BAD

Did Komen’s Lack of Board Diversity Cause Its Crisis?
The nonprofit breast-cancer-prevention group decided to defund Planned Parenthood, then flip-flopped after public outrage. Its CEO ended up resigning.

Lowe’s Muslim Publicity Gaffe Serves as Case Study of What Not to Do
The home-improvement chain caved in to an anti-Muslim group and stopped advertising on a reality show featuring Muslims. The public outcry was significant.

Chick-fil-A Caves on Funding Anti-Gay Groups But Is It Enough?
The flip-flops from the food chain have cost it several contracts and public support.

GOOD

Lessons on Values From Ellen & jcpenney
jcpenney CEO Ron Johnson stood up quickly and very publicly for the choice of lesbian Ellen DeGeneres as company spokesperson after anti-gay One Million Moms launched a campaign to have her removed.

Ask the White Guy: Decision Making, Clarity of Values & What to Do When It Goes Horribly Wrong
When progressive corporations found out their local representatives in Tennessee supported anti-gay legislation, they were horrified and reacted swiftly to try to reverse the decision. It was too late, but their public statements were forthright and they have subsequently made sure this won’t happen again.

The post Diversity Crisis Communications: What to Do When Scandals Erupt appeared first on DiversityInc.

All stated their opposition to the bill, but the damage was done, and as the heat started to rise, the governor signed the bill into law, bringing Tennessee into the circle of states that affirmatively oppress their LGBT citizens.

The corporate reaction to our questions was swift but after the fact. I think most companies’ headquarters were genuinely surprised by the actions of their colleagues on the chamber’s board.  That leads us to a “teachable moment”—here are some ground rules I’ve learned by observing companies closely:

1. Decision making is best by having clarity on your values.
Credibility received for your professed values is dependent on your decisive execution of actions based on your values. This does not preclude empathy and forgiveness for mistakes, but values cannot be parsed without exposure to repercussions.

2. Your best possible business outcome is dependent on your ability to equitably execute on fair and equitable treatment.
People treated fairly have a better relationship with you—better relationships transcend commodity pricing and increase the quality of your revenue stream. Better relationships also increase employee engagement and productivity—as well as reduce regrettable loss.

3. In the age of Facebook and Twitter, you cannot hide.
Your actions will be publicly evaluated and the resulting addition or subtraction from your brand image will have an impact on your business.

Here is some food for thought regarding human rights, business and our LGBT neighbors:

Rights afforded to one group that do not diminish another group’s rights are what this country is all about. This was the basis of women’s suffrage and the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act—and it is the basis of the lawsuit that overcame the anti-LGBT Proposition 8 in California. The anti-LGBT forces could not produce a single expert who could show that same-sex marriage in any way diminished heterosexual marriage. Married couples have certain legal rights, and extension of those legal rights to same-sex couples does not hurt heterosexual marriages and does not force your house of worship to marry same-sex couples. Freedom from a state-run religion and freedom of religion from the state are part of our Constitution.

Here’s some personal advice if you think marriage is for one man and one woman: Don’t marry someone of your own sex.

Finally, especially for companies that are publicly traded and/or regulated by the government (which, in aggregate, includes just about every company), there are some things to keep in mind regarding communications, donations and membership:

1. Communications sent in “secrecy” are worse than no letter at all, as “secret” complaints constitute tacit approval.

2. An organization cannot stink selectively. The chamber’s actions were anti-LGBT rights, period. This cannot be parsed, and if your continued membership in an organization conflicts with your stated values, then you have a problem across the entire organization.

3. Conflict in values produces brand damage and potential exposure to lawsuits and is detrimental to shareholder equity. Your personal opinions or politics do not trump your organization’s need to do business properly. This is especially true for leaders.

Over the almost 14 years of publishing DiversityInc, we’ve seen the practice of managing diversity become more effective by orders of magnitude in the most competitive companies. Questions about diversity are now on 100 percent of DiversityInc Top 50 companies’ requests for proposals (RFPs). This directly communicates a statement of values. The ripple effect of diversity values is aggregating into a bow wave as globalization is enhanced by web and cell communications.  This gives companies unprecedented opportunities—and unprecedented responsibilities—that transcend nations.

This creates seemingly complex challenges—but I don’t think they’re all that complex: If you have clarity on your values, then don’t violate them; if you’re doing business with a company that violates your values, you are violating your values; and if you make a donation or support an organization that has facets that violate your values, then you are violating your values.

