Do you think diversity training is effective? What would make it effective?

Answer:

Most of the “diversity training” I’ve seen is not very sophisticated. Some companies think “compliance” training is diversity training, but that’s incorrect. In my opinion, to build a good diversity-training program, you have to first have a plan. To have a plan you need goals. And to get goals, you need measurement to tell you where you are. Here is a quick sequence:

1. Benchmarking (find out where your company is)

2. Engagement, broken out by race, gender and age (how the people in your company feel)

3. Understanding goals (approved by the CEO)

4. Diversity plan (to take from where you are and how your people feel to where you want to go)

5. Training (to help accomplish the plan)

DiversityInc has the most sophisticated benchmarking available—we use SAS software to crunch the extensive data we’ve collected (for 13 years) in the DiversityInc Top 50 process. We also use our own engagement survey to gain more perspective on the benchmarking data; if you can benchmark and survey by division, you can get very finite in finding where your opportunities are. In the past year, we’ve helped several companies align their diversity programs with the strategic direction of the company. This has the result of pulling in top management to the cause.

One more thing: Training for top management should be considered carefully. I’ve found that a discussion of legacy is motivating for senior executives. The recent presidential election has brought understanding about the business case for diversity in a way I’ve never seen before. There seems to be far more clarity on how effectively relating to people where they are is absolutely necessary to achieve the results you want. I’ve spoken at several meetings where I’ve seen an immediate change in tempo as a result of linking the reality around demographics and diversity-plan results to their roles as senior executives—and whether or not they’re going to leave their organization better, or worse, prepared to meet the immediate future.

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.

The post Ask the White Guy: Is Diversity Training Effective? What Would Make It Effective? 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.

Despite entreaties from GOP leaders, including presumptive vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan, Akin is continuing his run for the Missouri Senate seat. And all this focus on what he said, his alleged sources of information and the backfighting in the party are proving a negative distraction for the Republican national convention in Tampa next week.

The greater organizational issues one can take away from this are both of a preventative and a reactive nature. From a preventative perspective, how can an organization create a culture of inclusion and respect so people do not feel they can make blatant—and erroneous—statements that are harmful to others? And once a statement is made or action taken, what are the legal and ethical ways to respond? How do you prevent negative stereotypes from seriously impacting productivity?

Without proactive efforts to create an inclusive culture, organizations run the risk of permitting inaccurate stereotypes to flourish, which hampers engagement and productivity. Dr. Claude Steele spoke about this to a DiversityInc audience, highlighting stereotype threat and how it impedes talent development for people from underrepresented groups. [Scroll down to watch the video.]

What’s Legal?

DiversityInc legal columnist Bob Gregg, who specializes in discrimination law, says our laws encourage the ability to have different viewpoints. “We recognize that if we have people from so many races and religions, all these differences create frictions. We address our differences with laws as opposed to guns and bullets … Our policies have to be flexible enough to allow difference but not to allow discrimination.”

Many of these statements are voiced as “religious beliefs.” In the private sector, the Title VII Civil Rights Act of 1964 guarantees that employees cannot be discriminated against because of religious beliefs. Employees can believe whatever they choose but cannot take actions that violate a company’s policy. However, the company must be very clear in its communications on the policy.

AT&T, No. 4 in The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list, ran up against this issue in 2004. The company had adopted a diversity policy requiring its employees to “value the differences” in all employees. A Christian employee, who said he believed that being gay is a sin, requested clarification on the policy and did not receive it. He then refused to sign the policy and was fired. He sued for religious discrimination and won because, according to Gregg, “AT&T failed to accommodate his religious beliefs by failing to provide an explanation and ordering him to sign the policy.”

But in another 2004 religious-discrimination lawsuit against Cox Communications, No. 25 in the DiversityInc Top 50, the outcome was quite different, says Gregg. A supervisor was fired for violating the anti-harassment policy (which had been clearly explained) when he told a lesbian employee during an evaluation that being a lesbian was a sin and that he would pray about her sexual orientation. The court found that the behavior violated a reasonable company policy, and the firing was upheld.

