

For now, she’s “excited to be sitting around Jon Campbell’s table to create long-term economic growth and vitality for every community where we have business.” She notes that when she interviewed for the job with Chairman, President and CEO John Stumpf, “I said that we really have the opportunity here to be a leader, to change something in this country.” Read DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti’s exclusive Q&A with John Stumpf and watch the video below.

Personal Satisfaction

For Paschall, who grew up in Macon, Ga., the vibrancy of the Washington, D.C., area has always been important. Wells Fargo is allowing her to continue to live in the D.C. region, traveling often to the bank’s headquarters in San Francisco and its key hubs.

Before having children, Paschall often volunteered in public schools to mentor needy children. “With our own kids, there isn’t enough time, but I find more of the mentoring relationships and supportive partnerships are happening through work and [nonprofit] organizations.”

She still talks to “my Marriott folks” all the time, she says, as she acclimates herself to the world of Wells Fargo. “It is an amazing environment. My husband says: ‘You just come home smiling every day.’”

For more on diversity management at Wells Fargo, read Increasing Diversity in Talent Development and Retention Best Practices: When Paychecks Aren’t Enough.

The post How Diversity Management at Financial Institutions Creates Major Impact appeared first on DiversityInc.

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.

Question:
What do diversity and inclusion have to do with income distribution, such as in “The United States of Inequality” from Slate? 

Answer:
The broad subject of wealth disparities is a source of constant discussion in our office. What “diversity” in a business context means for most companies is maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of talent development; you want the best and brightest of ALL groups and want them to equitably be developed—and it is of immense advantage to companies that do it well, especially if their competitors don’t.

However, where I think the subject truly makes money for companies (and societies) is that when you harness equitable talent development to the purposeful development of innovative and nimble corporate (and societal) cultures, you have a force multiplier that dramatically outpaces competition. That means taking diversity training beyond compliance and making a real business case for the four stages of diversity management.

In a country-size economy, it will maintain economic superiority, but the nature of economics is that when one group wins, all win because they have to produce the goods and services demanded by increased wealth. Winning in this context isn’t bad; it’s highly desirable.

A Distribution of Wealth

I’m not sure that we’re seeing anything more than a return to traditional distribution of wealth because very few people as a percentage are truly talented, and this has been consistent. What hasn’t been consistent is access for talent to express itself, and from time to time, markets expand to include more people than typical. For example, I think the post-war “middle class” was an artificial artifact of our not having to suffer massive strategic bombing and TWO generations of dead young men (our casualties in World War I were nothing compared to those of France, Germany and England).

The last 100 years have been a process of expanding workforce needs forcing expanding participation of workers; women haven’t had the vote for 100 years yet, and Jim Crow ended less than 50 years ago. When we needed more workers, the workforce market had to expand past Christian Anglo men. When the new groups to the table gained a modicum of power, they demanded their rights. Those rights increased wealth, and that wealth consumed more services and products—a virtuous circle. Good for America. Good for the world. [Click on the images below to view and enlarge the timelines.]

But I’d argue that economic growth didn’t come from labor, the labor came from innovation—and innovation created the economic growth that drove the demand for labor. Innovation is facilitated by a free society, and our society is more “free” than anywhere else (acknowledging our faults, but giving us our just credit). In other words, despite our faults, America gives access for talent to find means of success better than anywhere on Earth.

Recovery Through Education

So if we are returning to a traditional distribution of wealth (more wealth concentrated in the hands of fewer people), what is the answer to the discordant societal damage from inequitable distribution of wealth?

The article on slate.com touches on the one thing I think will save America’s pre-eminence: education.

In my opinion, only a certain percentage (a small percentage) of people have what it takes to be in the top 5 percent—or the top 1 percent. We need to maximize the ability for people to reach that level because they create the things that the rest of the people live on; their innovation creates wealth, which in turn creates economic (and labor) demand. We destroy our potential by limiting good education to a precious few. I believe that we do this because people intuitively feel that if “they” win, “I” lose.

There is also a cynical group of very wealthy people who will prey on the common human emotion of xenophobia to aggregate and restrict access. So we end up with crappy schools for Black and brown people, the prison-industrial complex and healthcare disparities. We kill off that small percentage of truly talented people out of the bigotry that, generally speaking, we mistakenly believe that “keeping ours” is dependent on “keeping them” in their place. Foolishness—and that’s being proven in today’s economy.

