®
Profiles in
DiversityJournal Volume 4, Number 4 • July/August 2002
Denny’s, Inc.
The Road to Redemption
Sharing Workforce Diversity Experiences
U.S. 12.95 U.S.
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Architects of Change
Lockheed Martin We Are Stronger as a Whole
Ford Motor Company It Takes a Village
Abbott Laboratories Careers in Fast Forward
New York Life
JPMorgan Chase
An ambitious new program helps senior management experience the diversity challenges facing their corporation, their people, and their evolving business environment. JPMorgan Chase CEO Bill Harrison (center) with Stephen Young, SVP Global Diversity, and Joy Bunson, SVP Leadership and Organizational Development
Where Humanity & Integrity Go Hand In Hand
Waste Management, Inc. Building a House of Inclusion
Plus ideas from top thought leaders ... including PRISM, The Diversity Leadership Academy of Atlanta, and The Winters Group.
WWW.FOR D.COM
I NGREDIE NTS:
BETTER I DEA # 29
Diversity GLOB AL
The nice thing about our world is that there’s
room for everyone.
There’s something truly special about people who work tirelessly to make the world a kinder place. For this reason, we would like to offer both our thanks and appreciation to those who do so much to promote understanding. We’re proud to support you and your efforts to promote diversity. Marisela Reyes, Arvin Ramachandran, Marsialle Arbuckle, Lewis Thompson and Ellen Enloe are all actively involved in Diversity and Worklife initiatives. Making this a group that understands the importance of understanding.
©2001 Ford Motor Company
www.ford.com
®
Diversity Journal Profiles in
Sharing Workforce Diversity Experiences
PUBLISHER / MANAGING EDITOR James R. Rector
pointofview From the editorial staff of Profiles in Diversity Journal
SENIOR EDITOR Katherine Sandlin
We are all still students
EDITORIAL CONSULTANT Laurie Fumic
What would happen to your corporation if, as of today, you began to operate in a vacuum? If you made all your decisions on what you know right now—right this very second—and never again made the effort to learn anything new, or build on anyone else’s experiences, or research the changes that are happening in your marketplace? What type of effect would that have on your business?
PRINTING Master Printing OVERSEAS CORRESPONDENTS Dr. Myrtha Casanova, President European Institute for Managing Diversity, Barcelona Spain
It seems like a silly question, doesn’t it? But organizations do it every day; they try to build on outdated information, or without looking to the experience of others, or by viewing their market and their workforce as a “snapshot” rather than the “moving picture” it truly is.
Graham Shaw, Director Centre for Diversity and Business London UK LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Commentaries or questions should be addressed to: Profiles in Diversity Journal P.O. Box 45605 Cleveland, Ohio 44145-0605 All correspondence should include author’s full name, address, e-mail and phone number. DISPLAY ADVERTISING 28263 Center Ridge Road Suite E-11 Cleveland, Ohio 44145 Tel: 440.892.0444 FAX: 440.892.0737 e-mail: profiles@diversityjournal.com SUBSCRIPTIONS U.S. $49.95 one year; $89.95 two years; in Canada, add $10 per year for postage. Other foreign orders add $15.00 per year. U.S. funds only. Subscriptions can be ordered on our web site: http://www.diversityjournal.com or call customer service at 800.573.2867 from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST.
From the cover, JPMorgan Chase Diversity Leadership: (l-r) Stephen Young, Senior Vice President, Global Diversity; Bill Harrison, Chairman and CEO; and Joy Bunson, Senior Vice President, Leadership and Organizational Development.
Successful organizations are filled with perennial students; in fact, they’re run by them. That’s why this issue of Profiles in Diversity Journal is so important. This is a magazine full of stories to learn from: real-world corporate diversity experiences, examples of programs and successes, tools, ideas and realistic solutions. You’ll find engaging lessons: • Is it possible to totally transform a corporate diversity culture? Denny’s, Inc., had been rocked by revelations of racial discrimination. Here, they share with us the ten fundamentals that helped them rebuild and restore their culture, reclaim their marketing success, and resurrect their good name. • How can your organization jump-start your women’s initiatives? Abbott Laboratories found true power in Josita Todd, a divisional vice president who is on a personal mission to connect and engage women leaders to support one another and develop rising talent. • How can your organization align and integrate your company’s diversity initiatives with your bottom line business goals? In an exclusive interview with Henry Hernandez, Jr., founder of the National Society of Hispanic MBAs and Executive Director of Global Diversity Leadership for Pitney Bowes Corporation, you’ll learn internal strategies to insure your corporate leadership “gets the big picture.”