“Our policies should not prohibit beliefs; they should focus on behaviors. If it’s not a matter of public concern, a religious belief or something protected by the whistleblower law, a company can say that if a person doesn’t go along with company values, they can work elsewhere,” Gregg says, adding that it also depends on the person’s job. A vice president of HR, for example, would have more at stake for making a comment perceived as biased than a file clerk. It also matters whether the comment was made on company or personal time, he says.

Can You Prevent These Incidents? 

From these cases, it’s obvious that an organization must communicate its values clearly—and that those values must emanate from the top.

DiversityInc Top 50 companies all have consistent diversity and inclusion policies and statements from the CEO on their websites supporting them. In almost all of these companies, the mission statement also includes a diversity component.

Organizationally, it’s important to engage employees “whose thoughts around their personal values may differ from corporate values,” says Dr. Walter McCollum, senior director of Organizational Development at Sodexo, No. 2 in the DiversityInc Top 50. Dr. McCollum, who will be the luncheon speaker at DiversityInc’s Sept. 13 event on “Managing Relationships Between HR & Diversity Departments,” says it’s critical to recognize the interplay between departments, sub-units and identity groups.

“By paying attention to the impact of actions on different populations, we make sure we account for key aspects of the system, and, therefore, create comprehensive and lasting change. Attending to diversity increases the likelihood that a change process will benefit the system as a whole along with its many parts,” he says.

An essential way to do that is through the use of resource groups, which are a major source of cultural education in an organization and a conduit between mid- and low-level employees and senior executives. All of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies use their resource groups for these purposes, and they make sure the groups are inclusive—so anyone can join, even if they are not of the direct “affinity” of the group. That increases the ability to reach those who have different views, as does mandatory diversity training for the workforce, which 66 percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 has.

Corporations don’t have power over freedom of thought or speech. But companies with clear communications and diversity-management initiatives in place are better equipped for the legal and organizational challenges of dealing with those whose views collide with corporate values.

–Barbara Frankel

The post Can You Prevent a ‘Todd Akin’ Moment at Your Organization? appeared first on DiversityInc.

What Is Diversity Management?

Diversity management is the method of implementing diversity-and-inclusion strategies—also referred to as D&I strategies—to maximize benefits of corporate diversity in the workplace. Using best practices in recruitment and retention, resource groups and mentoring, diversity management enhances talent development and workforce diversity through utilization of diversity metrics and diversity benchmarking.

Your Diversity-Management Primer

DiversityInc is in the unique position of assessing diversity management because in 13 years of running The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity, we have collected in-depth data on more than 500 companies. The articles below feature the best practices and strategies needed to get companies’ diversity-management departments up to speed. For in-depth information on diversity-management best practices, visit www.DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

Ask the White Guy: Can Companies Survive Without a Concern for Diversity?
The White Guy says companies that don’t pay attention to diversity face a scary long-term future.

Diversity Management: The Four Stages of Diversity Management
We’ve studied the four stages of diversity management for more than a decade. What stage of managing diversity in the workplace is your company in?

What’s the Key to Diversity-Management Success?
What’s the one factor that determines whether your company’s diversity efforts will succeed or fail?

Ask the White Guy: Can a Diversity-Management Question Kill Your Career?
The White Guy responds to a reader’s inquiry by breaking down how data on retention rates can be analyzed, but he warns about discussing diversity topics in certain professional circles.

Diversity Management’s No. 1 Advantage: The CEO/Chief-Diversity-Officer Relationship
Diversity management at Sodexo centers on a special trust and open dialogue. What can you learn from this DiversityInc Top 50 company?

What Diversity-Management Metrics Are the Most Valuable?
From recruitment and promotions to engagement and retention, here are the best practices your company should use.

Diversity Management: What Diversity Questions Should Be on Employee Surveys?
Diversity-management questions on employee surveys are a key way to gain critical feedback. What questions deliver results?