Read Ask the White Guy on Racism, Bigotry & White Privilege.

How to Bridge Gaps With Community Outreach

The question for America is: Can we keep the destructive forces lagging behind the constructive forces? I sure hope so, and that’s why all my philanthropy is dedicated to educational disparities, such as the DiversityInc Foundation and Rutgers Future Scholars.

For corporate America, the decision on managing this overtly must be made from the top. I’d say that most companies on a sustainable path are actively involved with managing diversity because the face of educated talent has become much more diverse, and that trend is increasing. Watch the video clip below to hear KPMG CEO John Veihmeyer discuss his best practices for communicating diversity goals throughout the organization.

Companies that are dragging their feet on this one aren’t on the right side of the demographic shift, and if you can say that for your place of employment, it’s a flashing red light that your future is not secure; get out if you can.

I think the larger and far more economically powerful discussion should be taking place around how diversity can build innovation—how the very culture that develops talent equitably has far more potential to have dramatically better innovation and nimbleness than competitors that do not. For cutting-edge best practices, watch our recent innovation web seminar from Capital One and McGraw-Hill, and read Our First Innovation Fest! 10 Companies Use Diversity to Drive Change.

Think about it this way: If “diversity and inclusion” programs can help you achieve a 5 percent improvement in productivity from better human-capital performance (higher engagement, lower turnover/regrettable loss, etc.), that’s wonderful. If “diversity and inclusion” programs can help you build the innovation that facilitates the next generation of pharmaceutical advances or transportation improvement or first-mover advantage in your marketplace, well, you’d be a fool not to pick a workplace that has a demonstrable advantage over one that does not—even if you’re a white, Christian, heterosexual man with no disabilities. Anyone with an evolved sense of survival knows that your chances of success are far better at the successful company. Especially if you’re talented.

Before you jump to sending me an email that I’m beating up on one side or another, please think about this: I am taking a side. I am an optimist and I believe that all people are created equally. If you aren’t or don’t, that’s fine, but there’s no parsing this basic truth: People are created equally; therefore, talent is distributed equitably. Anything less than equitable cultivation of talent is subtractive from optimum performance.

If you are an executive, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your investors. If you’re a worker at a company that operates with this ethos (and it is a matter of ethics and values), then you do NOT have the right to work contrary to your company’s stated interests. It’s that simple.

For more on corporate values, read Ask the White Guy: Decision Making, Clarity of Values & What to Do When It Goes Horribly Wrong

The post Ask the White Guy: Why Are Disparities in Income Distribution Increasing? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Success, according to McDonald, is dependent on being a proactive catalyst of positive change. For him, that includes running a profitable global business that improves people’s lives. In this exclusive interview, he reveals how a firm commitment to empathy and foundational values helps the company bridge cultural gaps, promote corporate diversity and innovate products that directly satisfy customer needs.

LUKE VISCONTI: Tell me about Procter & Gamble’s emphasis on values, what they mean to the organization and how you conduct business globally.

BOB MCDONALD: Procter & Gamble was founded with a purpose: improving people’s lives. During the Civil War, people shipped short-weighted products or clothing that didn’t last very long. This company said, “We’re not going to do that. We’re going to be known as the company that prides in high-quality products.”

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s when John Smale, our CEO, asked John Pepper, our president at that time, to lead a group of leaders to write down the values that we were trying to lead. It was serendipitous and necessary—at that time we were globalizing very quickly. As you move in to another culture, the difficulty is bringing your values with you.

We ascribe to keep the purpose and the values of the company consistent globally, but you have to be willing to change to stay relevant to your consumer and grow. We formulated the purpose about touching and improving lives and giving back to the communities in which we live and work.

Five values—leadership, integrity, ownership, passion for winning and trust—are critical to the success of the company. Leaders can personalize those values by bringing the experiences they had in life that cause them to form different beliefs. We teach people how to do that so that they can share that with their organizations and be introspective as leaders.

Creating Experience & Empathy Through Corporate Diversity

We’ve discovered that people join this company because their personal purpose is about improving lives. It gives them a way to execute that purpose on a bigger stage with more resources. This purpose is what provides meaning to their lives. That means if I as a leader can tie every behavior the person has back to that purpose, their life would be fulfilled.

You don’t compartmentalize that. The more pervasive we make our purpose of improving lives, the more fulfilled the people are and the better the business results. What we’re really trying to show is the virtuous cycle, where companies do well financially and do good at the same time.