We will all make mistakes. As Dr. Cornel West said at one of our events, “We are all cracked vessels,” and the public is very forgiving of a speedy and forthright apology, particularly if it’s backed by redemptive action. Such as, for example, resigning from the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce.

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.

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Generating buy-in from white men is a challenge in some companies, especially for middle management. Even the DiversityInc Top 50 companies are split on strategies, with some choosing to directly focus on white men as a demographic group while others insist they are included in all workplace-diversity efforts.

In Do White Men Really Need Diversity Outreach? DiversityInc’s Barbara Frankel, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor, addresses this issue head-on in a 3,124-word analysis. Frankel interviewed 20 companies to learn how they handle including white men in their workplace-diversity efforts.

Companies include: Sodexo (No. 2 in The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity), PricewaterhouseCoopers (No. 1), The Coca-Cola Company (No. 46), Merck & Co. (16), CSX (No. 23), Aetna (No. 24), Health Care Service Corporation (No. 19), AXA Equitable (one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies), Harley-Davidson, Ameren, Comerica, Choice Hotels, Staples and the Army & Air Force Exchange.

Readers will also receive need-to-know answers to key questions in workplace diversity including:

• Can white men be diversity leaders in the workplace?
• What aggressive workplace-diversity efforts are companies, such as Coca-Cola and PricewaterhouseCoopers, making?
• Why do you need to keep senior management accountable for diversity efforts in the workplace?
• How can you make a business case for workplace diversity to middle managers?
• How will creating an action plan help make workplace diversity meaningful?
• Should white men have resource groups?

Read Do White Men Really Need Diversity Outreach? at DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

Watch the video below to hear DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti discuss the business case for workplace diversity and why it is important for ALL groups to be included in diversity efforts.

Read DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti’s Ask the White Guy column, Can a White Man Speak With Authority on Diversity?, for more on this subject.

The post Workplace Diversity: Do White Men Really Need Diversity Outreach? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Justices recently held an hour-long oral argument to discuss whether a person without the ability to hire or discipline employees can qualify as a supervisor in racial, sexual and religious discrimination cases. An employer automatically assumes liability if a supervisor is accused of harassment; when a coworker is accused, the victim must prove neglect on the part of the employer to extend liability.

Liable for Discrimination?

The debate stems from the Vance v. Ball State University racial discrimination case, in which Mattea Vance claimed her “supervisor,” Sandra Davis, created a racially hostile working environment.

The federal court—which had defined a supervisor as the power to hire, fire, demote or discipline—threw out Vance’s case, as Davis’ job responsibilities did not include these functions. Vance appealed because the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) defines “supervisor” as anyone who has authority to assign or direct daily work activities or recommend employment actions. Listen to the radio broadcast to learn more.

“There are lots of situations where people have power over other employees when they don’t have the power to fire them, to discipline them, to promote them, to set their wages or things like that,” says University of Virginia law professor Daniel Ortiz, who represents Vance. The AARP and National Partnership for Women & Families also are backing Vance.

“This is consistent with workplaces across America today, where jobs are less hierarchical, more collaborative, and so where you have got more senior employees by virtue of their experience or job title, just a paper title, are in a broad sense team leaders of the like in the workplace,” Gregory Garre, representing the university, told CNN. “That doesn’t mean they are supervisors in any traditional sense.”

Will Discrimination Lawsuits Increase?

If the Supreme Court rules in Vance’s favor, it could potentially increase the number of discrimination cases that actually make it to court. The conservative justices argued that a less-restrictive standard could leave companies suffering for the acts of mid-level employees, which would fall under scrutiny.

A decision is not expected until sometime after winter 2013.

The post New ‘Supervisor’ Definitions Could Increase Discrimination Lawsuits appeared first on DiversityInc.

These aspirations, however, were well outside the scope of a typical Black law student at the time. James recalls: “When I was going to school, people always focused on Legal Aid or the public defender’s office. Not knocking that, but why go to Harvard for public-interest work? Why should Blacks settle, limit ourselves to a niche?”

Leveraging Litigation for Diversity

James was named chief diversity officer of MGM in 2009, after having worked in the company’s legal department for seven years and getting footing as counsel to the diversity committee to the board of directors. Now she is responsible for driving MGM’s philanthropy, diversity and community-engagement messages throughout the organization.