Diversity Management: Which Diversity-Councils Model Is Best for Your Organization?
Two companies—one with a more traditionally structured council and one with a more integrated model—share their best practices and significant results.

Additional Diversity-Management Training

DiversityInc Training offers an online corporate university designed to provide basic diversity training to professionals whose work is aligned with diversity management.

Four DiversityInc Training courses—employee-resource groups, mentoring, diversity councils and generational communications—provide an in-depth overview of the topic, data-based trends for best practices on how to structure diversity initiatives/programs, key measures for success, and specific case studies from The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity.

For more best practices and case studies on resource groups, mentoring, diversity councils and generational communications, view our diversity web seminars.

The post Diversity Management 101: This Definition of Diversity Management Can Help You Make a Business Case appeared first on DiversityInc.

What should you do if one of your executives uses a negative stereotype, especially in a public forum? How can you make sure your workplace doesn’t tolerate these types of damaging misconceptions, which impact morale and productivity? Learn a lesson from recent verbal missteps by presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and see what Dr. Claude Steele advises you to do.

Gingrich announced that “If the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied cultural competence with food stamps.”

NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous called the statement “inaccurate and divisive.”

Santorum said at a campaign stop in Iowa: “I don’t want to make Black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” After getting national criticism for the remark, he said he was “pretty confident that I didn’t say ‘Black,’” but the video shows that he did indeed say that. Watch the video.

Dr. Steele, dean of education at Stanford University and former provost of Columbia University, is the author of “Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us.” Dr. Steele, who analyzed these stereotypes at a DiversityInc event, told us that statements like these have long-term impact on workplace engagement and productivity. Watch the video.

“As my work has taught me and illustrates, stereotypes are not innocent or easily ignorable. They create pressures on people to see others in those stereotypes and degrade the quality of life for people who are stereotyped. They have a profound effect of creating discomforts that are attached to our identities,” he said. “Politicians resort to reinforcing old stereotypes about groups because it gives people belief that these things still are true … it creates a sense of social reality. Even though Obama’s the president, it keeps them alive.”

What would he recommend you do if someone in your organization perpetuated a stereotype? Be true to your values. “If I were leading an organization and this happened, if the opportunity arose in a naturalistic way, I’d condemn it and say this is something to be ashamed of. That’s what happened in the civil-rights movement; I’m old enough to remember when you could use the N-word in Congress, and that’s not acceptable anymore,” Dr. Steele said. 

For more on clarity of values, read CEO Commitment: Why Visibility & Accountability Matter and Why Julie Goodridge Might Be the Scariest Person in Investment Banking. Also read Ask the White Guy: Decision Making, Clarity of Values & What to Do When It Goes Horribly Wrong.

The real danger, Claude emphasized, is in people accepting these stereotypes. “These people are dangerously trafficking in stereotypes and making this a normative behavior. That’s what happens eventually; behavior shifts and these are no longer the norm,” Dr. Steele said.

And people often accept these statements without checking the facts. For example, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, offers food stamps. PolitiFact says participation is high, but that’s because of efforts since the Bush administration to increase participation. The largest group of SNAP recipients is white people, and most SNAP participants are younger than 18.

Facts are important in diversity work and in destroying stereotypes. Here are some diversity-management lessons demonstrated by companies in the DiversityInc Top 50 to address stereotypes in your organization. 

Ensure Diversity Training Is Mandatory

Seventy-eight percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 require mandatory cultural-competence training for their managers, and 66 percent require it for their entire workforce. While one can’t regulate what comes out of an employee’s mouth, teaching people about the need for respectful speech, as well as what type of speech is hateful, goes a long way to avoiding these types of hurtful communications.

Former NBA star John Amaechi addressed the power of hateful words recently when he keynoted DiversityInc’s special-awards ceremony. Read highlights from John Ameachi’s speech and watch the video.

