Sheryl Sandberg thinks the concept of mentorship for women is highly overrated. Sandberg’s wrong—and here’s why.

Before I take apart the argument about mentoring made by Sandberg, the Facebook COO who is on every media channel pushing her book Lean In, I have a confession: I never had a formal mentor and if I’d had one, it could have changed my life for the better.

When I started my career—30 years ago, in a very male-dominated industry—it was sink or swim. Produce results or find another job. I was smart, ambitious and willing to work harder than my peers, almost all of whom were men. I always managed well but relating to peers wasn’t so easy.

Case in point, I was a newspaper reporter in a unionized shop and we weren’t supposed to work overtime, even if we were covering breaking news, like fires and murders. I ignored the union and put in as many free hours as needed to do a great job—and I never asked for overtime even though I was grossly underpaid. So my bosses loved me, and I didn’t have a whole lot of friends in the newsroom. And within a couple of years, I became their boss, which didn’t endear me to the rank and file either.

If I’d had a mentor, I might have been able to find a more collaborative and less competitive way to succeed, which would have made me a much more effective manager when I was promoted over everyone else. A mentor also could have shown me how to better balance personal time and work time so I didn’t exist in a constant state of anxiety. Most importantly, a mentor could have helped me learn how to talk to my male bosses about what wasn’t working in the organization and for me, instead of being afraid of pissing them off.

What would have been effective for me would have been both a female mentor and a male mentor. There weren’t any female role models where I worked, so that wasn’t an option. And the men who were interested in mentoring picked people who looked and sounded like them—and that sure wasn’t me.

Sandberg: Women Rely Too Much on Mentors 

Sandberg argues that the current emphasis in corporate America on women finding mentors (who coach you) and sponsors (who advocate for you politically) wastes everyone’s time. For senior women like herself, she says being asked to be a mentor “is a total mood killer” that she seems to find annoying, like a celebrity being approached for an autograph.

For the mentees, she projects her “do it yourself” mantra, saying: “We need to stop telling them, ‘Get a mentor and you will excel.’ Instead, we need to tell them, ‘Excel and you will get a mentor.’”

If Sandberg’s logic follows, there will be no change in the very status quo she wants to “revolutionize”: men (and I’ll add white men) holding on for dear life to their vastly disproportionate share of leadership positions. She admits, and I agree, that people mentor and sponsor those who have common interests and who remind them of themselves. That leaves women—and Blacks, Latinos, Asians, American Indians, LGBT people and people with disabilities—out in the cold.

If women have to “lean in” and excel before they solicit mentors and sponsors—and if women should be careful not to annoy powerful women by “bothering them” for advice—only white men are going to use mentoring and sponsoring to their advantage.

Corporate Involvement 

This is the essential reason why companies that understand they have a lot of ground to make up with women and other underrepresented groups have been jumping into cross-cultural, formalized mentoring. The formalization is critical because informal mentoring leads to propagating the status quo. If the company doesn’t emphasize the cross-cultural aspect of mentoring—and include cultural awareness training for both parties before they start the relationship—again, the reach out to women and others doesn’t happen.

Sandberg says that mentoring works best when it’s combined with other kinds of leadership development and training, and cites Deloitte’s excellent Leading to WIN Women’s Initiative. The most successful talent-development efforts (such as Deloitte’s) are indeed multipronged, but they only succeed when strong one-to-one relationships are a major part of the deal.

If you look at mentoring programs that show dramatic increases in female retention and promotions, such as Deloitte’s, Sodexo’s IMPACT program, and Target’s mentoring initiatives for managers, you will see that they are very structured, very metrics-driven, and yet enable those personal relationships to grow on an individual basis.

The Other Side 

So while I’ve never had a real mentor, I have mentored several people, most of them younger women. My first mentee was Tammy, who was assigned to me when I was a senior editor at a newspaper that had just initiated formal mentoring. Tammy and I met every week and developed a strong friendship that continued for many years. I taught her how to improve her writing and what she needed to do for her next career moves. She taught me how to slow down (a little) and listen to what people are saying (a lesson I’m still working on).

Since then, I’ve informally mentored several people (because our company is too small to have a formal mentoring program), most of them women. And what continues to surprise me is how much I learn from them.

If those who have become successful choose, like Sandberg, to ignore the requests of others to be their mentors, we do ourselves a great disservice. We aren’t holding on to power by denying them our collective wisdom—we are allowing an inequitable status quo to be perpetuated (with a few  “token” women and others at the top)—and we are denying ourselves the opportunity to grow in different ways by learning from those we teach.