Her latest project is Inspiring Our World. The 90-minute musical program showcases MGM’s corporate-responsibility platform through song and dance. Written, produced and performed by MGM employees, the show will go live Dec. 16–18 before audiences of 5,000 frontline MGM employees per show.

While her diversity work rarely crosses over into her litigation responsibilities—most EEO cases and other legal complaints stem from conflicts with management and as such are not directly related to diversity, she says—James says communication and the ability to persuade are two valuable skills that a legal background affords her.

“To be effective as CDO, you have to have the ability to speak to a lot of different types of audiences, be able to converse at the board-of-directors level,” says James, noting that she regularly reports to and has a constant interface with MGM Chairman and CEO James Murren. “I need to be able to advocate the case for diversity, that it is our corporation’s best interest—it’s like making an argument, albeit a friendly argument, to a jury.

There Were Few Like Me

Following her graduation from Harvard Law School in 1977 and a clerkship for Theodore R. Newman Jr. (then Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals), James was hired by San Francisco–based Pillsbury, Madison, and Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where she says “you could count on one hand the number of Black associates who ever worked at my 300-person firm.”

One partner was of American Indian heritage, which was not openly discussed, but the rest were white—and only two were women. In 1985, James would become the third woman, and first Black, partner.

“I was very conscious about the fact that no Black lawyer had been considered for partnership,” says James. “I always wanted to make sure I was excelling. I was a rarity—and wanted to make sure I set a good precedent that opened doors for others.”

Once promoted, James became heavily involved with the San Francisco Bar Association and became active in the American Bar Association’s Conference of Minority Partners in Majority Corporate Law Firms, where she led initiatives to improve the retention of nonwhite lawyers at big firms.

Advocating the Retention of Black Lawyers

All the major elite firms were predominantly white, and all had a problem with retaining Black associates, according to James. “It was a revolving door. Blacks were usually out by year four,” she recalls. “We wanted to help law firms understand what the cultural-isolation issues were.”

One of her key projects was a collaboration with a diversity specialist named Harry Jacob to create a video and accompanying manual that raised awareness of the negative experiences that nonwhite lawyers frequently encountered. The project, which received an award of merit from the ABA, focused on themes such as building an inclusive culture for Blacks, Latinos, Asians and American Indians, and best practices to ensure that all associates, regardless of race, received the same amount and same quality of mentoring from firm partners.

Creating Diversity Through Public Service

When Dennis Archer, a Michigan Supreme Court justice who knew James through the ABA, became mayor of Detroit in 1994, James left her firm to accept a public-service position as corporate general counsel and law director for the city.

“I took a huge pay cut and the work in some ways was harder, but it was a great opportunity. It gave me the opportunity to do work that helped to develop a primarily Black city,” says James.

While working on a casino authorization project in 1997, James met with representatives from MGM Resorts International, one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies. They recruited her in 2002 to help drive the company’s diversity strategy. “Never in my wildest dreams had I thought I’d wind up working at a gaming and hospitality company,” she says.

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Wlodkowski, who started his job at Comcast this spring, is still formulating his strategic plan, but he knows it will be aimed at making the company’s products useful for and available to customers with disabilities across the spectrum of the Comcast business, from set-top boxes to mobile applications, software, downloads and phone services.

Noting that Comcast, one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies, is the first in the cable industry to create this position, Wlodkowski says, “Comcast executives realized there was an opportunity to really address the market and bring in a dedicated subject-matter expert.”

Specifically, previous roles include leading accessibility at AOL and at WGBH, where he worked on descriptive video for blind and visually impaired people and implemented voice-guided navigation on DVD menus. These roles have given him a great knowledge base for his new position.

“The biggest challenge for developing products for people with disabilities is that they are designed by people who aren’t actually using them, who don’t have disabilities. … As I tell my friends and colleagues in the disability community, now they have someone on the inside,” he says.

Out There in the Real World

Blind since birth, Wlodkowski grew up in Southington, Conn., the youngest of four brothers.

“Having a blind child as the youngest meant my mother wasn’t so protective,” he recalls. “She put me out there in the real world. I had to take out the trash just like everybody else. My brothers never let me play the blind card, although they would try to sneak the food bowl past me.”