And so many more ... let this issue of Profiles in Diversity Journal speak to the student within you. Here you’ll also find information about our new sister publication, Workforce Diversity Reader,TM which we developed to support in-depth corporate diversity development and dialogue. Welcome, students. There’s much to learn here. Let’s do it together.
Profiles in Diversity Journal® is published bi-monthly by Rector, Inc., Principal Office: P.O. Box 45605, Cleveland, Ohio 44145-0605. James Rector, Publisher, Rector, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and may or may not represent the views of the publisher. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Registered in U.S. Patent Office.
ISSN 1537-2102
www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
James R. Rector Publisher Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
Katherine Sandlin Senior Editor page 3
What’ s possible when 70,000 people with diverse cultural, national, and family backgrounds, skills and life experiences work together toward one common vision?
Anything. Sharon Larkin, mother of two active boys and Divisional Vice President of Human Resources.
Abbott Laboratories. www.abbott.com
contents Volume 4, Number 4 • July/August 2002
Raising the Bar
Corporate and Non-Profit Perspectives
Architects of Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
It Takes a Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
A broad-based reverse mentoring program helps senior management at JPMorgan Chase learn firsthand the diversity challenges facing their corporation, their people, and their evolving business environment.
Ford Motor Company's unique partnership with seven high schools in the Dearborn, Michigan area helps give students the support they need to make the most of their future.
Creating a Diversity Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Understanding Each Other's Diversity . . . . . . . .50
JPMorgan Chase and Creative Nonfiction unite to propagate the understanding and appreciation of diversity through a unique and riveting essay collection.
The Atlanta JournalConstitution's Booker Izell reflects on the teachings of the Diversity Leadership Academy.
Careers in Fast Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) creates a year-round testament to the diversity of their region.
Abbott Laboratories' Josita Todd helps to ignite a Women's Leadership Initiative to network and advance women through the company's leadership pipeline.
A Constant Reminder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56
The Changing Landscape
Ideas from Diversity’s Thought Leaders
Building a House of Inclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Turning Diversity Efforts into Corporate Gains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Two years into a three-year corporate turnaround, Waste Management turns its efforts toward transforming its culture as well.
Medelia Communications explains how corporations can “close the sales gap,” converting diversity marketing to sales through diversity sales training.
Where Humanity & Integrity Go Hand in Hand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
The Diversity Tipping Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39
The values that have served New York Life as guiding principles for 150 years are a solid groundwork for a diverse corporate culture.
Building grass roots support for your diversity initiative is easier if you identify those who can help influence social change; from The Winters Group.
The Road to Redemption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Getting Employees “On Board” . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
Transforming Denny's, Inc. into the diversity success story it is today is due to 10 fundamental Keys to Change.
PRISM International’s new communications and learning model helps put an organization's diversity initiatives back in the organization's view.
We Are Stronger as a Whole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Diversity Leadership Competencies . . . . . . . . . .48
Lockheed Martin discovers that corporate diversity is much like system integration: the whole is definitely stronger than the sum of its individual parts.
Public/Private Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
The Centre for Diversity and Business presents a study of four countries and a partnership approach to ethnic minority integration into employment.
When is it not enough to "do the right thing?" A lesson in diversity maturity with the Diversity Leadership Academy of Atlanta.
An Evolving Curriculum Building a Leadership Environment . . . . . . . . . .40 Results of intensive focus groups were the driving force behind The University of Maryland's Student Intergroup Dialogue and Leadership Program.
Among our Strongest Assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Dedicated to understanding and respecting the unique cultures of the communities they serve, Bank of America is constantly finding new ways to meet the needs of changing markets.
Legal Briefings Above the Glass Ceiling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
The Search for the Best Minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Who makes up your corporate senior executive management? A study by Holland & Knight LLC.
Aggressive and innovative college relations give ScheringPlough the edge on finding upcoming talent.
Forging the Link Between Diversity and Business Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Special Feature
As they expand across the continent, BMO Financial Group keeps its sights on the goal of a diverse workforce and an equitable and supportive workplace. www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Profiles in Diversity Journal
The Global Strategy of Henry Hernandez . . . . . .30
An intimate interview with Henry O. Hernandez, Jr., founder of the National Society of Hispanic MBAs and Executive Director of Global Diversity Leadership at Pitney Bowes. • July/August 2002
page 5
© 2001 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. PricewaterhouseCoopers refers to the U.S. firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and other members of the worldwide PricewaterhouseCoopers organization. PricewaterhouseCoopers is proud to be an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer.