The post Sheryl Sandberg’s Message on Mentoring Is Wrong—and Dangerous appeared first on DiversityInc.

“We’ve ceased making progress at the top in any industry anywhere in the world,” Sandberg writes. “In the United States, women have had 14 percent of the top corporate jobs and 17 percent of the board seats for 10 years. Ten years of no progress,” despite the fact that women now earn more bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees than men.

Sandberg’s advice to women? Don’t get a mentor if you want to excel—you need to excel first, then you’ll get a mentor. It’s a philosophy that has sparked a significant debate, especially since her viewpoint relieves many organizations of the responsibility of promoting equality in the workplace and advocating cultural-competence education, writes Barbara Frankel, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor, DiversityInc.

As a woman who has fought for three decades in the workplace for a place at the table … I agree with Sandberg that too many women give up too easily as the challenges of family and work become overwhelming. But her simplistic solution of urging women to take control of themselves and join “Lean In Circles” to bolster each other ignores the reality that most workplace inequities aren’t caused by the victims, but by the institutions and those in power who benefit from continuity.”

Read the rest of Frankel’s reaction to Lean In in this column.

Read these reviews and reactions from other top news outlets—then share your thoughts with us in the comments below:

Sheryl Sandberg Inspired and Offended on 60 Minutes [with video]
Sandberg says she’s not blaming women, but there are a lot more factors to success that women can—and should—control.

SHERYL SANDBERG: Women Need to Get More Comfortable With Power
This overview of Sandberg’s book breaks it down into seven lessons, including “women should not ask for mentors” and “having it all is a myth.”

‘This Week’ Roundtable on Sheryl Sandberg
Do men outnumber women when it comes to ambition for leadership? Panelists discuss controversy surrounding Sandberg’s Lean In.

Lean In, Read On: 21 Perspectives on Sheryl Sandberg’s Book
Sandberg is a “PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle books,” wrote Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize recipient.

10 Things Sheryl Sandberg Gets Exactly Right In Lean In
Despite criticism, you can’t ignore that Sandberg hits the nail on the head: Men still rule the world.

Gen-Y Responds to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In
What do 20-something’s think about Sandberg’s book? Here are some first-hand responses on Lean In.

Sheryl Sandberg: On a Mission to Elevate Women
Is Sandberg too rich, too successful to lead a women’s movement? The Facebook COO won’t back down despite criticism.

Facebook’s Sandberg Says Women’s Revolution Has Stalled
CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell interviews Sandberg.

60 Minutes: Sandberg on Mentoring
Sandberg details the insecurities she still has about her success and about the mentors she had along the way.

The post Sandberg’s Lean In: Women’s Biggest Barrier to Success? Themselves appeared first on DiversityInc.

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.

In our diversity web seminar on mentoring and sponsorship, BASF’s Chief Diversity Officer Patricia Rossman, and Deloitte Consulting’s Kelvin Womack, Principal, Lead Client Service Partner, Federal Health Practice, and Managing Principal, Diversity, discussed:

• How BASF Successfully Launched a Mentoring Program: The company utilizes an eHarmony-style digital system to match mentors and mentees, which increases engagement and customizes each mentoring pair for optimal results.
• Why Sponsorship at Deloitte Drives Careers: The company’s pilot Navigation to Excellence formal sponsorship program nationally paired 15 Black, Latina and Asian women with sponsors. Participants reported improved relationships with senior sponsors, networking and communication skills.

Additional insights from BASF and Deloitte include:

• Relationship Must-Haves: What you need to formalize and integrate mentoring and sponsorship programs into your corporate culture.
• Benefits of Formal Programs: How are they different from informal programs and why companies opt to formalize their talent development.
• Metrics & Data: What are the best metrics to assess progress, especially involving retention, engagement and promotion?
• Consistency: How to achieve a sustainable program at your organization.

Please log in to DiversityIncBestPractices.com to watch the presentation and download the slides.

Not a subscriber? Buy this web seminar now, or request subscriber information and pricing for DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

The post Will Your New Mentoring/Sponsorship Program Succeed? appeared first on DiversityInc.

KPMG, No. 22 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50, is one of eight leading companies that presented at our Managing Relationships Between HR & Diversity Departments event held in New York City.