Mainstreamed in public schools, he was in the marching band in high school and was the drummer for a rock band, leading to work in radio after college. He thought he wanted to be on the air, but when asked to work on technology for people with disabilities, Wlodkowski found his niche.

Today, he’s married with a 14-year-old son. And he appreciates how much technology has improved his life. “My son is amazed at how I can use voice-over technology on my iPhone,” he says.

The D&I Factor

The hiring of Wlodkowski is part of the company’s overall drive to be a leader in the diversity-and-inclusion space, says Maria Arias, executive director, Diversity & Inclusion at Comcast.

“There’s clearly a focus on employees and customers with different abilities. He’s our resident expert with live, hands-on experience and connections with organizations,” she says, citing not just product accessibility and workforce diversity but supplier diversity as well, particularly the certification of the US Business Leadership Network (USBLN) for suppliers owned by people with disabilities. USBLN certification is required for companies citing supplier diversity with people with disabilities on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity survey.

Wlodkowski and Arias also both work with Comcast’s Abilities Network for employees with disabilities and their allies to create an accessible and inclusive workplace and encourage the hiring and promotion of people with disabilities.

Emerging Market

But Wlodkowski’s primary duties are marketplace focused.

“My first steps are to prioritize where we are going to focus these efforts—the next generation of set-top boxes, product development, the engineering team, and the roadmap for products from XFINITY TV that connect the home,” he says.

Adds Arias: “For the past year and a half, we have focused our efforts on building a year-over-year diversity-and-inclusion plan. We are becoming a leading company in the space, and Tom’s presence here is based on that.”

The post Comcast’s Tom Wlodkowski: Leading the Company to New Levels of Accessibility appeared first on DiversityInc.

“It was my first time working in a different country and I experienced what it was like to be an outsider,” he recalls. “I was young and I felt all the pressures to have all the answers to be Superman. I hit a wall and there was real culture shock.”

What he learned was that he had a team of experienced people on hand “and all I had to do was bring them in the room and we got much stronger decisions.”

That experience has served him well as he has moved to increasingly important HR positions, from Unilever to Bristol-Myers Squibb to Novartis, where he recently was appointed global head, Human Resources, Oncology after three years heading HR in the United States and Canada for Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, No. 13 in The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity.

The Value of Diversity

For Baert, diversity is critical to the business strategy of Novartis, and HR clearly plays a central role in recruiting, retaining and promoting diverse groups. “I have seen firsthand that a diversity of experience, cultures and individuals leads to innovation, engagement and stronger decision making,” he says.

Having worked globally, including heading the Emerging Growth Markets area, which includes China, Russia, India, Turkey, Thailand, Korea, Australia and New Zealand, he sees strong differences in U.S. and other approaches to diversity and inclusion.

“There are ways the United States is ahead and ways it is behind,” he says. “In general, the focused attention on diversity and inclusion in businesses in the United States is ahead of the world. It seems every major U.S. corporation has a dedicated function on diversity, with many senior leaders understanding the importance of diversity as part of their strategy. You will not find that easily in other parts of the world.”

However, he notes that on some issues, such as same-sex marriage, the United States is not as progressive as some other countries, and this can be a detriment to hiring. He says that he has had trouble recruiting gay/lesbian scientists to the United States because they cannot get visas for their spouses since the federal government does not recognize their marriages.

“As an employer who likes to bring in the best people, this is disappointing,” he says.

Tying Business to HR

Baert is a rare HR leader whose strategic emphasis is always focused on business goals. He started his professional life as a lawyer, which he chose because “life is not expressed in black and white and the law is a good training ground to manage ambiguity. … I am by nature very solution-oriented and I didn’t like all the fighting in law.”

He moved into HR, thinking he would work in that field for two years and switch to a business role, “but I got so passionate about HR” and its impact on the business. He was recruited by Novartis in a global role and in 2009 was asked to head up HR North America, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. In that job, he had many opportunities to drive the human-capital agenda.

In his new role, he believes the intersection of HR, diversity and innovation is crucial to the company’s success. “Our business is all about innovation,” he says. “The discoveries we make to fight diseases become ever more complex. It would be naïve to think one person singlehandedly could come up with a solution. You need to bring in many diverse backgrounds, insights and experience to work in an inclusive way because that is what will lead to a breakthrough.”

The post Novartis’ Steven Baert: Diversity of Experience Leads to Stronger Business Decisions appeared first on DiversityInc.