Get the Message Out Externally and Internally, Starting at the Top

From your CEO’s statement on diversity (which should be on your corporate homepage) to your mission statement to all your external and internal communications, the message of respect and inclusion has to be clear and constant. Allowing any stereotypes for any group, including white men, to be perpetuated in any way by your company opens the door for these kinds of comments. A no-tolerance-for-disrespect policy, from the highest ranks of the company on down, must be clearly and consistently articulated.

Mandate Cross-Cultural Mentoring—Allow Senior Leadership to ‘Walk in Others’ Shoes’

Formal, cross-cultural mentoring relationships enable people from different backgrounds to really get to know each other and enhance cultural awareness, especially for senior, white, male executives. The one-on-one nature of the relationship, both studies and DiversityInc data show, are critical to that increased knowledge. Progressively more companies also require both mentors and mentees to undergo cultural-competence training before beginning the formal mentoring arrangement. Ninety-four percent of DiversityInc Top 50 companies now have formal, cross-cultural mentoring programs.

Expose CEOs and Senior Executives to Different Employees Through ERGs

Ninety percent of DiversityInc Top 50 CEOs now meet regularly with leaders of employee-resource groups. That connection, one shared by other senior executives, is invaluable in developing understanding of the group’s constituencies. For more on the positive effects of CEO commitment on talent development, read Increasing Diversity in Talent Development.

Related stories/videos:

The G.O.P.’s ‘Black People’ Platform
New York Times’ op-ed columnist Charles M. Blow comments on and debunks the rhetoric from GOP candidates Santorum and Gingrich and how they play on existing racial anxieties.

Gay, Black Aide Defends Santorum
One of Santorum’s former aides, Chris Matthews, a Black and openly gay man, defends the candidate. Here’s what he said.

NAACP Blasts Santorum for Targeting Blacks in Entitlement Reform
A CBS news video shows Rick Santorum’s comments that single out Blacks as recipients of federal benefits. The NAACP says his remarks are “inaccurate and outrageous,” while Santorum denies he said “Black.”

NAACP Leader Blasts Gingrich’s Food Stamp Comment
Gingrich’s comments, as shown in a CBS news video, positions Blacks and other traditionally non-represented groups as jobless people relying on food stamps. NAACP refutes the inaccuracies and Gingrich denies his remarks were racist.

Newt Gingrich ‘Irritated’ By Outrage Over His Comments On Food Stamps
A Black person, Yvan Lamothe, speaks up to Gingrich at the candidate’s town hall in New Hampshire, and Gingrich aims to clarify his original remarks.

Black Woman Confronts Santorum Over Comments: ‘Why Do You Have A Problem Against Black People?’
At a campaign event in New Hampshire, a Black woman confronted Santorum on his racist remarks. A Think Progress post provides an audio recording and a photo of the exchange.

Why Santorum’s Comment Isn’t Racist
An article on The Root calls attention to how the comments take root in a deeper fear by GOP members to discuss issues of race and truly connect with Black voters.

Rick Santorum To John King: I Didn’t Say Black People, I Said ‘Blah’ People
What did you hear Santorum say? “Blah,” “Black” or something else? Mediaite.com offers readers a “What Did You Hear Rick Santorum Say?” poll and a video from the candidate’s appearance on John King USA where he tries to defend his statements.

Did Newt Gingrich really say Blacks should “demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps”?
Gingrich said that his comments aren’t racially charged if you look at them in context. Metro posts the full text of what he said for readers.

Rick Santorum, Racist—It’s a Lie
National Review blog defends Santorum, saying he did not say “Blacks” and upholding that he is not a racist but honest about data facts in American populations.

The Slanders Against Santorum Clarify the Real Conflict
This blog defends Santorum, saying NPR and leftists “manufactured a controversy” to slander “a man who’s one of the nation’s leading advocates for rebuilding African-American families.”

Sarah Palin defends Newt Gingrich: David Gregory of ‘Meet the Press’ asked ‘racist-tinged’ question
Palin says the “Food Stamp President” line wasn’t racist—it was an answer to a reporter’s question that was tinged with racism. Was it a set-up?

The post ‘Blacks Should Not Be Satisfied With Food Stamps’: The Danger of Stereotypes appeared first on DiversityInc.