Visit DiversityInc.com/events for a schedule of our upcoming learning sessions, such as our DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity Announcement on April 23 and 24 in New York City.

Video Minutes

00:58 The Four Success Factors of Mentoring

02:27 KPMG’s Mentoring Expectation

08:30 Business Impact: Advancement Opportunities & Senior Leadership

12:20 How to Improve Mentoring Through Sponsorship

16:05 Sponsorship at KPMG: Different than Mentoring

17:53 Audience Q&A Session

The post HR, Diversity & Mentoring: A Correlation to Talent Development? appeared first on DiversityInc.

By prioritizing the allocation of resources, diversity leaders can better align diversity-management initiatives—such as talent development, resource groups and mentoring—with business goals, which is crucial for success, according to the diversity leader.

“We diverted our dollars away from heritage celebrations and some external partnerships to focus on leadership training. We provided external coaches and up to six hours of one-on-one time putting together a viable and robust development plan,” said Norman during an interactive session on talent development at a DiversityInc event.

The audience of corporate diversity leaders and executives was able to ask Norman questions, contribute their best practices for talent development and share their real-life success stories firsthand.

Kraft Foods, which is No. 7 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50, was recognized with the 2012 DiversityInc Special Award for Top Company for Executive Development. Mark Clouse, president of the U.S. Snacks Business Unit, acccepted the award on behalf of the company at our October event in New York City.

Companies participating included: Procter & Gamble (No. 5 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50), Prudential Financial (No. 9), American Express (No. 14), Automatic Data Processing (No. 27), Toyota (No. 41) and MassMutual (one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies).

In What Makes Kraft’s Talent Development So Successful?, the companies detail their top talent-development challenges and provide the solutions that are helping them improve diversity in succession planning. Talent-development best practices include: 

1. Focus development efforts a level below what’s needed
2. Personalize talent-development plans to individuals
3. Determine the importance of global experience to high-ranking positions and tailor the quality of assignments now
4. Use resource groups to identify high-potential talent from traditionally underrepresented groups and nominate candidates for mentoring
5. Utilize metrics to measure the potential success of mentor pairings
6. Mentoring should include cross-cultural, cross-gender and cross-functional components

Click here to read the full article, available to subscribers at DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

Not a subscriber? Request subscriber information and pricing for DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

The post What Makes Kraft’s Talent Development So Successful? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Diversity-management case studies provide companies with insights into their competitors’ strategies. There is always volatility on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list as the competitive set increases and improves in diversity management—and, simultaneously, as other companies lessen their commitment. When there is a major swing of more than 10 spots, it is usually attributable to a significant change in circumstances (e.g., a merger or a new CEO) or to a dramatic improvement or reduction in tracking or implementation of initiatives.

Consider these facts:

• 20 companies moved up this year; 24 declined
• 3 companies moved on to the list from DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies list
• 2 companies made the list for the first time; 1 was participating for the first time

With competition increasing (participation, including the number of companies that completed the entire survey, is up 11 percent), our questions evolve each year to reflect cutting-edge diversity-management techniques and metrics to evaluate them. For example, this year we put more emphasis on resource-group and mentoring participation and the concurrent results demonstrated by the demographics of the top three levels of the organization. Watch our diversity web seminar on resource groups and our diversity web seminar on mentoring for best practices in these areas.

Here are case studies of four companies in two industries: consumer-packaged goods and financial services. In each industry, we look at one company that went up significantly and one that declined.

Case Study No. 1: Consumer-Packaged-Goods Company That Rose

Contributing factors:

• Visible CEO support; accountability for results
• Dramatically improved metrics/tracking
• Increased utilization of resource groups

Company A is a large, decentralized global consumer-packaged-goods business, with a wide variety of products and customers. The company has been on the DiversityInc Top 50 list multiple times but has had trouble moving into the upper echelon.

This year, the company made significant strides for three reasons: It reassessed the manner in which it tracked key diversity-management metrics of mentoring and resource-group participation, multicultural philanthropy and first promotions into management; it better assessed and communicated the CEO’s deep commitment to diversity; and the racial/gender diversity at the top three levels of the company improved.

IT STARTS AT THE TOP

The CEO has been a vocal proponent of diversity for years, but much of what he said and did wasn’t captured or directly connected to diversity management. In the past two years, the company’s leaders have become much more cognizant of the need to link their leader’s support more visibly, both internally and externally. He talks frequently about the nexus of diversity and global innovation, and this of late has become a hallmark of the company’s messaging. This essential point is also now included in the company’s simple and direct mission statement.