WE SEE THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS, AND SHE LOOKS GOOD. With your ability to deliver the best solutions to an evolving global market, it’s your talent that will take your career as far you want—as fast as you want. As the world’s largest professional services firm, we give you life-long learning and continuing education. We help you tailor your career by listening to your aspirations and through focused mentoring programs. And we value your individuality with initiatives like Minority Scholars, Mentoring Partnerships and Circles networking activities for women and minorities. We help you realize that your future—and ours—is what you make of it.
www.pwcglobal.com/uscareers
Join us. Together we can change the world.SM
Our trucks are everywhere. But our collective talents go far beyond that. Diverse minds equal effective solutions. The NEW Waste Management.
A
t Waste Management, a diversity of talent goes into everything we do. Incredible minds are developing unparalleled environmental solutions, strengthening our position as an industry leader. Great talent, better solutions. From everyday collection to environmental protection, look to the NEW Waste Management.
www.wm.com Waste Management is proud to be an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.
Raising The Bar
JPMorgan Chase
Through Connections!, a broad-based reverse mentoring program, senior management at JPMorgan Chase builds the bridges necessary to learn firsthand the diversity challenges facing their corporation, their people, and their evolving business environment.
T
architects of change
he concept of “reverse mentoring,” where the traditional mentoring model is flipped and the more senior person becomes the protégé, is not new. In fact, the concept is not new to JPMorgan Chase. What’s different about the recently launched diversity reverse mentoring program, called Conn ections!, is that the concept has been expanded and applied across a broad spectrum of diversity groups targeting the top leaders of the corporation—with the potential for dramatically positive results. “This is an unparalleled opportunity to expand the experience, awareness and understanding of our senior executives around diversity issues,” says Bill Harrison, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase.
F. Chase Hawkins Vice President Corporate Diversity Education Manager JPMorgan Chase One Chase Plaza - 27th Floor New York, NY 10081 Tel: 212.553.3876 FAX: 212.383.0417
chase.hawkins@jpmchase.com page 10
JPMorgan Chase used the reverse mentoring paradigm successfully for a technology program, Exec-Tech, designed to provide mentoring to the senior leaders of the organization to develop an increased degree of web savvy, as well as comfort with e-commerce and desktop softwares. The diversity council from the Investment Management area of the Firm also employed this model, aligning a diverse group of junior-level employees to mentor IM executives on issues that they face within the environment. “The relationships we build through Connections! will help us achieve a greater depth of understanding and insight around our people and our business environment, leading to a stronger, more effective organization,” Harrison, himself a protégé, went on to say. “This program also directly underscores and supports our strategic principle of ‘One Firm. One Team. Be a Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
Leader.’ by continuing to build our leadership capabilities.” When the Connections! concept was being examined as a possible tool to further leadership development in the area of diversity, John Farrell, senior executive for Human Resources, was the lead executive champion who saw the value immediately. “As soon as it was presented to me, it took no effort to recognize the potential benefits that we could reap from such a program.” Connections! pairs the Firm’s most senior executives with a person of a different background. After the initial “getting to know you” exchange in the first meeting, the dialogues are structured to transition well beyond the superficial discussions around diversity challenges. “Each participant will be one half of a dynamic partnership that will allow us to learn of and respond to the perceptions and challenges that our diverse workforce faces, both personally and professionally,” says Stephen Young, the Firm’s Diversity Executive, who is also serving as a mentor in the program.
In the Beginning … “The initial proposal suggested we conduct the pilot with four members of our Executive Committee, gather lessons learned, and incorporate that experience into a broader rollout of the program,” explained Chase Hawkins, Diversity Education Manager for JPMorgan Chase and manager of the project. “The response we received from Bill [Harrison] and the Corporate Diversity Council was so enthusiastic, that they requested the program scope be expanded right out of the gate.” In fact, the protégés now include 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Architects of Change Raising The Bar all members of the Executive Committee, a significant number of their direct reports, and the entire Corporate Diversity Council. That translated "This program also directly underscores and supports our strategic principle of ‘One Firm. One Team. Be a Leader.’ by continuing to build our leadership capabilities." Bill Harrison, Chairman and CEO into a total program participation of one hundred and fifty individuals, half of them “the top of the house”… an ambitious, and potentially risky, undertaking for a pilot program. The challenge was now to identify seventy-five mentors.
polite cocktail conversation after the second or third meeting, we’ve missed the mark.” “We also wanted to ensure that their primary motivation was to improve the diversity environment at JPMorgan Chase,” added Ernest Smith, another Connections! Team member and the individual responsible for diversity initiatives in the Southwest region, “not an opportunity to advance their career.” Using a simple ratin g system, the team assigned a ranking to each candidate based on the responses to the interview questions, then reached out to their Human Resources generalist and Employee Relations partners to review the list of names and ensure that all were in good standing with HR.