Lechleiter accepted Lilly’s award as DiversityInc’s Top Company for Working Families at our October event in New York City. Go to www.DiversityInc.com/2012specialawards for the full video. Also view our digital edition to read this article and other CEO Interviews.

Luke Visconti: You’ve publicly stated the importance of diversity to Lilly’s mission and to its business goals. How did you come to this realization and why has it become an increasing focus of your tenure as CEO?

John Lechleiter: I’ve been CEO just over four years. The importance of diversity as an underpinning of our business success today and for the future has become more clear to me and more evident. There are a number of reasons why diversity has sprung to life as an important business issue and been magnified in my mind during this time. One is the opportunity I’ve had to travel even more around the world to meet so many willing people and so many of our customers who reflect different backgrounds and different cultures.

Secondly, it’s the increased diversity of our scientific workforce. As we recruit the very best scientists and physicians from universities and medical schools around the world, we see an increasingly diverse population among the group of individuals who really form the core of our company, based as we are on innovation. And the way that our business is shifting in terms of serving different populations and different segments of different populations than we have in the past, both here in the U.S. and in emerging markets, has brought me, and the whole company, a greater awareness of how different we are with respect to the way in which medicine is practiced, the way in which treatment is sought, the way in which people understand disease and approach therapy.

Visconti: You’re coming off of patent on a couple of things. How are you seeing this subject applied to innovation at your company, considering how important it is for you to develop new products?

Lechleiter: We’re in a very interesting place right now in this industry where the promise of the science and all of this knowledge we’ve accumulated about the human genome and about disease pathways is sitting there in front of us, sort of tempting us, waiting to be exploited. Yet so many of our companies are finding it difficult to really innovate in a way that is affordable, that is timely, that ultimately hits the target.

We believe that among the best approaches is to really enhance the innovations, to make sure that we’re able to effectively integrate the ideas, the energies, the passions of Lilly people around the world—Lilly people who come from all sorts of different backgrounds, who bring their diversity with them to work, who are proud of that, who really make their different perspectives and their different backgrounds work for us in terms of literally making that whole greater than the sum of the parts. We can harness that, really harness that; it gives us a real competitive advantage.

Visconti: Is there a personal reason that diversity is a subject that’s important to you?

Lechleiter: I’ve been here almost 33 years now. I joined Lilly as a scientist, and you could say I came from a nontraditional background in terms of going from that entry-level position as a chemist to becoming CEO. There have certainly been times along the way when diversity and the implications of diversity for the company have been really brought home to me.

About 20 years ago, when I was in my first executive management job, I had lunch with a group of gay and lesbian employees who happened to work in the area that I was responsible for. Leaving that lunch, I felt like I really had stepped into someone else’s shoes and recognized just how subtle and how almost imperceptible some of these issues are that magnify themselves and become really big deals for people who are not like most of the people they happen to be working with. I have never forgotten that. It really opened my eyes, and opened my ears as well, to listen better, to try to figuratively, if not literally, put myself in people’s shoes to try to understand their stories and their journey more completely, and then to try to deal with some of the things that represented obstacles for them, that kept them from realizing their potential, that made them feel maybe just a little less significant in the scheme of things because of the ways they might be treated or things that were said, opportunities that didn’t open up for them.

Visconti: You’ve put Shaun Hawkins, a line executive, in the role of chief diversity officer. What led you to this decision and how is it paying off for your business?

Lechleiter: That reflects our view that diversity needs to be owned and led and driven by our people in the line. This is not HR’s job, it’s not strictly the CEO’s role. The message here is that we picked one of our best and brightest to serve as the catalyst. While I’m proud of the progress that we’ve made—we were tremendously proud to join DiversityInc’s Top 50—there’s never been a time when we don’t see the opportunity for more progress to be made. We’re never going to be satisfied.

Visconti: What place do metrics have in diversity management?

Lechleiter: My view is we can’t zero in on any one metric and say that achieving that represents the epitome; it has to be looked at as a composite. I pay particular attention to retention rates. We have proven time and again that Lilly is able to hire many of the best and brightest from schools and companies all over the world.

But that’s just the first step. We want to retain these talented employees that we hire. We want, through that metric, to see a clear indication that this is a place people like to work, where they want to build a career, where they want to raise their families, where they feel valued and where they feel like they can make a contribution. Even at a challenging time for Lilly, those things that we can control, we’re making the kinds of progress that we expect and are pleased to see.