The CEO of this company is on the board of three multicultural nonprofits, and almost a third of the executives in the top two levels of the organization also sit on boards of multicultural nonprofits. In addition, this CEO meets with resource-group members at least quarterly. This CEO chairs the diversity council and holds senior executives directly responsible for results, with a significant portion of their bonus linked to diversity metrics. The council also sets company-wide goals, which are also linked to executive compensation.

In addition, this company has a very diverse board of directors, with good female representation as well as representation from Blacks, Latinos and Asians. As it seeks to understand the complex U.S. and global marketplaces, these strategic leaders from diverse backgrounds are even more crucial.

The representation in the top three levels of the organization has increased in both gender and racial/ethnic diversity in the past two years, showing that the talent-development and engagement efforts are paying off.

DOESN’T COUNT IF IT ISN’T TRACKED

This company demonstrates one of the clearest cases we’ve ever seen of an organization doing great work that no one was properly tracking in a consistent manner. The resource groups, which are used for recruitment, talent development and leadership training, have been instrumental in driving new business ideas for products directly relevant to underrepresented groups. However, until our discussions with the company this year, it did not institute a means of assessing how many employees were actually members of each group. Without the metrics to understand its participation and the result on engagement, retention and promotions, the company was not fully able to make the case to senior management for increased support for these groups. Watch our diversity web seminar on diversity metrics for best practices in tracking diversity goals.

Secondly, the company until this year was unable to measure its level of management participation in formal, cross-cultural mentoring. Many companies, especially larger ones, tell us they can’t track mentoring because they have so many kinds and so much “informal mentoring.” We ask them to measure participation of formal mentoring because that can be directly linked to business results.

Thirdly, the company had never been able to track the percentage of its philanthropic donations allocated to multicultural charities, which actually exceed the industry average by more than 15 percent. With new tracking tools in place, Company A was able to connect the dots both in our survey and publicly, telling communities exactly how much it supports them and raising loyalty of current and future employees, as well as consumers.

Recommendations for this company:

• Use resource groups to improve promotions into first management jobs. The company has improved its tracking of this key metric but still has some gaps for which resource groups can help identify reasons why people from underrepresented groups don’t seek to move into management.
• Use resource groups more formally for market research. This company surveys employees often about consumer trends/products but has never taken advantage of the formal groups to seek innovative marketplace solutions. Now that group membership is being tracked, the groups can contribute more directly to field work.
• Link mentee promotions to mentor compensation. Now that the company has a handle on who is in mentoring relationships, the next step is to tie mentee success to the mentor’s performance evaluation.

Case Study No. 2: Consumer-Packaged-Goods Company That Fell

Contributing factors:

• Top level all-white
• Lower percentage of resource-group participation
• Lower percentage of mentoring participation
• CEO doesn’t chair diversity council

Company B has been a mainstay in the DiversityInc Top 50 but has not dedicated the resources its competitors have to internal development and community outreach. The consumer-packaged-goods industry is one of the two most competitive industries we see for talent from underrepresented groups and, correspondingly, for multicultural customers. (The other industry is consulting.)

This company fell off the list because of several factors we put increased emphasis on that directly correlate to measurable results: resource-group participation, mentoring participation and demographics of senior executives.

NO REPRESENTATION, NO PROGRESS

This company is all white in the top level (CEOs and direct reports). The next two levels of management have some racial/ethnic diversity but considerably less than the other CPGs on the list. Five years ago, all of Company B’s competitors had pretty much the same white top demographics, but the top CPGs have instituted formal, cross-cultural mentoring, resource-group leader training and mandating diversity in their succession planning, resulting in increased diversity at the top levels.

Our research has shown that increased management participation in mentoring is the most significant factor in driving diversity to the top of the organization. We have been told repeatedly by people from underrepresented groups (and organizational research supports this) that the personal relationship, especially with senior executives, provides invaluable guidance to the corporate culture and individual plans for success. The data directly shows that when the percentage of managers in mentoring rises, racial/ethnic/gender representation in the top levels goes up. Company B does have a formal mentoring program, but the percentage of managers involved dropped significantly this year.

This company also lacks the accountability for results that we see in several of its industry competitors, especially in recent years. Almost all of the top CPG companies on the DiversityInc Top 50 list have their CEO chairing the executive diversity council, and they increasingly link executive compensation to company-wide goals that the council sets. Often, those goals are tied to increasing representational diversity, especially at the top levels. For more on top-level commitment and accountability, read CEO Commitment: Why Visibility & Accountability Matter.

