Bloomberg Businessweek posted the article “Deloitte Thinks Diversity Groups Are Pass” on July 19 about Deloitte’s plans to do away with its “employee affinity groups.” My first thought was, were they referring to the firm’s business resource groups (BRG) That was confirmed as I read on and the article mentioned that the firm will end its women BRG, known as the Women Initiatives (WIN). My second thought was that this is a huge mistake. I sought to understand the rationale so I read on and finished the article.
Deloitte’s rationale for doing away with business resource groups is that it wants to get a broader buy-in, specifically from white males. The firm will move to set up “Inclusion councils,” which will include a mixture of people to tackle diversity issues. The firm’smanaging principal for inclusion,Deepa Purushothaman, explains,”By having everyone in the room, you get more allies, advocates and sponsors. A lot of our leaders are still older white men, and they need to be part of the conversation and advocate for women. But they’re not going to do that as much if they don’t hear the stories and understand what that means.”
I’d like to give Deloitte my perspective on this,but first let me preface by saying the firm is really good in managing diversity and inclusion. The firm ranked No. 12 on our Top 50 list this year and has ranked on the list 13 of the past 16 years.
Inclusion in Resource Groups
When I first came into this space 13 years ago, most companies werenot effectively utilizing their resource groups.The groups at many companies were operating as”affinity groups,” in which they celebrated a culture (Black History Month) or worked to spread awareness about a particular area (including LGBTs or people with disabilities). As the years went on, companies sought to gain more insight from these groups and leverage them for talent management and business objectives. Many companies changed the name of their groups, moving away from”affinity groups” to”resource groups” to” business resource groups.”
The underlying reason for forming specific resource groups is to leverage the backgrounds and experiences of those group members to tackle problems specific to that cohort. For example, the Black resource group would be leveraged to tackle problems such as regrettable loss of Black high potentials, recruiting Black women or further penetrating the Black consumer market. All of the companies on the Fair360, formerly DiversityInc Top 50 and Noteworthy lists have employee resource groups.
Comcast NBCUniversal haseight ERGs,which include more than 20,000 employees across 118 ERG chapters. The groups have generated incredible results for the business, communities, culture and members’ careers. The company uses the 4C Model, which focuses the groups on four areas: Careers, Commerce, Community and Culture. Its ERGs have been successful in all four areas, especially Commerce. Its Black resource group was instrumental in shaping the company’s African American business strategy.
Companies that are most effective in utilizing their business resource groups came across the issue of inclusion years ago. Those companies encouraged inclusion of other race/ethnicities to the Black, Latino or Asian groups.In fact, many companies require a senior executive from a different race/ethnicity sponsor the groups.For the LGBT and people with disabilities groups, a best practice was to add”A” for allies or “Friends” on the endof the acronym to signal that the groups were inclusive of others.
Inclusion of senior executives, majority of which are white men, was critical to elevating the importance of the resource groups. It demonstrated that the company’s commitment to leveraging resource groups for talent management and business objectives was real. Executive sponsors of the resource groups have a responsibility not only to lead the group in completing talent development and business objectives, but to also guide the group to be as inclusive as possible.
While debriefing a global company last month, a white European senior leader who chairs the Black resource group explaine