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 an era defined by an escalating “war for talent,” many employers are providing their workforces an environment that allows employees to better balance the competing demands of careers and personal lives. This is particularly important to Generation X and millennials, many of whom prefer greater control over their personal time. As an alternative to the Monday-to-Friday 9-to-5 schedule, these “work/life programs” have become increasingly popular. Examples of work/life program components include:

• Flexible work arrangements such as flex-time (e.g., flexible hours, compressed work week)
• Part-time schedules
• Telecommuting
• Discretionary or floating leave (e.g., paternity leave, educational leave, community-service leave)
• Job-sharing
• Shift-swapping

For more on work/life benefits and diversity management, watch our diversity web seminar on work/life.

Although the program is usually created at the headquarters level, programs must also be implemented locally, at field facilities or offices. The typical process requires an employee to approach her/his manager with a specific request for flexible or alternative work arrangements. The manager then must decide whether the request is consistent with the parameters of the company’s program and the needs of the business unit, since approval is not guaranteed. Often, human resources is involved in the decision-making, or review, process.

There are many positive reasons why employers initiate work/life programs. These include:

• Increasing productivity
• Retaining staff and decreasing turnover
• Expanding the talent pool, attracting and recruiting new employees
• Enhancing diverse recruitment and retention

See “Work-Life Balance and the Economics of Workplace Flexibility,” Executive Office of the President, Council of Economic Advisors Report, March 2010.

For more on diversity management and recruitment, watch Diversity Web Seminar on Recruitment: 5 Workforce-Diversity Strategies to Find, Engage & Retain Talent.

Properly designed and consistently implemented work/life programs can provide employers a competitive edge in attracting and retaining a diverse, highly productive workforce. (Here’s a comprehensive listing of diversity-management articles demonstrating the effectiveness of these programs.) Unfortunately, if improperly designed and inartfully or inconsistently implemented, these programs can backfire. They then may be an unintended source of depressed morale and possible legal exposure for the employer.

To begin, there is nothing per se unlawful or illegal about a work/life program. Indeed, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) encourages employers to offer such benefits to their employees. Potential legal problems arise in the implementation of these programs. Similar to many other new workplace initiatives, these programs:

• Depend on local and individualized processing, deliberation and management
• Grant substantial discretion to field managers and human-resources representatives
• May implicate federal employment laws (e.g., Americans with Disabilities Act, as amended; Family and Medical Leave Act; and Fair Labor Standards Act) and state law.

Employers should identify potential problems in the design and implementation of work/life programs and take steps to minimize risks from the beginning. Some companies experiment with a pilot program. This allows them to further study program implementation before deciding whether to continue with it or make it available company-wide.
We describe below several instances where work/life programs may implicate certain federal (and state) employment laws, and we offer suggestions for minimizing potential legal complications and maximizing the benefits to the employer’s business and workplace.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Preventing Discrimination

While the EEOC has strongly encouraged work/life programs, particularly in the caregiving context (e.g., for children, elderly parents, etc.), such programs present another potential source of discrimination allegations. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires equal treatment and nondiscrimination with respect to the terms and conditions of employment—such as compensation, benefits and application of company policies—for covered employers regardless of race, color, religion, sex or national origin (“protected classes”).Most work/life programs empower local managers and/or human-resources representatives to determine whether employee requests for flexible schedules, for example, are consistent with the needs of the business and should be granted. Local discretion creates an opportunity for aggrieved employees to claim unlawful discrimination.

There is always a risk that such programs may be implemented in a manner that results in perceived—or actual—disparate treatment or disparate impact against one or more protected individuals. For example, if it appears that most flexible work arrangements have been granted to younger, or white, employees, the employer may be exposed to a discrimination claim.

Recommendations for Diminishing Discrimination Risks

Ensure that senior management exercises the same diligence, caution and oversight over the creation and implementation of work/life programs as it would with planning and launch of any other grant of managerial discretion over employment matters.

• Establish and disseminate clear policies and procedures to assure that supervisors make nondiscriminatory decisions based on sound and demonstrable business reasons.
• Document each decision with clearly articulated reasons. Decision making should be consistent and capable of serving as a potential precedent for future requests and decisions.
• Rigorously and regularly train all managers/supervisors and related human-resources personnel on the EEO/nondiscrimination/non-retaliation requirements of implementing work/life programs, making sure they understand that the programs are a central part of company policy.
• Ensure fairness in application of the rules by periodically reviewing the grants and denials for disparate treatment or adverse impact. Take appropriate remedial action based on the results of the analyses.