Visconti: You personally are chair of the diversity council. Why take such an active role, and how do you hold your senior executives and council members accountable for results?

Lechleiter: This year, for the first time, I sent very explicit guidance to the 13 people who comprise the executive committee along with me about what I expected them to do in terms of their own leadership for diversity as we enter into this challenging period at Lilly we call Years YZ, where we’re going to lose these patents and we’re going to have some ups and downs in our business. At this time, any of us might be tempted to say, “Let’s not worry too much about diversity; we’ve got these clear business objectives we need to hit, we need to reduce our cost, we need to move our pipeline forward.” And I think that would be exactly the wrong approach to take. This is the time we need to engage people like never before; this is the time when we need to take full advantage of the power, of the intellects we have here and the people we have who are committed to this company, who want to see us move forward.

Our resource groups are absolutely a critical part of the overall fabric of diversity and are responsible for a lot of the progress that we’re making. I try to ensure that the individual executives who have been given executive-leadership or executive-liaison responsibilities with these groups really are engaged with them. I sit down with some regularity with people who comprise those resource groups and I ask about that, and I try to also understand at a first-person level what the Lilly experience is for them, how we can improve, what suggestions or recommendations they would have for me or for any of our executives in terms of how we can be more effective leading diversity.

When I meet with our resource groups—this is typically an hour-long lunch that is almost never over at the one-hour point—I learn an enormous amount. We have a resource group for veterans, a group for people with physical handicaps, a group for our gay and lesbian employees. Every time I sit down with any of these groups I learn a lot, my eyes are opened up. And these are not gripe sessions. These are, ‘Hey, John, did you know this, this is happening over here, we are driving this initiative there, things are getting better,” or, “John, progress is just too slow.”

I met with a group of our Indian employees a few years ago and they said, “When you walk in our lobby you have ‘Welcome to Lilly’ in eight languages, but our language isn’t there.’” Well, gosh, how hard is it to add “Welcome to Lilly” in another language? It was a small thing, but every time these folks walked into work, they were reminded they didn’t see their language up there.

Visconti: What do you see as the greatest value diversity and inclusion bring to Lilly’s ability to create and market pharmaceuticals?

Lechleiter: Our vision is improving outcomes for individual patients. We know that while medicines are necessary, they are seldom sufficient. If you have diabetes and you’re prescribed Lilly insulin, that’s not the end of the story. There’s a whole lot of other things that need to comprise your care for you to meet current treatment standards, in addition to using that insulin. So if we want improved outcomes for individual patients, and our medicines figure prominently in that, we really have to understand the patient journey. We have to understand how Hispanic patients are different from African-American patients, are different from a Caucasian woman who lives in New York City.

Sometimes we can do this at the genetic level—in other words, differentiate a disease based on a genetic factor. Cancer is a good example. Today we’re able to say you don’t just have this type of cancer, you have a subtype of this type of cancer, and we know how to treat that more effectively than we did 10 years ago because we can target therapy. That’s really exciting; that’s the ultimate improved outcomes for individual patients. But in between there’s a whole lot of knowledge we can bring to bear about how communities of people think and live and approach medical care. We’re getting better at that. We have a couple of programs we are running for diabetes, in particular one with African Americans here in the U.S. And we have growing knowledge of how certain disease states are approached and thought about within the Hispanic communities in the U.S.

Imagine what might be possible for us from a business perspective if we can become more relevant to the prescribing physician based on a more detailed understanding of the differences among people who seek care and use our products.

Visconti: What is your vision for Lilly for the immediate future and then longer term?

Lechleiter: Lilly the company needs to be representative of the people we aim to serve. There are still many things that remain to be done to get even closer to our vision of having the company comprised of diverse individuals who as a group are innovative and who ultimately can deliver on this promise of improving outcomes for individual patients.

One of the things that is fundamental is ensuring that we continue to create opportunity for everyone to gain access to quality education. We put a lot of focus in terms of the way our foundation supports K–12 education, on encouraging women and minorities to pursue careers in math and science. We want to see more African-American graduates from schools of engineering; we want to see more women and Hispanics graduating from Ph.D. programs in chemistry and biology. Also, creating opportunities for people to expand their responsibilities within the company, to be promoted, to be able to be in positions of leadership as diverse individuals, is something we monitor, measure and strive for.