At Company B, the diversity council is chaired by the head of diversity, who is only at the director level. The council does not link executive compensation to its goals.

INVESTING IN MARKETPLACE CONNECTIONS

For consumer-facing companies, understanding an increasingly multicultural marketplace is vital to sustainable business success, especially when it comes to product development and placement. While all of the other leading CPG companies have multicultural-marketing departments, this company does not.

Increasingly, top CPGs use their resource groups for market research and to take advantage of diverse views to create innovative solutions to reaching customers. Company B’s percentage of employees participating in its resource groups is one-third of what it was last year, while its competitors have dramatically increased their percentages. Our data shows direct correlations between resource-group participation and human-capital results, with companies with lower participation having less diversity in promotions into management, promotions within management, and demographics of the senior levels of management. For innovative diversity solutions, watch our diversity web seminar on innovation and watch the presentations from DiversityInc’s first Innovation Fest!.

In addition, the company has a very low percentage of supplier-diversity spend with businesses owned by Blacks, Latinos, Asians, American Indians, women, LGBT people and people with disabilities. Even in an industry not known for its high supplier diversity, this company’s supplier diversity is significantly lower, indicating it is not reaching vendors and community leaders of underrepresented groups.

When looking at this company’s philanthropy to multicultural organizations, it appears to be on par with the other top CPGs. However, this company has less than half the amount of top-tier executives (levels 1–3) sitting on boards of multicultural nonprofits as the average of the top CPGs. So the donations are the same, but the actual involvement, which builds relationships and community support, is much lower.

Recommendations for this company:

• Change diversity-council model to one chaired by CEO, with all direct reports involved. Have council set company-wide human-capital goals linked to senior executive compensation.
• Aggressively increase participation in and utilization of resource groups. Document benefits of taking on leadership roles (increased engagement, promotion). Offer groups recognition/rewards for customer-based solutions, including finding diverse suppliers.
• Connect participation in cross-cultural mentoring to compensation/performance reviews. Increase emphasis on networking, sponsorship and access to senior leaders for high potentials from underrepresented groups.

Case Study No. 3: Financial-Services Company That Rose

Contributing factors:

• Increased accountability (linking bonus to diversity goals)
• Ability to track, report mentoring
• Heightened emphasis on resource groups

Company C has an extremely committed CEO. He chairs the executive diversity council, which meets monthly. This CEO has increased philanthropic efforts to underrepresented communities and has been very visible in his public support of diversity management.

This company has been on the DiversityInc Top 50 list frequently but was not able to break out of the middle of the pack until this year. The difference is its increased ability to hold its executives accountable and to track and improve key best practices, especially mentoring. Read Ask DiversityInc: How Resource Groups, Mentoring and Accountability Drive Engagement for more on the benefits of mentoring.

DIRECT LINK TO COMPENSATION

Although the executive diversity council at this company is very active (and consists of the CEO and direct reports), the company has had difficulty in the past extrapolating how much of senior-executive compensation is actually linked to direct diversity-management results.

This year, the company put in place practices that enabled it to directly measure and reward the senior executives on the council based on individual factors, including sponsorship of a resource group, being a cross-cultural mentor and serving on the board of a multicultural nonprofit, as well as increased diversity in retention, engagement, promotion and procurement in the executive’s area of responsibility.

Company C now has measurable goals directly tied to diversity results at roughly the same average as the DiversityInc Top 50 of 12.2 percent. The bonus plan was approved by the board of directors, and the CEO is signing off on each executive’s diversity bonus. The CEO includes both the quantitative goals stated above as well as a qualitative assessment of the executive’s performance championing diversity throughout the organization.

The company is seeing specific results in its human-capital demographics. While its board and senior management have had relatively good representational diversity, diversity by race/ethnicity and gender in the two levels below the CEO and direct reports in first promotions into management has improved year to year. Relative to its industry, which has racial/ethnic gaps at the top on average, this company has significantly improved its competitive position.

WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE

Company C is a large financial-services company, with business units across the United States and globally. The company has a variety of mentoring programs in place, some formal and some informal. These include group mentoring, reverse mentoring, on-boarding mentoring for new hires, peer mentoring and external mentoring. Until the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 survey, this company had repeatedly said it was unable to measure the percentage of managers in its formal mentoring program and the percentage in cross-cultural relationships.