Family and Medical Leave Act

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) (and many state counterparts) requires covered employers to provide unpaid, job-protected leave to eligible employees for specified family or medical reasons. Since some employee requests for work/life flexibility, such as modified hours or compressed work week, might be prompted by medical or family concerns, employers should anticipate some overlap between flexible work arrangements and the FMLA.

Where an employee asks for a work/life arrangement because of caregiver issues and the manager does not know, or recognize, the implications of the FMLA, a legal issue could arise. Denial of such a request could inadvertently violate the act. Employers should incorporate safeguards to allow consideration of arrangements protected by the FMLA, where they are requested under the auspices of work/life programs. Read FMLA: What Employers Need to Know.

Recommendations

Requests for work/life flexibility based clearly on FMLA causes, such as where the employee expressly says she needs mornings off to care for an elderly parent, should be processed as FMLA requests. In addition, whenever a flexible work arrangement is denied under the work/life program in circumstances where the manager is unaware of the basis, employers should invite employees to request the same or similar arrangements under FMLA. These issues can be both technical and problematic. Managers should recognize and utilize expert advice whenever appropriate to avoid confusion by employees and missteps by management.

Americans with Disabilities Act Concerns

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA, recently amended by the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act) generally prohibits discrimination against applicants or employees with defined disabilities and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations where requested, except where doing so would cause undue hardship to the employer. Some work/life requests may be prompted by an employee’s medical or other covered disability. As with Title VII, employers need to be cautious that their actions do not result in disparate treatment or cause disparate impact for employees with disabilities as defined in the statute and regulations. Here, too, expert advice should be sought for challenging or complex scenarios.

Read Embracing Disabilities in the Workplace  and Disability Employment Awareness Month Facts & Figures for more information.

A cautionary note: Regarding the ADA reasonable-accommodation requirement, employers should be aware that granting work/life requests will make it more difficult to argue in a separate but similar ADA situation that the requested accommodation under the ADA would cause an undue hardship; if management has already granted the same request to one employee, how could there be “undue hardship” to grant a similar ADA request to another?

Recommendations

• If there is any reason to suspect that an employee is requesting a flexible work arrangement because of a personal medical or other covered condition, the employer should analyze that request as one for a reasonable accommodation under the ADA.
• Alternatively, the employer should provide employees who have been denied flexible work arrangements under the work/life policy an opportunity to renew the request as one for reasonable accommodation under the ADA if their need is prompted by a legitimate physical or medical condition that the business can appropriately consider granting without undue hardship to the business.

Fair Labor Standards Act Wage-Hour Concerns

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), along with analogous state and local laws, generally governs the wages workers receive and the hours they work, including minimum wage, overtime pay and record-keeping requirements for covered employees and employers. Telecommuting, flex- and part-time schedules, shift-swapping and job-sharing can trigger FLSA concerns. This is especially true where tracking hours becomes challenging, for example, with telecommuting or flex-time. Read about American Express’ virtual resource groups for telecommuting employees in Why Resource Groups Are Business-Resource Groups.

Compressed work weeks (e.g., four 10-hour days) may present overtime issues under state (but not federal) law, where working more than eight hours in a day (rather than 40 in a week) requires premium overtime compensation. While the full range of FLSA and state-law issues implicated by work/life–balance programs are complex and must be considered by legal counsel, the following recommendations address a few of these concerns. Read Successful Career Paths for Women in Corporate Sales for more on work/life benefits and women.

Recommendations

• Establish a process to maintain accurate time records for telecommuters, including strong policies requiring: employees to report all time spent on work-related duties and prohibiting “off-the-clock” work; daily reporting of hours worked; and supervisors to review time records frequently.
• Establish a process for maintaining accurate time records for flex-time employees, such as: requiring “badging” (secure electronic entry/exit) at the start and end of shifts; maintaining badge-swipe data; and periodically comparing badge data to employee time records, among other measures.

Cultural/Managerial Resistance

Although not strictly a legal issue, employers implementing work/life–balance programs often encounter resistance by managers accustomed to a 9-to-5 regimen. These managers may improperly deny meritorious requests for flexibility or evaluate an employee who has taken advantage of a work/life–balance initiative more harshly than one who has not. In most companies, managers hold the keys to the program’s ultimate success—or its failure. Their “buy-in” is critical if the benefits are to be achieved.

Recommendations

• Initial training of managers should communicate the importance of this program to the ultimate success of the company. Effective administration of the program should be an element of supervisors’ performance evaluations.
• Train managers to understand that employees should not be disadvantaged in performance reviews or career advancement because of participation in work/life programs.
• Conduct routine “audits” of employee-performance reviews, compensation and other personnel actions to discern any negative treatment or trends, and institute remedial measures, if necessary.
• Acknowledge and reward managers who demonstrate effective implementation and achievement of anticipated benefits of work/life balance in their business units, and share evolving “best practices” with other business units. Publicize such achievements.
• Encourage employee involvement through satisfaction surveys, group meetings and exit interviews to gain important workforce input on work/life initiatives. Read What Diversity Questions Should Be on Employee Surveys?