Visconti: Lilly is significantly more philanthropic than even the DiversityInc Top 50 companies. You are at about 2.3 percent of gross revenue going to philanthropy; the average for the DiversityInc Top 50 is 1.6 percent and my estimate for the Fortune 500 is 0.5 percent.

Lechleiter: We recognize that the Lilly family who started this company were in their own way visionaries way back when. They had a deep-seated belief that a successful firm should give back to the community and should engage with the community that it is a part of—for us that’s been Indianapolis for 136 years. Giving back is really in our DNA.

There’s been a trend in recent years to engage our employees more in that. A very successful program—we’re now in the second year—is called Connecting Hearts Abroad. We give about 200 employees an opportunity annually to spend two weeks in one of eight or nine locations all around the world, working on the ground in some sort of community-related activity. It could be supporting an orphanage, helping to build a new irrigation system. That’s really brought home to our employees the company’s commitment to social responsibility, but to also creating shared value among the people who ultimately, like any of us, could be patients someday.

The post Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter: ‘Engage People Like Never Before’ appeared first on DiversityInc.

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 asked Jim Norman of Kraft Foods, No. 7 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50; Raymond Arroyo of Aetna, No. 24; and David Casey of CVS Caremark, one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies, for their views on the DiversityInc Top 50 process. We came away with the three main areas in diversity management that they cite as having received value from the process.

If you would like to participate in the DiversityInc Top 50 survey for diversity management, click here for more information.

• They use the survey to create an overall diversity blueprint and determine areas of focus for their diversity management  

Jim Norman of Kraft: The survey can be used by a chief diversity officer as a strategic tool to create conversations with partners in the organization that he or she has not had or has been dying to have, and to put some parameters around what “best in class” looks like. It’s work that you’re doing for yourself and the organization to get better and to monitor your progress each and every year. 

Raymond Arroyo of Aetna: We have quarterly reports that mimic the DiversityInc Top 50 methodology so that we know whether we are making progress against the goals. This relates to the methods DiversityInc is going to measure, and the survey tells us that. We get all the data around new hires, retention and promotions.

David Casey of CVS Caremark: When I sent the CEO Commitment section to our head of communications (she’s kind of the CEO’s keeper), she started scratching her head, saying, “Wow, these are really the things we should be having them focus on.” It’s another way for me to get best-practice information out there in front of different parts of the business. 

• The survey captures trends and best practices across various organizations that become the standard for diversity management

David Casey of CVS Caremark: What does the Top 50 really mean? It gives you a data point. It gives you a data set. It’s one thing to go into your board or to your CEO and say, “X percent of our workforce is people of color or women, and we’ve spent this much on supplier diversity,” but unless you give them an anchor and some kind of relative sense of what that means, it doesn’t work, and that’s what DiversityInc provides.

Jim Norman of Kraft: I know there could be criticism around any survey, and people get confused about why they’re doing it or why they would be involved. We have strategic plans. They’re about creating a better organization. The survey, then, is a tool for me to mark progress against a journey I’m already committed to. It holds me accountable. It’s a very usable tool. It asks questions that are critical to driving the kind of deep, sustainable organization change that I need to drive.

• The survey forces companies to track important data and understand how the results affect diversity management

Raymond Arroyo of Aetna: The survey asks the questions in a very, very specific way that every single time requires us to look at the data in a very sophisticated way. I love the stuff about human capital because it’s something that we should be doing ourselves anyway.

David Casey of CVS Caremark: Before the DiversityInc Top 50, there were not a lot of robust, true surveys or measurement tools for diversity management. There was just a lot of affirmative action and EEO recognitions and awards. DiversityInc’s Top 50 is by far the most robust analysis of what a company does in diversity management.

About the DiversityInc Top 50

The survey measures four key areas of diversity management: CEO Commitment, Human Capital, Corporate and Organizational Communications, and Supplier Diversity. Participation is free, and companies that do business with DiversityInc have no advantage. Each company that completes the survey receives a free report card assessing its diversity-management performance overall and in those four areas.

For background on the history of the DiversityInc Top 50, click here. For more information on our upcoming diversity-management event, click here.

Note: Since this article was written, Raymond has taken a new role as the head of Alternative Distribution, Aetna.

The post Diversity Management: Top 3 Reasons to Participate in the DiversityInc Top 50 appeared first on DiversityInc.