DiversityInc has increased the weighting of these percentages in the past two years because of the direct correlation to improved diversity in human-capital results, especially in management levels. Understanding that, and the importance of tracking these results as well as the long-term successes of mentoring in terms of engagement, retention and promotions, Company C determined a year ago that it should implement a better tracking system. The results? The company now reports that at least 30 percent of its managers are involved in the formal mentoring program, which compares with 39.7 percent of the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 average. Company C believes the actual average across the entire organization will be higher next year as it more effectively collates its mentoring efforts. Read Mentoring Roundtable: How Mentoring Improves Retention, Engagement & Promotions for best practices in mentoring.

The company has also followed best practices established in our benchmarking practice to ascertain how to count resource-group membership and has doubled the percentage of employees who participate in those groups. Like many ethical companies, it was being overly conservative in its initial findings, and without a benchmark, it did not know what the standard was. It has been leveraging the ability to properly assess participation to garner more resources for the groups from senior management.

Recommendations for this company:

• Do not give 100 percent of eligible executives the diversity bonus. A bonus that everyone gets in full (as they did this year) doesn’t have credibility. The bonus should be awarded on a curve.
• Increase metrics to assess resource-group success. Although the company has increased its metrics on resource groups, it still lacks a consistent method of measuring promotions of those in groups versus those not, as well as membership in more than one group.
• Use groups to provide training/on-boarding for new employees. Company C does not have specific training to acclimate new hires, especially from underrepresented communities. Resource groups are critical in improving retention/engagement of new hires, our data shows.

Case Study No. 4: Financial-Services Company That Fell

Contributing factors:

• Lack of diversity at top
• No longer links bonuses to diversity goals
• No cross-cultural mentoring emphasis

Also a long-time member of the DiversityInc Top 50, Company D is a financial-services company that has been directly impacted by the economic and reputational turmoil occurring in its industry since the housing-boom bust of 2008. The company has undergone several organizational shifts and layoffs, but the diversity leadership has remained constant. However, this year, we note a drop in several key indicators, including linking executive compensation to diversity and senior-leadership demographics.

LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY

For a company that has been in the public eye for its lack of accountability during the financial crisis, the decision to no longer link executive compensation to diversity results is surprising. Still, that’s what company D did between the 2011 survey and the 2012 survey.

Although the company continues to have an executive diversity council chaired by its CEO, it does not have the council set organization-wide diversity goals or hold the council executives responsible for reaching those goals—which 86 percent of the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 companies do. As this company has reorganized in general, its efforts to pay bonuses at all have been jeopardized. But companies with deep commitments to diversity see this as crucial. Sodexo, for example, which has been in the top two in the DiversityInc Top 50 for the past three years, has a fund set aside for diversity bonuses that is the only one that is paid regardless of the financial performance of the company. And Sodexo links 25 percent of executive compensation of its senior leaders to diversity goals.

But Company D is not connecting compensation and diversity goals, and its top level of management (CEO and direct reports), which was all white last year but was almost half female, this year continues to be all white and is 10 percent less female. The next two levels of the organization also have little racial/ethnic diversity, a trend that seems to be getting more pronounced in the last three years. Read our Report on Executive Compensation.

MORE CULTURAL COMPETENCY: INTERNAL & EXTERNAL

Company D has been in the public eye for lending practices to lower-income consumers, many of whom are Black and Latino. Yet Company D does not have diversity prominently on its corporate homepage (unlike 82 percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies), and it has a lack of cultural-competency training for its mentors, mentees and executive diversity-council members. For best practices in training, read Diversity Training Goes Way Beyond Compliance.

The mentoring connection would be a crucial way for this company to increase its representation at the top. However, only 5 percent of its managers participate in mentoring, it does not have a cross-cultural component, and it has no formal evaluation or metrics associated with mentoring. By contrast, an average of 39.7 percent of DiversityInc Top 50 managers are in formal mentoring, 96 percent have a cross-cultural component and 84 percent have formal evaluations and metrics. All of those have increased significantly over the past six years.

The lack of formal cultural-competence awareness spills over into other areas directly impacting customer relationships. Company D has a very low multicultural-marketing budget—more than 20 percent lower than other companies in its industry, including Company C. A review of its recent public statements shows few mentions of diversity, while its closest competitor, another company in the DiversityInc Top 50, has increasingly tied its business results to diversity in its public messaging.