Conclusion

This article necessarily addresses only a few of the legal and practical considerations of work/life programs and provides recommendations to avoid legal claims and achieve the anticipated benefits. While work/life programs offer many advantages to employers and their employees, they also can raise thorny legal issues in areas where the law is constantly changing. Employers should work closely with their employment-law counsel to address and eliminate or reduce these concerns. This should take place prior to the introduction of the program and throughout its implementation. Employers may then proceed more confidently in winning their “war for talent.”

– Weldon Latham; John M. Bryson II, a Jackson Lewis partner, contributed to this article.  

Weldon Latham is a senior partner in the Washington, D.C., regional office of Jackson Lewis LLP, chair of the firm’s corporate diversity counseling group, chair of Jackson Lewis Diversity Committee, and counsel to the PepsiCo Global Diversity and Inclusion Governance Council and the Omnicom Group Diversity Development Advisory Committee. He is also a professor teaching corporate diversity at the Georgetown University Law Center.

The post Workplace Diversity: 5 Legal Challenges of Work/Life Programs appeared first on DiversityInc.

In DiversityInc’s work/life diversity web seminar, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Barbara Frankel moderates a panel of executives who discuss how top-performing companies are using work/life strategies to improve business, improve workplace diversity, and attain their diversity and inclusion goals.

The panel consists of Barbara Adachi, national managing principal, women’s initiatives, Deloitte (No. 8 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50); Shaun Hawkins, chief diversity officer, Eli Lilly (No. 29); and Charlotte Hawthorne, consultant, work life and diversity, Eli Lilly.

Those who watch this 90-minute diversity web seminar on work/life (also available as a downloadable PDF) will learn the following about workplace diversity:

• The data correlation between work/life programs and retention and promotion rates
• How Deloitte utilizes a corporate lattice, rather than a corporate ladder, to increase overall engagement to 90 percent and a potential 150 percent growth in revenue
• How employers can begin to tailor flexibility for employees and adapt for enhanced workplace diversity
• What Eli Lilly does to reap the greatest benefits and address work/life abuse and inconsistency
• How to evolve your corporate culture to have a more “flexible” mindset

For more on work/life best practices and workplace diversity, read Successful Career Paths for Women in Corporate Sales and PwC’s Maria Castañón Moats Tells Her Story of Career Redemption.

The post Diversity Web Seminar on Work/Life: How Workplace Diversity Benefits From Flexible Work Options 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.

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

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

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

Key findings include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

CSX Corp. has remarkable CEO commitment and has made huge strides in diversifying its workforce and management ranks by race/ethnicity and gender, which is particularly tough for a railroad company headquartered in the South. CSX also has a remarkable record of community philanthropy. Some specific achievements:

• Major efforts to diversify workforce and management. Of managers with less than five years of employment, 42 percent are women, Blacks, Latinos, Asians and American Indians. Two of the top six executives now are women, and CSX has the first woman chief transportation officer in the rail industry.
• Growing emphasis on employees with disabilities, including having a website designed for people with disabilities and being the first company in Northeast Florida certified as disability-friendly.
• Close affiliation through Chairman, President and CEO Michael Ward and the company with the Wounded Warrior Project as its first corporate partner.
• Strong veterans employee-resource group and overall program for veterans, including support of the National Guard and reserves, recognized recently with the Freedom Award from the Department of Defense. CSX is the only company to win this award twice.

Award accepted by Michael Ward, CEO, chairman and president, CSX:

“This is a tremendous honor, on behalf of our 30,000 employees, to receive this award from DiversityInc. As I look around this room, my guess is everyone’s looking to make a positive difference in the lives of others. I want to thank you all for this award and I assure you we will continue to work hard, and we expect to be here every year in the future.”

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

In 2010, Southern Company introduced several changes to its benefits program to align with other large employers and to better meet the diverse, multi-generational interests of employees and recruits. One significant change was the addition of domestic-partner benefits, which DiversityInc had been urging the company to add, to create more equality for LGBT employees.

