“Our country’s veterans deserve more than just our respect – they deserve our support in helping them return to the civilian workforce,” said Linda Jimenez, WellPoint’s chief diversity officer and vice president, diversity and inclusion. “WellPoint is committed to supporting veterans through our partnership with the 100,000 Jobs Mission and other outreach efforts.”      

Enlisting in the 100,000 Jobs Mission advances WellPoint’s objective of assisting military veterans. In fact, the company has been named to G.I. Jobs magazine’s Top 100 Military Friendly Employers® list for the past three years. The Veterans’ Organization of WellPoint (VOW) employee resource group plays a valuable role in building a workplace culture that embraces employees and family members who have military experience. The company donates $50,000 annually to the USO, and WellPoint employees put together care packages for deployed military personnel. 

In addition, our Life and Disability Insurance companies further demonstrate WellPoint’s commitment to helping disabled veterans live active lives through sponsorships of sporting opportunities run by The Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project^TM

To meet its commitment to 100,000 Jobs Mission, WellPoint will recruit veterans by attending job fairs and other veteran hiring events across the country, by posting jobs on Transition Assistance Online (TAOnline.com), — the largest source of transition information, jobs and tools for separating military) — as well as HireVeterans.com and other online veterans job sites. 

“Our goal is to assist veterans within our communities and within our company,” said Randy Brown, WellPoint’s executive vice president and chief human resources officer.  “I am proud to be part of an organization that stands behind its mission: To improve the lives of the people we serve and the health of our communities. I believe we can truly make a difference with our support of the 100,000 Jobs Mission.” 

For more information about the 100,000 Jobs Mission or upcoming hiring events, visit www.100000jobsmission.com. 

The post WellPoint Joins 100,000 Jobs Mission Pledging to Hire Veterans appeared first on DiversityInc.

In this 90-minute Veterans in the Workplace webinar, moderated by DiversityInc Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Barbara Frankel, David Casey, vice president of workforce strategies and chief diversity officer at CVS Caremark and former vice president of workplace culture and chief diversity officer at WellPoint, and Margaret Downey, military and diversity recruiting at CSX Corporation, discuss the benefits of hiring veterans and the best practices that keep these workers engaged.

While veterans only make up about 7 percent of the total population (approximately 11 million people), according to the U.S. Census Bureau, they are more educated than the general public. Ninety percent have a high-school diploma, compared with 84 percent of the general public.

Casey, who served in the Marine Corps for eight years and was a part of Operation Desert Storm, says an aptitude for education and learning is just one of the many skills veterans can offer. He notes inspirational leadership, enhanced camaraderie/teamwork, adaptability, a balanced perspective and a strong work ethic and drive to complete assigned tasks.

What’s important, says Casey, is that companies help veterans transfer these skills and experiences to a corporate setting. Without support and recruiters educated in military life/terminology, it can be a challenge to recruit and retain veterans. (For more, read Recruitment Tips: Where to Find Veterans.)

One company well versed in hiring veterans is CSX: 1 in 5 employees currently serves or has served in the armed forces. Downey says the company has outlined a targeted military-recruiting strategy that aligns with its other diversity-recruiting strategies.

“Ultimately this pool has the potential to increase company profits and productivity,” Downey explains. (Watch CSX’s Susan Hamilton discuss the company’s corporate recruiting strategies below.)

Casey and Downey detail during the webinar a variety of recruiting and workplace best practices. These include:

• Using recruiters who are military experts who know where to look for candidates
• Starting a military or veteran resource group to provide support to employees and provide leads to new talent
• Providing a structured environment with clear communications/responsibilities so veterans can thrive
• Offering flexibility and support for veterans with disabilities such as hearing loss, hypertension and post-traumatic stress disorder
• Making up differences in pay/salary for active-duty and veteran employees, and keeping their families and spouses in mind

Additionally, special training for managers and coworkers could help make others aware of how to be more culturally competent with veterans.

Read Veterans in the Workplace: How to Help Them Succeed for more best practices.

The post Veterans in the Workplace: Help Them Make the Transition appeared first on DiversityInc.

How are these companies attracting more talented recruits? Jennifer Terry-Tharp, director, staffing, talent attraction and analytics of AT&T, No. 4 in The 2011 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity, and KiKi Lorenz, college relations manager of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. (Toyota Motor North America is No. 46), share their companies’ best practices and case studies for successful recruiting in this 90-minute recruitment web seminar. The seminar includes data trends from the DiversityInc Top 50, showing best practices that yield measurable human-capital results. Those best practices include the use of resource groups for recruitment and on-boarding, as well as formal, cross-cultural mentoring.

AT&T has demonstrated great success with its recruitment strategies. Terry-Tharp attributes its success in large part to its commitment to preventing high-school dropouts, especially Latinos and Blacks. AT&T is a major sponsor of the Aspire program, which launched in 2009, and works with job shadowing, mentoring and intervention strategies to cut the dropout rate of at-risk students.

Read Increasing Diversity in Talent Development for best practices in developing leadership.

Lorenz similarly emphasizes the importance of a targeted and well-planned internal and external recruitment strategy at Toyota. “Our challenge has been how to create a meaningful recruitment presence but with a smaller footprint,” she explains. “It’s much more than setting up a booth at a business fair.”

She said recruitment doesn’t stop once candidates are hired. “We have to re-recruit and re-engage our associates. If we don’t, other companies will, and we will be left with empty pockets in our workforce.”