Q: DO YOU REQUIRE:
A certain percentage of women and people of color in management? That the company has a diversity award program? That the company has affinity groups? That the company has mandatory diversity training for the workforce?

A: We analyze the data from the hundreds of companies that apply and compare all companies against the accomplishments of the 50 best. It is the practices of the best companies that produce the standards, not something we dream up. The results are expressed as a percentage of standard deviation, with cut-offs at both the low and high levels. For example, a company that has 80 percent Black people does not receive more points than the high cut-off and having that high a percentage of Black people would certainly make it practically impossible for them to be competitive on Latinos, Asians and American Indians.

1. We do not require a certain percentage of women and people of color in management. The percentage of women and Black, Latino, Asian and American Indian people in management that is competitive to be on our list is a factor of the  results of the companies that are the most equitable.

2. We don’t require the company to have a diversity award program. Although that may be a nice thing to do, it’s a minor factor of overall organizational communications.

3. Companies that make the DiversityInc Top 50 list are not required to have affinity groups. While it’s not a requirement, there is no case of a company producing competitive results in human capital without them. The correlation between employee-resource groups (ERGs) and talent development is very strong. Again, it’s not an absolute requirement and some companies in the DiversityInc Top 50 have rather low participation in their ERGs, but the connection between ERGs and competitive results becomes stronger every year.

4. Mandatory diversity training is not a requirement, but it’s increasingly difficult to attain competitive results without mandatory training.

There’s a very important point to be made here: I don’t think you can game the survey. Overall results are a matter of organizational culture, and that extends to many facets beyond ERGs or mandatory diversity training. For example, there is an order of magnitude difference in overall philanthropy spend between companies at the top of our list and companies that finished in the lowest quartile of all respondents. I think what we’re measuring is organizational empathy and commitment to equity. This is critical to effectiveness in many ways, but here’s a simple and profoundly important one: If all people are created equally, then talent is distributed equally, and that means quality is directly relative to diversity.

If you would like to send a diversity-management question, please email askDiversityInc@DiversityInc.com.

The post How Does DiversityInc Determine the Top 50? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Read the specific actions that these executives are taking.

What are the greatest obstacles to equality in corporate America (and America) today?

Emilio Egea, chief diversity officer, Prudential Financial: Bias has gone from being very overt to being more implicit, an unconscious incompetence. I don’t think it’s necessarily malevolent, but people have these biases and they don’t recognize how they’re impacting their workplace decisions.

Billie Williamson, Americas inclusiveness officer, Ernst & Young: There is a broader issue of unintended bias. People don’t mean to be biased but they are because of the way they grew up and the different experiences they have had. There are built-in things in the mind that don’t allow us to treat people decently.

Alicia Petross, senior group manager, diversity, Target Corp.: The biggest challenge that we face as diversity leaders, and I think it’s human nature, is dealing with how people naturally behave, how the brain functions, how the brain resists change. We are trying to take individuals with 30, 40, 50, 60 years of experience and bias and beliefs, and shift them to a different place than they experience on a day-to-day basis, and that is a huge undertaking. That’s why this becomes the evolution or the journey, and this doesn’t happen overnight. You’re trying to impact corporate culture, and then you’re trying to impact individual beliefs and behaviors.

Jimmie Paschall, senior vice president, external affairs, and global diversity officer, Marriott International: Taylor Branch called it intimate separation. It’s a concept that you can work with people for years and not really know them because individuals don’t render themselves vulnerable to each other.

Bob Chauvin, president, SimplexGrinnell, a Tyco International company: There is a perception that people don’t have the ability to aspire or achieve certain career aspirations. [People think] they don’t care, they’re not interested and, therefore, we shouldn’t spend our time with them.

Tara Amaral, chief diversity officer and vice president of talent acquisition, ADP: We’re not particularly good at making sure that everyone understands the different channels that they could leverage to find out about opportunities, project work, how we do a better job of connecting people so that they can manage their own career. 