“This innovative approach is another clear demonstration of our commitment to the Firm’s Hawkins reached out to his Corporate Diversity diversity initiative. Adding a new and powerful dimension colleague Jane Roche, who leads the Diversity to our efforts to create ‘an Engagement and Communications area, and environment that is inclusive, together they contacted several of the Firm’s open, flexible, fair and affinity groups to solicit mentor nominations. courageous.’" The four major areas of focus for the pilot Stephen Young, (gender, race, sexual orientation and disability) Senior Vice President, Global Diversity drove which groups would be contacted.
Identifying the Mentors
“We formally requested mentor nominations from our Afr ican-American, Asian-Pacific, Hispanic, Gay/Lesbian, and Disability networking groups,” Jane told the Journal, “and were very pleased with the robust response that we received.” In fact, the response was so significant that they received many more candidates than they had mentor positions to fill—nearly twice the number that they actually needed. So how did they narrow down the field of candidates? “We created a standard set of interview questions that would get to the heart of why these individuals wanted to be mentors,” Hawkins shared with us, “and what some of the outcomes were that they wanted to see result from these relationships.” Then it was up to the Connections! Team to conduct the interviews. “It was important that not only the candidates understood the issues,” said Debra Selke, a Connections ! Team member who conducted interviews, “but that they could also tactfully engage a senior manager in conversations that broke through the barrier of being “politically correct.” Debra, who has had oversight for mentoring programs in the Firm’s Southwest region since 1997, went on to say, “If they’re still having www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
“We made certain that we matched top performers with our top executives in order to optimize the experience and learning,” said Lauren S ontag, Development Executive for the Firm.
University and Student Relations and is a member of the team. Buchanan, who is also serving as a mentor in the program, added, “Our goal was to match each protégé with a mentor from a different business area, to add an additional dimension to these relationships.” Although that wasn’t always possible, in most cases they were able to implement that strategy. So the seventy-five mentors were selected, the matches were made … but how do you go about preparing the participants for entering into a relationship that breaks so dramatically from the traditional mentoring model?
Preparing the Participants The Connections! Team provided the protégés with a document that precisely defined the program, as well as delivered insights regarding what they could expect to experience during the course of the relationship. “In addition to the reversing of the senior/ junior roles in the relationship, in a typical mentoring partnership, the protégé is driving the connection,” Hawkins told the Journal. “In our program, we are again reversing that dynamic, and it is the mentor that will be in the driver’s seat.” Given that the mentors would be at the helm, a more in-depth approach was taken to provide the mentors with the proper guidance and support, leading to the creation of a Mentor Orientation session.
Indeed, the session Once the HR checks were completed, the actual content ranged from an process of selecting the mentors from the still overview of the impressively large mentor pool, and matching program and its goals them to the seventy-five protégés, could "Establishing a significant level of begin. trust is another key component to the success of these relationships, “About half of our 30-member Corporate and trust requires familiarity." Diversity Council became mentors, and Joy Bunson, Senior Vice President, Leadership and the other half protégés, depending on Organizational Development where we felt they would add the most value to the program,” Haw kins stated. “So and structure, to specific techniques that the we started off the process with 15 mentor mentors could use to approach the understandcandidates who had already demonstrated the ably challenging conversations they would face commitment to diversity and skill set that we as effectively as possible. It also reviewed were looking for.” That still left sixty mentor enabling factors to these relationships, such as roles to be identified out of nearly twice that noting lifestyle elements they may have in comnumber in the pool. mon, as well as the potential challenges that they co uld come up against.
The Matching Process
“We began with location to facilitate ease of the pairs connecting, and then moved on to Line of Business,” said Sandra Buchanan, who works in Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
Potential Pitfalls “Availability and scheduling were at the top of the challenges list,” Debra Selke told us, page 11
Architects of Change Raising The Bar “followed by achieving significant levels of trust and potential discomfort with the one up/one down reversing of the mentoring model.” One of the ways that the Connections! Team addressed the discomfort issue was by urging the participants to select an off-premises venue for their meetings, to provide a power-neutral environment for their discussions. “Given the reversing of the roles, we didn’t want the conversations to be in an environment controlled by the protégé,” said Selke. “We’ve suggested they select, when practical and comfortable for both partners, a location that may add cultural insights and value to their dialogue.” Examples ranged from ethnic restaurants to cultural exhibits at local museums. Another challenge, and one that Hawkins considers to be one of the critical success factors of the program, is the ability of the mentor to relate their own perspectives or viewpoints to the protégé’s personal experiences of being excluded or devalued. “Everyone at one time in their life has been in a situation where they were either prevented from being a part of something, or made to feel inadequate or under-valued. If the mentor can tap into these feelings, and help the protégé make the connection to challenges that the mentor may have had based on their ‘diversity identity,’ then the protégé will be able to build a very real foundation of understanding that may not have existed before.”