To strengthen its efforts, Lorenz said that Toyota looks to community involvement to share its corporate culture and communicate its values to current employees and the public. Some of these relationships include outreach with TELACU and the Boys & Girls Clubs, as well as investments in its local Toyota plant and office locations. Read more about these initiatives in this interview with Toyota Financial Services’ CEO George Borst.

Other best practices that Terry-Tharp and Lorenz detail in the webinar include:

• Holding interactive events online and in-person
• Using resource groups to identify talent internally and externally
• Developing a targeted media and posting strategy for job listings
• Creating a detailed and focused career portal for candidates
• Building relationships and partnering with select organizations and schools

The post What’s Missing From Your Diversity-Recruitment Strategy? appeared first on DiversityInc.

With about 1,700 stores spread across 49 states, the talent-acquisition team at Target might say it’s difficult to recruit underrepresented groups in regions where whites are the majority—especially at its headquarters in Minneapolis.

But they don’t say this. In fact, women, Blacks, Latinos and associates from other underrepresented groups made up 22 percent of Target’s nearly 28,000 salaried positions in the United States last year. That’s because Alicia Petross, senior group manager of diversity at Target, and her staff take a methodical approach to talent acquisition that ensures the company attracts the best and brightest.

“We know where to find diverse talent. But if there’s a limited resource of diverse talent in your area, be extremely realistic and have a plan,” advises Petross.

In Case Study: Recruiting Women, Blacks, Target explains how its resource groups and relationships with professional organizations benefit its talent development.

Beyond setting clear goals and responsibilities, Target’s recruitment approach employs five best-practice steps:

1. Create a plan
2. Gain commitment
3. Leverage the right sources
4. Communicate the brand
5. Measure results

Read Case Study: Recruiting Women, Blacks for Petross’ detailed explanation of each step.

The post Recruiting: What Makes Black & Women Candidates Want to Work for You? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Winning the Race for Talent in Emerging Markets

By Douglas Ready, Linda Hill and Jay Conger, Harvard Business Review

Economic activity in emerging markets, like Brazil, Russia, India and China, is growing by leaps and bounds, but finding talent to keep up with that growth is extraordinarily challenging, according to an article in the Harvard Business Review. And companies in the developed world that try to export the talent strategies they use at home have abysmal results.

The authors interviewed executives at more than 20 global companies to identify strategies for attracting talent in developing economies, including where brand, opportunity, purpose and culture play out in particular ways.

The article notes that recruiters have to offer more than fat paychecks and a standard career path to find and keep employees in developing nations. “Emerging-market job candidates prize a company with a game-changing business model, where they can be part of redefining their nation and the world economy,” the authors write. “They are also attracted by a mission that focuses on helping the unfortunate—many have experienced poverty firsthand—and expresses the value of global citizenship.”

According to the article, a company’s culture matters in several distinct ways in emerging markets:

• Its “story,” or brand promise, has to feel authentic
• Employees must be rewarded for reasons of merit; a high potential from Brazil or Dubai must believe that the executive suite in China or the United Kingdom is within reach
• Although employees want to be recognized for individual achievements, they also want to feel a connection with their teams
• The culture has to be truly “talent-centric” so that people know they’re critical to the company’s success

“This war for talent is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” write the authors, who have spent decades studying talent management and leadership development.

Read Diversity Recruitment Research to access the links to the full reports and read excerpts from:

• “Diversity: An Ephemeral Concept” by Christian Hasenoehrl, Gallup Management Journal Online
• “How to Build the Right Board: Composition and Development” by Mary Helen Gillespie, Directorship
• “The Board’s Role in Developing a Diverse Leadership Team” by James W. Gauss and Howard T. Jessamy, Trustee
• “But Can S/He Lead? Market Assessments of Black Leadership in Corporate America” by Alison Cook and Christy Glass, Journal of Workplace Rights

The post Win the Talent War: Best Practices for Efficient Recruiting appeared first on DiversityInc.

But how do these companies use resource groups to reach community groups and schools to find new talent pools? How are they communicating to potential job candidates about the company’s inclusive culture?

DiversityInc asked several corporations for their best talent-acquisition practices to find out. Outtakes of their responses are detailed in “Resource Groups & Recruitment.”

For example, Ernst & Young uses resource groups to gain leadership access by holding formal employee-referral discussions to scout for similar leadership potential and to mentor future candidates.

Read this article for more best practices from ING, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, ADP, Kraft Foods and Prudential Financial.

For more on resource groups and their benefits, watch our resource-groups web seminar.

The post How to Reach New Talent Pools With Resource Groups appeared first on DiversityInc.

In the 1,620-word article 3 Case Studies: Why Companies Decline on the DiversityInc Top 50, DiversityInc offers three comprehensive case studies from companies that were once ranked as diversity leaders that have since fallen off the list. These are detailed examples of what NOT to do, including having a lack of visible CEO commitment and not holding executives accountable for sustainable results.

Each company case study is broken down into easy-to-follow sections: the situation, what happened, the results and the solutions. All identifying information, including each company name, is excluded from the case studies. However, their actions provide valuable insights.

 Readers will learn:

• Why follow-up with employee-resource groups is critical to business results
• How decreasing the amount of executive compensation tied to diversity results could impact human-capital metrics
• How maintaining a diverse succession pipeline ultimately improves recruiting, retention and promotions throughout all levels of an organization

Read 3 Case Studies: Why Companies Decline on the DiversityInc Top 50 at DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

The post Why Companies Decline in the DiversityInc Top 50 appeared first on DiversityInc.

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

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

The post The U.S. Navy Must Diversify Its Ranks to Stay Relevant appeared first on DiversityInc.