What you should do as a company is provide opportunities for employees to do community service—through that, they become more fulfilled. They improve lives but they also have an experience.

We sent a team of people to Mexico to build homes for Habitat for Humanity. We sponsored the trip. People came back totally fulfilled—a life-changing experience. They learned about low-income consumers in Mexico. When we go to hire people around the world, we need to give them opportunities to learn how the majority of the world lives.

LUKE VISCONTI: You’re leading the diversity council personally. Why is this important to you and your corporate-diversity goals?

BOB MCDONALD: It’s so fundamental with everything that we do. If your purpose is to improve lives, you’ve got to have the leadership, the strategies, the system and the cultures to do that. You can’t ignore diversity.

Diversity for us is a strategy. If I’m trying to improve someone’s life, wouldn’t I be better off having somebody in the organization who is of that representation so they can help the company be empathetic to the consumer? Consumers can never tell us exactly what they need. We’re trying to find the unarticulated need. That’s where we develop our best products.

We believe that we have five strengths: consumer knowledge, innovation, branding, go-to-market and global scale. That innovation strength is the primary way we improve lives. The more diverse your organization, the better your innovation. We try to be very deliberate about setting up diverse teams of people in order to accelerate the innovation that comes from them.

I’m a big believer in the work of a fellow named James Burke, who wrote a book called “American Connections” and a TV show called “Connections.” He says the greatest innovations in the history of the world have never happened in a linear way. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to help hearing-impaired people; [Guglielmo] Marconi invented the radio for two ships to communicate at sea; Tom Watson said someday the United States might only need two or three computers.

How do we create conditions that allow people to bring their diversity to work and have their diversity become the modes that provide the potential for these innovative connections? That’s what we’re really trying to do.

Trust: A Synergistic Effect

LUKE VISCONTI: What do you expect out of your diversity council? 

BOB MCDONALD: A much more deliberate goal, objectives, strategies. We’ve done that. We’ve put together a scorecard. The other thing that comes out is insights.

Procter & Gamble always cared about diversity. But why haven’t we achieved the results? We did a deep dive on the advancement of women as an example. Everybody was well intended but we weren’t happy with the results.

We promote from within, and in any company, leaders tend to attract individuals that they know to work for them. We’d always insist that you get a diversity candidate. Unsurprisingly, the diversity candidate wasn’t selected enough because people didn’t know the candidate. We had to put in place a much more deliberate system of making sure the diversity candidates get exposure.

Secondly, we had to join hands as a leadership team, saying, “I trust you. I’m going to take a risk on this person because you know them and I don’t.” The way to do that is to bring people together and create that trust.

LUKE VISCONTI: A synergistic effect by having everybody in the room? Do you think that it adds to not only awareness but accountability for corporate diversity?

BOB MCDONALD: There’s nothing stronger than accountability. In a combat situation, people perform heroically; they don’t think they’re heroes. They say, “I did this because I didn’t want to let my buddies down.” The same thing happens in a corporation.

I’ve seen attitudes totally shift. I’ve seen individuals who were skeptical of diversity become the biggest advocates. I don’t think it’s simply because of a feeling of hierarchy and me being in the room. I do think it’s the group dynamic. Everybody has good intentions, but it takes more than that.

Connecting With Consumers

LUKE VISCONTI: How have you seen this connection manifest between this diversity council, more disciplined corporate-diversity efforts and your successes around the world?

BOB MCDONALD: We are in the fast-moving consumer goods of business. We have no alternative but being empathetic to consumers; no alternative but to have a diverse workforce that represents those consumers.

We talk a lot about the importance of knowing the culture, knowing the language. In my own experience, it gives you an empathy that you couldn’t otherwise get.

LUKE VISCONTI: How are you leveraging this empathy? What are you structurally doing to make sure that you’re not making mistakes when you go into a place?

BOB MCDONALD: The challenge for us is we have to innovate for everybody on the economic pyramid. We don’t just innovate for the people on the top and dilute that product for the people on the bottom.

For example, in the Philippines, people really want clean clothes. They wash by hand and use soap suds as a surrogate for cleanliness. It takes the average Filipino five buckets of water to rinse their clothes.

Water in the Philippines is very expensive. Water runs by your house generally 30 minutes a day. You have a high horse-powered pump on the street; you pump the water into your water tank. If you miss that 30 minutes, you don’t have water.