Filters and Effectiveness Another critical success factor, and a key program objective, is to understand any potential filters that the protégés may have in place, which they may not even be aware of, that impact their personal, workplace, and social effectiveness. “Once we’ve assisted the protégé in uncovering any potential filters that may be hindering their effectiveness as leaders, we can partner with them to implement change strategies to address these filters,” said Patrice Hall, SVP of Retail and Middle Market Diversity, and the author of the framework designed to assist mentors in exploring these issues with their protégés (see inset).
Connecting the Dots Gail Bigley, another Connections! Team member, also leads the Firm’s Mentoring Program Manager’s Forum, a group that captures and shares best practices that can be leveraged to create the global strategy for mentoring programs across the entire JPMorgan Chase footprint. Bigley provided an important link between the diversity reverse mentoring program and the corporate mentoring initiatives, ensuring consistency of approach and strategic direction. “We have over 50 formal mentoring programs at the Firm,” Bigley shared with us. “Creating a mentoring culture and aligning it directly with our key themes as a corporation is critical to the success of any mentoring initiative, but especially to this diversity reverse mentoring pilot.” In
building bridges
One of the key objectives behind Connections! is to increase the individual effectiveness of JPMorgan Chase leaders by allowing them to explore filters they may have regarding various aspects of diversity, and implement change strategies to address these filters. With the help of their program partners, the protégé will discover: Kicking off Connections!—Bill Harrison • What are the filters, either positive or negative, that they may have in place regarding the relevant issue of diversity?
makes a point at the Executive Committee Pairs kickoff, and Steve Young leads a group during Mentor orientation.
• What, if any, impact are these filters having on their - Personal effectiveness? - Workplace/organizational effectiveness? - Social effectiveness? For each of these arenas of effectiveness where there is an impact, the partnership will allow these leaders to examine situations from a 360 degree perspective, to measure the degree and nature of the impa ct these filters cause, and to select key areas of focus based on this impact. • How can this partnership be used to create and implement a change strategy to enhance their effectiveness by changing the filter and/or minimizing its impact? page 12
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
fact, Connections! was able to leverage some of the terrific work that has come out of the Manager’s Forum, by incorporating key learnings into the information that was shared with both mentors and protégés alike. Once the participants had been briefed on the program, and provided with best practices and insights regarding mentoring relationships, what was the next step?
Beginning the Journey “We formally launched the relationships with a reception where each participant met their partner in an informal setting and began the process of getting to know one another,” said Hawkins. “Establishing a significant level of trust is another key component to the success of these relationships, and trust requires familiarity,” added Joy Bunson, who leads the Firm’s Leadership and Organizational Development area. “The reception was not designed to delve into the deeper levels of what this program is designed to achieve, but merely open the door to the relationship. A guideline for their first one-on-one meeting was the use of the Lifelines exercise, created for our Leadership Morgan Chase executive development program.” The exercise, which highlights personal and professional histories, is engineered to underscore the dynamics, a nd especially the individuals, who influenced the development of who we are today. Bunson, who also is serving as a mentor in the program, went on to say, “The use of the Lifelines tool helped jumpstart these relationships and bring them quickly to a more personal level.” Hawkins is banking on the theory that the personal nature of these partnerships will lead to breakthroughs on the part of the protégé s that simply could not have happened in a classroom or by reading a book or viewing a video. “It really is about making connections on many different levels,” stated Hawkins. “Connections that most of these protégés would probably not have had the opportunity to experience without this program.” “Ultimately,” says Patrice Hall, “these relationships are all about raising the awareness and understanding of our senior executives around how they experience colleagues who are different, so they can become more effective leaders and positively impact the bottom line.” PDJ 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Raising The Bar
diversitydialogue
JPMorgan Chase & Creative Nonfiction CREATING A
One of the largest financial institutions in the world has united with a tiny breakthrough literary journal to help propagate the understanding and appreciation of diversity through a unique and riveting essay collection.
“A Measure of Acceptance”
JPMorgan Chase has partnered with a highly acclaimed literary journal, Creative Nonfiction, to create a collection of essays about racism, bigotry and the coming together of a nation by some of the most prestigious writers in the world.