Tracey Gray-Walker, senior vice president and chief diversity officer, AXA Equitable: Unequal access. There are leaders who believe that people should be able to be successful in environments but those people don’t necessarily have the same access to the decision makers or the people who are actually creating the opportunities.

Lorie Valle-Yañez, vice president, chief diversity officer, MassMutual: There is often a lack of access in an organization to prevent people from even having a conversation. The people at the top tend to be more homogeneous and are not even having the benefit of the dialogue of diversity of thought. In some organizations, there’s a cultural taboo of even having conversations up and down the chain.

Jim Norman, vice president of diversity, Kraft Foods: One of the greatest obstacles is a scarcity of resources in corporations, a scarcity of time, a scarcity for positions, a scarcity of access to the top jobs. Whenever you have that, you’re going to have this human nature play out in a certain way—about controlling access, limiting access, giving time.

How involved should corporations be in changing public policy/social inequities?

Tracey Gray-Walker: They should be very involved because companies have the opportunity to actually change and influence communities from a policy standpoint.

Joe Husman, national manager, inclusion and diversity, Toyota Financial Services: It used to be the federal government that led the workplace progress for many different groups. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. If the federal government is not going to be the place that is the benchmark on leading, on equality for people, then maybe it should be corporations.

Lorie Valle-Yañez: We’re sitting in Springfield, Mass. And it is absolutely a responsibility to help people through supporting education. Eventually, you hope these folks will become customers. It’s really in companies’ self-interest to be involved.

Jim Norman: Companies are a little bit more challenged when it comes to public policy because, at least in the United States, that may be contrary to their corporate best interests. The public policy for a society typically sits on the Democratic side of the House, on the left. The things that benefit organizations typically sit on the right.

Susan Hamilton, assistant vice president, diversity/human resources, CSX Corp.: If corporations are not involved in public life, the communities will stagnate and they will not accept change. The companies have to lead the way—meaning company leaders have to be involved in organizations and community.

William Lee, director, corporate diversity, inclusion and compliance at Abbott: It’s important for companies to be involved from a public standpoint because of their future workforces [and] the needs they have. What you need to do is go into the communities that need it the most and develop those folks to be future employees for you.

Deborah Dagit, vice president and chief diversity officer, Merck & Co.: If you’ve done diversity work in the government and nonprofit sectors, it becomes apparent that—whether it’s good, or right, or not—the likelihood that you can effect change on a global basis is greater in the corporate world. It’s just a bigger microphone. There are more funds, and people are more likely to listen and replicate.

Ronke Ekwensi, vice president, Pfizer: When an organization can see a synergistic need between their survival and your welfare, then what that organization will do is step up to ensure your welfare is met. I came from a public accounting firm, and … one of the reasons why public accounting firms are so far ahead in the diversity agenda is that they recognized that if they were not diverse, the economics of their business was going to change because their customers were changing. So they had to step up to the plate, as opposed to a widget-making company where there is a product on the shelf and maybe or maybe not you’re not getting that same kind of economic pressure. To the extent that you can align both, then you see corporations or organizations taking that proactive step to make a difference.

The post How to Eliminate Your Company’s Promotion Gaps appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:
I have just been invited to (my company’s) first ever Diversity & Inclusion meeting and training pilot tomorrow morning. It will be a 4 hour session managed by an external training vendor. Attending will be several “diverse” and female senior managers in addition to a few HR managers.

Can you give me a couple of bullets on what should be included in a standard session and how is a successful rollout managed? Given that this [is] a first for (my company) I am hoping it is well received and receives C-level support.

Answer:
In my opinion, diversity training that is not immediately tied back to profitability and the business case is doomed to marginalization and/or failure.

Please read this: How Effective Diversity Management Drives Profit

Please read this too: Why Do Diversity-Management Departments Need Budget?

Am I correct in understanding that your diversity training is only targeted for non-white people? If so, white men should be included by mandate (not by voluntary action).