We developed a product called Downy Single Rinse. It sequesters the suds and allows you to rinse with one bucket of water, an innovation particularly designed for people at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Finding Purpose, Improving Lives

LUKE VISCONTI: What do you expect to flow through at the end of the day—the tangibles to the bottom line of the business?

BOB MCDONALD: It’s developing and delivering sustainable, outstanding business results, being in the top third of our peer group and total shareholder return sustainability, and doing that through a workforce that represents the consumers we’re trying to serve, the lives we’re trying to improve. Importantly, people are performing at their peak.

For people to perform at their peak, we’ve got to be empathetic to their needs and improving employees’ lives while we’re working to improve the lives of the world’s people.

If you ask me what success is, every person in the world uses a Procter & Gamble product. It’s every employee reporting to us, that they’re working at their full potential and that we’re helping provide meaning in their lives.

I love Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” He wrote the book right after World War II. He was in the Auschwitz concentration camp and what he discovered was a new school of psychology.

Freud was all about looking in the past and basing your future behavior on what happened in the past. Frankl was about developing a vision of the future, recognizing the control you have over that vision. He would convince people in Auschwitz that how they reacted to those guards was in their control, that they could have a positive vision of the future that would determine the positive nature of their future.

I believe what we do in this company in improving lives is giving people meaning in their lives. I went to West Point because I wanted to free the people who were living in un-free societies. I joined P&G because I wanted to make a difference in the world.

When I go to college campuses today, the students tell us they want to work for a company where they can have meaning, where they can make a difference. I think that’s the opportunity we provide.

LUKE VISCONTI: In your bio, there’s a long list of organizations that you serve. Can you talk about how important that is to you?

BOB MCDONALD: I’m trying to help people understand what their individual purpose is in life. I have a set of 10 leadership beliefs: No. 1 is living a life driven by a purpose, compared with simply meandering through life without direction. With technology the way it is today, everyone is time starved. It’s possible to go through life reacting to external forces.

I’ve given this speech maybe 300 different times, maybe every college campus almost in the world. For me, it’s a calling. If I can help students understand how to make a difference in the lives of others and if that is a higher purpose, then they should set that purpose now rather than simply reacting to what affects them.

The point is people like to do what they’re good at, and they’re good at what they like to do. We naturally gravitate to certain things, and that may lift the veil a bit on what your purpose is.

It’s the No. 1 thing, in my opinion, that differentiates those who succeed at Procter & Gamble versus those who don’t, or those who succeed in life versus those who don’t. It’s maintaining the ability to learn.

I often tell people, “When you graduate, you’re not done learning. That’s the beginning of the learning journey.” No one can predict the future with certainty, particularly in today’s world which we at P&G call a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous). How do we prepare ourselves for that future to make the right decisions in real time? The way to do that is to continue the ability to learn.

The leadership challenge today is so different with so many generations that are so diverse. The people complain about not text messaging and other things like that, which is all true.

What is going to be the analogy for the young person today? Twenty or 30 years from now, they’re going to face the same challenge. The older you get, the harder it is to learn new things. Reverse mentoring becomes a very powerful concept: forcing yourself to learn things that are new or very difficult is a powerful concept. If we don’t do that, we won’t get the most out of life.

The post Corporate Diversity: How P&G’s Values Drive Innovation 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.

A panel moderated by DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti, explored the backgrounds and benefits of five chief diversity officers and was preceded by a talk from new PricewaterhouseCoopers Chief Diversity Officer Maria Castañón Moats. PricewaterhouseCoopers is No. 3 on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list. “It’s a unique opportunity to get in front of our 2,400 partners,” says Moats of her new position” to talk about diversity as a critical business issue, respective to the line of service, geography and industry you are in.” 

Moats spoke of how the professional-services firm works to marry the role of CDO with that of revenue-generator. Moats recently took over from Niloufar Molavi. The position at PwC is a rotational role, where the firm’s line partners serve for two to three years at a time.

“I am not an expert,” she says, admitting that the rotational model only works because “I have a terrific team supporting me.” She acknowledges that her team’s knowledge of diversity and its insight into the continuity of business relationships is critical to her success. Read the full-length, 1,039-word What Background Is Best for Chief Diversity Officers? article at DiversityIncBestPractices.com to watch the exclusive videos of her presentation.