Creative Nonfiction received nearly 1,000 entries for the Shipley Award—so named to honor the contributions of Walter V. Shipley, retired chairman of JPMorgan Chase, whose passion and vision have helped to create a work environment that embraces a mix of races, cultures, ages, religions and orientations. After a long and painstaking process of reading, evaluation, and discussion, seven essays deemed the best were submitted to Mr. Shipley and a half-dozen other executives at JPMorgan Chase who, collectively, would make the final selection of the $10,000 prize winner. Those seven finalists are published in Diversity Dialogues; their works are anchored with essays by prominent writers commissioned especially for this piece to help tone the meaning of diversity in the 21st century. In the hopes of spurring a wideranging discussion on the topic of diversity, Chase is planning to distribute a copy of Diversity Dialogues to hundreds of its employees, as well as funding an expanded print run. www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Photo courtesy of Paul Ruby
The collection, called Diversity Dialogues, features celebrated authors like John Edgar Wideman, Francine Prose and Andrei Codescru, who offer essays about diversity that defy easy labels. To involve new writers, fresh voices in diversity, the team offered a $10,000 prize for narratives about the challenges faced by outsiders in a world where “normal,” “regular” and “accepted” are the watchwords, and all others are marginalized.
An exerpt from the award winning essay by Floyd Skloot
Creative Nonfiction editor Lee Gutkind (left) with author Floyd Skloot, winner of the Walter V. Shipley Award for his essay “A Measure of Acceptance.”
The following exerpt is from The Shipley Award winning essay “A Measure of Acceptance,” by Floyd Skloot. A former actor and marathon runner, Skloot suffered from a virus that attacked and damaged his brain 12 years ago. In this piece, Skloot relates what happens when the government demands he undergo a battery of humiliating tests in order to keep his disabled status—as well as the disability payments that support him and his wife. In Skloot’s own words, the essay presents “an encounter between the disabled and the insurance industry in the starkest of lights.” “A Measure of Acceptance” will be republished in Skloot’s book In The Shadow of Memory, published by University of Nebraska Press and slated for release in March, 2003. “Without Chase’s help, we could not have afforded to commission some of the authors to write pieces,” says Lee Gutkind, author and Creative Nonfiction editor. “And we couldn’t have supported some of our lesserknown writers who are the emerging new voices of the literary world. The Shipley Award, offering $10,000 for a single essay in a literary magazine, is unprecedented.”
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
The psychiatrist’s office was in a run-down industrial section at the northern edge of Oregon’s capital, Salem. It shared space with a chiropractic health center, separated from it by a temporary divider that wobbled in the current created by opening the door. When I arrived a man sitting with his gaze trained on the spot I suddenly filled began kneading his left knee, his suit pants hopelessly wrinkled in that one spot. Another man, standing beside the door and dressed in overalls, studied the empty wall and muttered as he slowly rose on his toes and sank back on his heels. Like me, neither seemed happy to be visiting Dr. Peter Avilov. Dr. Avilov specialized in the psychodiagnostic examination of disability claimants for the So cial Security Administration. He made a career of weeding out hypochondriacs, malingerers, fakers, people who were ill without organic causes. There may be many such scam artists working the disability angle, but there are also many legitimate claimants. Avilov worked as a kind of hired gun, paid by an agency whose financial interests were best served when he determined that claimants were not disabled. It was like having your house appraised by the father-in-law of your prospective buyer, like being stopped by a traffic cop several tickets shy of his monthly quota, like facing a part-time judge who works for the construction company you’re suing. Avilov’s incentives were not encouraging to me. I understood why I was there. After a virus I contracted in December of 1988 targeted my brain, I became totally disabled. When the Social Security Administration decided to reevaluate my medical condition eight years later, they exercised their right to send me to a doctor page 13
Diversity Dialogues Raising The Bar of their own choosing. This seemed fair enough. But after receiving records, test results and reports of brain scans and statements from my own internal-medicine and infectiousdiseases physicians, all attesting to my ongoing disability, and after requiring 25 pages of handwritten questionnaires from me and my wife, they scheduled an appointment for me with Avilov. Not with an independent internalmedi cine or infectious-diseases specialist, not with a neurologist, but with a shrink. Now, 12 years after first getting sick, I’ve become adept at being brain-damaged. It’s not that my symptoms have gone away; I still try to dice a stalk of celery with a carrot instead of a knife, still reverse “p” and “b” when I write, or draw a primitive hourglass when I mean to draw a star. I call our bird feeder a bread winner and place newly purchased packages of frozen corn in the dishwasher instead of the freezer. I put crumpled newspaper and dry pine into our wood stove, strike a match, and attempt to light the metal door. Preparing to cross the “main street” in Carlton, Ore., I look both ways, see a pickup truck a quarter-mile south, take one step off the curb, and land flat on my face, cane pointing due east. So I’m still much as I was in December of 1988, when I first