Ultimately, diversity training should help people develop relationships to people who are not like them. This is tied to economics. In 1951, the average bank (for example) could afford to discriminate against everyone but white men because the labor force was segregated and white men had all the high-paying jobs. In 1951, women had the right to vote for only 31 years. “Gay? Good for you, I’m happy too.” You get the point.

Today, the average bank cannot afford to redline anyone from their business operations; without even discussing programs mandated by the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the economy has expanded to the point where our workforce will be 70 percent women and/or Black and Latino by 2016, household income for Black, Asian and Latino households is rising at twice the rate of white households (and has been since 1990), more people with ADA-defined disabilities have college degrees than people without ADA-defined disabilities, white people will be less than 50 percent of our population by 2043, and now that DADT has ended and DOMA is no longer being defended by the president, gay marriage and equal rights are right around the corner.

You shouldn’t be “hoping” for C-level support. Any CEO with his/her head out of the sand will be demanding support for diversity-management excellence. Why?

A person’s ability to build equitable relationships is directly relevant to their effectiveness in business.

If you think about it, white men are the LEAST likely to have trusting business relationships with people other than white men. Think about this carefully: A Black woman executive (for example) will HAVE to have built trusting business relationships with many white men to be promoted. The reciprocal is simply not true for the majority of white men; almost every single white man at the top of a Fortune 500 company got there without having to have a trusting, deep business relationship with anyone other than white men (they may have chosen to do otherwise, but it wasn’t necessary to get where they are in the overwhelming majority of companies).

If you consider the rapidly moving marketplace and the condition of white men and their interpersonal relationship experience, the inevitable conclusion is that diversity training MUST involve everyone in the company-especially white men.

I also think language around diversity should be very carefully phrased. Does your company’s CEO have a “vision” for profitability? Does the bearing assembly in the main shaft of a jet engine have an “aspirational” diameter? Does the vice president of sales task her/his salespeople with an “ideal” for a sales goal? Not in any business that’s successful.

Diversity management must be discussed in the same precise terms as any other important business process.

Finally: Please do not use “diverse” as a euphemism for everyone but white, Christian, heterosexual men with no ADA-defined disabilities. If you do, you send the signal that they are “normal” and everyone else needs “help.”

If you’ve read this far and are not bored to tears with me yet, please read this: Why Do ‘Differences’ Matter?

The post Why White Men Must Attend Diversity Training appeared first on DiversityInc.

Honors was permanently relieved of his duties as commanding officer of USS Enterprise Tuesday after it came to light that he produced and starred in sexist and homophobic videos that were broadcast on the aircraft carrier while he was serving in a top leadership position.

The fiasco offers a stark example of how workplace relations and collegiality can suffer when bigoted exchanges are allowed to occur uncensored.

John M. Robinson, chief diversity officer at the U.S. Department of State, recently told a DiversityInc audience in Washington, D.C., that when it comes to the principles of equity, fairness and inclusion, senior leaders in an organization set the tone-and their commitment must be visible and personal.

There’s a reason why CEO Commitment is the most heavily weighted section of The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity^�®, since it heavily influences all other diversity-management efforts.

“You don’t get trickle-up diversity,” Robinson said. “It has to start with the leadership. It must be visible and specific to your workforce. It should be personal.”

Honors appeared in the career-ending videos, which include swearing, anti-gay slurs and images of naked women taking a shower, while he was the USS Enterprise’s second-ranking officer back in 2006 and 2007, and they were broadcast on the ship’s closed-circuit television. He took over as the ship’s commander in May.

So, what do you do when coworkers, especially those in leadership positions, say bigoted or offensive things in the workplace? What do you do if you happen to work for someone like Capt. Honors or someone like him happens to work for you?

It’s a tough dilemma for many in the workplace who may fear that calling out this type of offensive behavior, especially when it’s coming from the top echelons, can backfire.

Once the Honors fiasco came to light after the Virginian-Pilot newspaper published edited versions of his lewd videos on its website last Saturday, the Navy’s response was fairly swift-and sent a strong message. Within three days, he was relieved of his duties.