Other changes included parental leave, maternity leave and adoption reimbursement. The company has increased its relationships with external multicultural organizations, for example, serving as a sponsor for the 2011 Atlanta Human Rights Campaign Gala Dinner. Southern Company also has been working hard to increase the diversity of its talent pool. For example, this year, the company hosted two interns with visual impairments for a three-month rotation as a result of a partnership with the Center for the Visually Impaired in Atlanta. And recent efforts in military recruiting led to Southern Company being one of 15 recipients of the 2010 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award. Southern Company’s leadership clearly understands the importance of diversity management in terms of talent development, innovative work solutions and the ability to connect with customers. The company has escalated its efforts in recent years and shows every indication of doing even more.

Award accepted by Susan Story, CEO, Southern Company Services:

“The ability to be named in the same breadth as the companies we have heard from tonight is extraordinary. We believe in a working environment that allows every single employee to develop to his or her full potential … One of the measures we get paid on is how well we do in the DiversityInc survey. We did improve our employee benefits significantly but another thing we’ve improved upon is our military recruiting. At the end of the day, we know that investing in our communities makes us stronger as a company; and when we invest in our communities, they invest in us.”

The post Video of 2011 DiversityInc Special Awards: Southern Company appeared first on DiversityInc.

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

Specifically:

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

Award accepted by John Strangfeld, chairman and CEO:

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

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

Kaiser Permanente has the most diverse board of directors and management, especially the top three levels of management, that DiversityInc has seen. The company’s board of directors is half Black, Latino and Asian and 36 percent women, and its top level of management is 38 percent Black, Latino and Asian and 25 percent women.

What types of best practices does Kaiser employ to keep its senior levels so diverse? The company has an exemplary mentoring program and is one of only 26 percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 that offer cultural-awareness training for mentors and mentees before they start their formal relationship. Its employee-resource groups are used for diversity training, mentoring, leadership opportunities and talent development.

Kaiser has exceptionally strong diversity leadership from its chairman and CEO, George Halvorson, who leads the National Diversity Council. What makes Kaiser remarkable is the consistency of its diversity-management efforts, as well as the alignment between diversity in the workplace and diversity in the customer base.

Kaiser first participated in The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity in 2005, when it was on the 25 Noteworthy Companies list. It moved to No. 36 on the list in 2006, No. 27 in 2007, No. 7 in 2009 and No. 4 last year. Kaiser’s diversity-management initiatives have jelled in the last five years as a clear reflection of its values and leadership.

Award accepted by Chuck Columbus, chief human resources executive and senior vice president, Kaiser Permanente:

“This recognition helps to remind us of the good work we are doing and why we are doing it. We’ll take this award back and celebrate what it represents, but we’ll celebrate it shortly. There’s still a lot left to do. We still have gaps to address. (In the healthcare world, we call them “disparities.”) For Kaiser Permanente, it’s about carrying on a legacy. We’ve had some long intentional, thoughtful, spirited debates about not just providing the best care but providing the best care for everyone—and that `inspires our work for diversity. It provides a compass for us.”

The post Video of 2011 DiversityInc Special Awards: Kaiser Permanente appeared first on DiversityInc.

Most companies are in the first two stages, with companies that earn spots on the upper portions of The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list in Stage Three. We don’t yet know any companies that are in Stage Four but a handful of very innovative companies are poised to break through to that stage.

Stage One: Celebration Focused

The company has begun to recognize the value of diversity and begins to have celebrations, such as Black History Month and Cinco de Mayo day in the cafeteria. The danger for these companies is in raising expectations with no corresponding gain in opportunities. They have a high level of regrettable loss (loss of talent, particularly from traditionally underrepresented groups) that could have been developed. They also have increasing difficulty in recruiting people from these groups and all younger people, who want a more inclusive environment, according to Pew Research reports.

Stage Two: Workforce Focused

The company has created a diversity plan—with actions, objectives and milestones. It has begun to show gains in the diversity of its workforce and has implemented resource groups and, often, a structured mentoring program. The company now has a competitive advantage—with talent and reaching customers/clients—over competitors still in Stage One.

Stage Three: Marketplace Focused

The organization has metrics-driven accountability for its diversity-management efforts, often through its executive diversity council. Its human-capital and supplier-diversity metrics are well above average and it assesses and communicates clearly the value diversity management is bringing to the organization. The company exhibits cutting-edge diversity-management initiatives, such as innovative work/life programs that aid in retention and talent development, or clear linking of supplier-diversity efforts to community building. It is outpacing its competitors in reaching and developing talent and creating marketplace solutions. These companies outpace their competitors in raising cultural competency in marketing and sales efforts.

Stage Four: Out-Thinking Competition

These companies leverage diversity management to create, sponsor and nurture innovation. They provide thought-leadership and integrate cultural competency in all they do, from recruiting to customer service.

The post The Four Stages of Diversity Management appeared first on DiversityInc.