got sick. I spent most of a year confined to bed. I couldn’t write and had trouble reading anything more complicated than People magazine or the newspaper’s sports page. The functioning of memory was shattered, bits of the past clumped like a partly assembled jigsaw puzzle, the present a flicker of discontinuous images. Without memory it was impossi ble for me to learn how to operate the new music system that was meant to help me pass the time, or figure out why I felt so confused, or take my medications without support. But in time I learned to manage my encounters with the world in new ways. I shed what no longer fit my life: training shoes and roadracing flats, three-piece suits and ties, a car. I bought a cane. I seeded my home with pads and p ens so that I could write reminders before forgetting what I’d thought. I festooned my room with color-coded Post-it Notes telling me what to do, whom to call, where to locate important items. I remarried, finding love when I imagined it no longer possible. Eventually I moved to the country, slowing my external life to match its internal pace, simplifying, stripping page 14
away layers of distraction and demands. Expecting the unexpected now, I can, like an improvisational actor, incorporate it into my performance. For instance my tendency to use words that are close to—but not exactly—the words I’m trying to say has led to some surprising discoveries in the composition of sentences. A freshness emerges when the mind is unshackled from its habitual ways. I never would h ave described the effect of a viral attack on my brain as being “geezered” overnight if I hadn’t first confused the words seizure and geezer. It is as though my word-finding capacity has developed an associative function to compensate for its failures of precision, so I end up with shellac instead of plaque when trying to describe the gunk on my teeth. Who knows, maybe James Joyce was brain-damaged when he wrote “Finnegan’s Wake,” built a whole novel on puns and neologisms that were actually symptoms of disease. It’s possible to see such domination of the unexpected in a positive light. So getting lost in the familiar woods around our house and finding my way home again adds a twist of excitement to days that might seem circumscribed or routine because of my disability. When the natural-food grocery w here we shop rearranged its entire stock, I was one of the few customers who didn’t mind, since I could never remember where things were anyway. I am less hurried and more deliberate than I was; being attentive, purposeful in movement, lends my life an intensity of awareness that was not always present before. My senses are heightened, their fine-tuning mechanism busted. Spicy food, stargazer lilies in blo om, birdsong, heat, my wife’s vivid palette when she paints—all have become more intense and stimulating. Because it threatens my balance, a sudden breeze is something to stop for, to let its strength and motion register. That may not guarantee success —as my pratfall in Carlton indicates—but it does allow me to appreciate detail and nuance. One way of spinning this is to say that my daily experience is often spontaneous and exciting. Not fragmented and intimidating, but unpredictable, continuously new. I may lose track of things, or of myself in space, my line of thought, but instead of getting frustrated, I try to see this as the perfect time to stop and figure out what I want or where I am. I accept my role in the harlequinade. It’s not so much a matter of
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
making lemonade out of life’s lemons but r ather of learning to savor the shock, taste, texture and aftereffects of a mouthful of unadulterated citrus. Acceptance is a deceptive word. It suggests compliance, a consenting to my condition and to who I have become. This form of acceptance is often seen as weakness, submission. We say I accept my punishment. Or I accept your decision. But such assent, while passive in essence, does provide the stable, rocklike foundation for coping with a condition that will not go away. It is a powerful passivity, the Zen of Illness, that allows for endurance. There is, however, more than endurance at stake. A year in bed, another year spent primarily in my recliner—these were times when endurance was the main issue. But over time I began to recognize the possibilities for transformation. I saw another kind of acceptance as being viable, the kind espoused by Robert Frost when he said, “Take what is given, and make it over your own way.” That is, after all, the root meaning of the verb “to accept,” which comes from the Latin accipere, or “to take to oneself.” It implies an embrace. Not a giving up but a welcoming. People encourage the sick to resist, to fight back; we say that our resistance is down when we contr act a virus. But it wasn’t possible to resist the effects of brain damage. Fighting to speak rapidly and clearly, as I always had in the past, only leads to more garbling of meaning; willing myself to walk without a cane or climb a ladder only leads to more falls; demanding that I not forget something only makes me angrier when all I can remember is the effort not to forget. I began to realize that the mos t aggressive act I could perform on my own behalf was to stop struggling and discover what I really could do. This, I believe, is what the Austrian psychotherapist Viktor E. Frankl refers to in his classic book, “The Doctor and the Soul,” as “spiritual elasticity.” He says, speaking of his severely damaged patients, “Man must cultivate the flexibility to swing over to another value-group if that group and that alone offers the possibility of actualizing values.” Man must, Frankl believes, “temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.” Such shifts of value, made possible by active acceptance of life as it is, can only be achieved 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Diversity Dialogue