“The foundation of our success in the Navy lies in our ability to gain and hold the trust of our Sailors, including through personal example,” said Adm. John C. Harvey Jr., commander of the U.S. Fleet Forces Command, in a written statement on Tuesday. “When confidence and trust are lost in those who lead, we fail.”

See the controversial Navy videos here.

So what else should you be doing?

The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity^�® focus on diversity training that goes way beyond mere compliance and is designed to create a more inclusive workplace and a “safe space” where everyone can reach potential, regardless of race/ethnicity, gender, age, orientation, disability or religion. And at the most progressive companies, it’s a critical factor in heightening employee engagement, yielding increased productivity and, most importantly, innovation.

In fact, 88 percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 mandate diversity training for their managers and 64 percent mandate it for their entire workforces.

It’s also a good idea to regularly expose senior leaders, including the CEO, to employee-resource groups, because it gives them valuable insights into the corporate culture they may otherwise not get.

Eighty-eight percent of DiversityInc Top 50 CEOs now meet regularly with ERG members, up from 84 percent last year and 37 percent five years ago.

What’s most critical when it comes to these types of meetings is the ability of ERG members to speak candidly-and for action to be taken without repercussions.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has published a free manual on how to respond to everyday bigotry and how to create an office environment that models respect and tolerance. “Core-value statements and other policies sitting on dusty shelves don’t establish an office’s culture. Casual interactions do,” the manual reads. “Whether you’re a staffer or a manager or an executive, there’s a role for you to play in setting a respect and unbiased tone in the office.”

Among some of the actions you can consider:

Interrupt early. Workplace culture largely is determined by what is or isn’t allowed to occur. If people are lax in responding to bigotry, then bigotry prevails. Speak up early and often in order to build a more inclusive environment.

Don’t laugh. Meet a bigoted joke with silence and maybe a raised eyebrow.

Interrupt the laughter. “Why does everyone think that’s funny?” Tell your coworkers why the “joke” offends you, that it feels demeaning and prejudicial. And don’t hesitate to interrupt a “joke” with as many additional “no” messages as needed.

Go up the ladder. If the behavior persists, take your complaint up the management ladder. Find allies in upper management and call on them to help create and maintain an office environment free of bias and bigotry.

Band together. Like-minded colleagues also may form an alliance and then ask the colleague or supervisor to change his or her tone or behavior.

The SPLC manual also offers some advice for employees when the bias is coming from the top, as was the case in the Navy video incident.

“When bias comes from the boss, it’s easy to assume nothing can be done,” the manual reads. “The boss has all the power, right? Regardless of a company’s size, nothing gets done without the worker; your power rests in this simple fact.”

Among some of the response techniques you can use:

Focus on the company’s people. “A lot of different kinds of people work for you and for this company. We come to work every day and give you our best. What you just said, does it really honor me and other people here?”

Tie tolerance to the bottom line. Remind your supervisor that when people feel valued and respected, a healthy and productive work environment emerges. “Is ‘faggot’ really a word we should be throwing around? We don’t know who’s gay and who’s straight or who has a gay relative and who doesn’t. I think that comment could really upset some people-and distract them from their work.”

Go up the ladder. Consider your options, based on your supervisor’s temperament and the office environment. If you’re uncomfortable confronting the boss directly, consult your company’s human-resources department to find out what harassment policies are in place and whether they apply.

Use incidents to teach tolerance. Psychologists at Harvard, the University of Virginia and the University of Washington have created Project Implicit, a series of tests designed to measure hidden or unconscious bias. You can take the tests at Project Implicit’s website to see what hidden biases you and your coworkers may be harboring.

“A growing number of studies show a link between hidden biases and actual behavior,” according to Teaching Tolerance, a project by the Southern Poverty Law Center, dedicated to reducing prejudice. “In other words, hidden biases can reveal themselves in action, especially when a person’s effort to control behavior consciously flags under stress, distraction, relaxation or competition.”

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ADP is No. 49 on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity�® and AXA Equitable is one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies.

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