Company D’s decline on the DiversityInc Top 50 list is a direct result of its leaders’ decision to be less accountable for direct diversity results and to fail to emphasize the connection between diversity management and its increasingly multicultural consumer base.

• Reinstitute direct link between compensation and diversity goals. If no bonuses are paid, make the compensation part of executive evaluations and salaries.
• Include mandatory cultural-competence training for all mentors/mentees, executive-council members and anyone hiring or evaluating managers.
• Work with corporate communications and marketing to include diversity in business messages and to make the importance more prominent on homepage and in social media.

For information on the DiversityInc Top 50 companies, visit www.DiversityInc.com/top50.

–Barbara Frankel

The post Diversity-Management Case Studies Reveal Why Companies Rise & Fall in the DiversityInc Top 50 appeared first on DiversityInc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Talent-Development Best Practice No. 1: Have an Executive Diversity Council With Accountability for Results

Companies that want a dramatic escalation of the diversity of their human-capital numbers, especially in senior-management ranks, have found that a strong executive council, led by the CEO, has the quickest and most sustainable results.

Follow these steps:

• Have the diversity council chaired by the CEO to send the clear message that this is a top priority
• The diversity council should be comprised of senior executives, direct reports to the CEO and others who have a clear interest in diversity management’s outcome on the business, including the head of procurement, the head of sales and the head of HR
• The chief diversity officer should also be a member of the diversity council
• If the organization has developed resource groups to assist in business and talent-development goals, taking two resource-group leaders every year and giving them rotating positions on the council brings fresh ideas from a different perspective
• The diversity council should meet at least quarterly and should have monthly updates on diversity-management progress
• The diversity council, at the beginning of the year, should set overall goals for its diversity efforts, including human-capital goals but also goals for procurement, set-up and participation in resource groups, mentoring participation, community philanthropy to multicultural organizations, and other diversity-related initiatives
• Diversity-council members’ compensation should be linked to the overall success of these diversity-management goals and individual diversity goals set for them

Talent-Development Best Practice No. 2: Make Formal Cross-Cultural Mentoring Available to All Managers

Both academic studies and DiversityInc Top 50 data show a direct correlation between formal, cross-cultural mentoring and promotions of underrepresented groups in management levels. Follow these steps:

• Include the top three levels of your organization in the mentoring program and make participation part of senior executives’ performance evaluation
• Expand your cross-cultural mentoring program to as many managers as possible throughout the organization, using flexible options such as virtual mentoring and group mentoring
• Create as many cross-cultural pairings as possible
• Ensure both mentors and mentees have cultural-awareness and diversity training before they start the formal relationship
• Monitor the relationships every three months to ensure they are working smoothly
• Have finite periods for mentor/mentee relationships, usually one year
• Measure engagement, retention and promotion of mentees versus non-mentees

Talent-Development Best Practice No. 3: Use Resource Groups to Find & Develop Talent

Resource groups are the best way to find that hidden talent—people who may have leadership potential but don’t have the right education or experience to be considered. Resource groups can encourage them to progress and give them confidence to ask for more.

Follow these steps:

• Ask resource-group leaders to identify talented people within their midst and invite them to take on leadership positions within the resource group
• Give the talent potentials cross-functional assignments within the group so they learn new skills
• Pair them with experienced leaders
• Ensure they have cross-cultural mentors within the organization
• Track their engagement, retention and promotion and publicize their success stories so others seek out similar talent-development opportunities

For more best practices for equitable talent development, read Increasing Diversity in Talent Development.

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The Difference Between Mentoring, Coaching and Sponsorship provides answers to these valuable questions that every professional should know, from entry-level staffers to the top executive ranks. It tells you tips on how to find the best mentors, coaches and sponsors.

The article serves as a primer, giving readers an easy-to-understand definition of mentoring, coaching and sponsorship. Readers will discover:

• The difference between someone who talks with you, talks to you and talks about you
• Why the cross-cultural component of all three is critical to promotion rates and valuable to senior executives serving as mentors
• Why networking is important and how to make it fit into the overall talent-development model
• Why having more than one mentor, coach and sponsor make you career-savvy

For more best practices on mentoring and talent development, read Mentoring Roundtable: How Mentoring Improves Retention, Engagement & Promotions and Increasing Diversity in Talent Development.

Read The Difference Between Mentoring, Coaching and Sponsorship on DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

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