Putting Diversity in P&L Terms

“Diversity is hard to measure but having a hard-ended discussion with our leadership is something I have done and am not afraid to do,” says Shaun Hawkins, chief diversity officer at Eli Lilly (No. 39). Hawkins has an investment background and attributes those P&L roots to his success as chief diversity officer. “We really rely on employee engagement, so diversity and inclusion have to be there. We have to be able to translate what we are doing here to some sort of business in an appropriate way.

Hawkins discussed these issues along with three other diversity leaders—Linda Jimenez, chief diversity officer and vice president, diversity and inclusion, WellPoint (No. 36), who is an attorney; Steve Bucherati, chief diversity officer at The Coca-Cola Company (No. 12), who was previously with the Coca-Cola Foundation; and Andrea Snorton, manager of diversity and inclusion at Southern Company (one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies and Top Company for Diversity-Management Progress), who has an HR background. Read the full-length, 1,039-word What Background Is Best for Chief Diversity Officers? article at DiversityIncBestPractices.com for more insights and the exclusive video of this interactive panel.

Making Friends with Legal

Jimenez says that her background as a lawyer has helped her in finding solutions and ultimately becoming a mediator for employees and managers’ qualms with diversity issues and goals. “It’s one of the things we like to do as a CDO. It’s about having everyone walk away with a win-win situation,” she says.

Understanding the Community

Chief Diversity Officers with experience in corporate community outreach know the value of these good relationships within and outside the company. Bucherati used to run the Coca-Cola Foundation, which enabled him to see the value in “connecting the dots” and working as a team, especially since CDO’s don’t manage every aspect of the business.

Linking Back to HR 

This is not to discredit those in traditional HR careers, as Andrea Snorton attests that her “background in HR has definitely been an asset, in terms of what our succession slates look like, determining which organizations we’re going to recruit from.” Knowledge of HR gave her the understanding of what the challenges were, allowing her to leverage her relationships and credibility within the organization.

Read the full-length, 1,039-word What Background Is Best for Chief Diversity Officers? article at DiversityIncBestPractices.com for more insight and the exclusive videos of these sessions.

Referenced Articles:
PwC Chairman Bob Moritz Makes Diversity Personal
Why Do P&L Guys Head Diversity at Deloitte, Lilly?
Retention Best Practices
Employee-Volunteer Programs
4 Ways to Overcome Global Diversity Challenges

The post What Background Is Best for Chief Diversity Officers? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Read more about these best practices in our event coverage, 4 Ways CSX Increased Its Diversity-Management Progress.

The post Exclusive Video: CSX Presents 4 Ways to Increase Your Diversity-Management Progress appeared first on DiversityInc.

Prudential exemplifies corporate citizenship reflecting its core values. The company’s efforts to revitalize its home city of Newark, N.J., as well as its philanthropic, employee-volunteer and educational initiatives, are changing lives throughout the country.

Specifically:

• Sixty-eight percent of its donations are allocated to multicultural nonprofits, including Boys and Girls Clubs of Newark, Children Defense Fund, and YouthBuild Newark. This compares with 37 percent for the DiversityInc Top 50.
• Two-thirds (67 percent) of its senior executives (CEO and direct reports and one level down) sit on the boards of multicultural nonprofits. The average for the DiversityInc Top 50 is 23 percent.
• The Prudential Foundation spends more than $25 million annually on public education, workforce development, business development, community revitalization, arts and civic infrastructure, and helping neighborhood organizations rebuild.
• The company has invested more than $1 billion in local redevelopment since 1976. Social Investments, an asset-management group for Prudential and The Prudential Foundation, manages portfolios of private placement debt, equity and tax credits, including low-income housing and new-markets tax credits. Current social investments include Newark, N.J.; Los Angeles; San Francisco; New York City; Hartford, Conn.; Philadelphia; Chicago; Boston; New Orleans; Dallas; Houston; Phoenix; and Jacksonville, Fla.

Award accepted by John Strangfeld, chairman and CEO:

“We at Prudential are very proud of what we do in the area of community service. As corporate citizens, we’ve come to realize that this is not always easy. Therefore what we’ve been doing through our foundation has been to build community capacity, strength for initiatives that help nonprofits function better and enhance their ability to be continually effective in the community. It’s not just about having programs: it’s about enabling these nonprofits in making decisions and to use their resources to achieve levels of success that have not historically been achieved. We are all called to be leaders in different ways, to create a hybrid of sustainability.”

The post Video of 2011 DiversityInc Special Awards: Prudential Financial appeared first on DiversityInc.