Raising The Bar
alone. Doctors, therapists, rehabilitation have “brains.” A brain, yes, with many functions throw stones.” I nodded, thought for a moment, professionals, family members, friends, lovers intact, but I’m not as smart or as quick or as knew that this sort of proverb relied on cannot reconcile a person to the changes steady as I was. Though I may not look sick, and metaphor, which as a poet should be my great wrought by illness or injury, though they can I don’t shake or froth or talk to myself, after a strength, and began to explain. Except that I ease the way. Acceptance is a private act, achieved few minutes it becomes clear that something couldn’t. I must have talked for five minutes, in gradually and with little outward fundamental is wrong. My losses of tortuous circles, spewing gobbledygook about evidence. It also seems never to cognitive capability have been stones breaking glass and people having things to be complete; I still get fully measured and recordhide, shaking my head, backtracking as I tried to “Acceptance is a deceptive word. furious with myself for ed. They were used by elaborate. But it was beyond me, as all abstract It suggests compliance, a consenting to forgetting what I’m the Social Security thinking is beyond me, and I soon drifted into my condition and to who I have become. trying to tell my Administration and stunned silence. Crashing into your limitations daughter during a the insurance com this way hurts; I remembered as a long-distance This form of acceptance is often seen as pany to establish phone cal l, runner hitting the fabled “wall” at about mile 22 weakness, submission. We say humiliated when my total disability, of the Chicago Marathon, my body depleted of I accept my punishment. Or I accept I blithely walk by various physiall energy resources, feeding on its own muscle your decision. But such assent, while away with cians to establish and fat for every additional step, and I recognized another treatment and passive in essence, does provide the this as being a similar sensation. shopper’s cart of therapy programs, stable, rocklike foundation for coping groceries or fall in by a pharmaceutical For the first time, I saw something clear in with a condition that will not go away. It someone’s path while company to establish Avilov’s eyes. He saw me. He recognized this as is a powerful passivity, the Zen of Illness, examining the lower my eligibility for real, the blathering of a brain-damaged man that allows for endurance.” shelves at Powell’s participation in the clinical who still thinks he can think. Bookstore. field trial of a drug that didn’t work. I have a handicapped parking It was at this moment that he asked, “Why are But for all its private essence, acceptance cannot placard on the dashboard of my car; I can get a you here?” be expressed purely in private terms. My free return-trip token from the New York City experience did not happen to me alone; family, subway system by flashing my Medicaid card. In I nearly burst into tears, knowing that he meant colleagues and friends, acquaintances all were this sense I have a public profile as someone who I seemed to be suffering from organic rather is disabled. I have met the requirements. involved. I had a new relationship with my than mental illness. Music to my ears. “I have the employer and its insu rance company, with same question.” So would Avilov find that my disability was federal and state government, with people who read my work. There is a social dimension to the continuing, or would he judge me as suffering To read “A Measure of Acceptance” in its entirety, experience of illness and to its acceptance, a kind from mental illness? Those who say that the order your copy of Diversity Dialogues, a special distinction is bogus, or that the patient’s fear of of reciprocity between self and world that goes issue of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction, at being labeled mentally ill is merely a cultural bias www.creativenonfiction.org or by calling beyond the enactment of laws governing and ought not matter, are missing the point. handicapped access to buildings or rules pro412-688-0304. The cost per issue is $15.00 pp; a hibiting discrimination in the workplace. It is in Money is at stake; in our culture this means it four-issue subscription to the journal is $29.95. matters very much. To all sides. this social dimension that, for all my private Recently, a recording was made of a special reading adjustmen t, I remain a grave cripple and, of "A Measure of Acceptance," sponsored by the Avilov began by asking me to recount the history apparently, a figure of contempt. American Library Association. Taped before a live of my illness. He seemed as easily distracted as I the reading was followed by a public diaaudience, At least the parties involved agreed that what was was; while I stared at his checked flannel shirt, logue of the issues inherent in the piece, and featured wrong with me was all in my head. However, sweetly ragged mustache and the pen he a panel of diversity experts, diversity executives from mine was disability arising from organic damage occasionally put in his mouth like a pipe, Avilov JPMorgan Chase, and Floyd's daughter, Rebecca. to the brain caused by a viral attack, not from looked from my face to his closed door to his This recording will be available on CD by the end of psychiatric illness. The distinction matters; my empty notepad and back to my face, nodding. August. Creative Nonfiction hopes in the future to disability status would not continue if my When I finished, he asked a series of diagnostic find funding support to dramatize many of the essays questions: Did I know what day it was (Hey, I’m condition were psychiatric. It was in the best in this collection and arrange for public di alogues here on the right day, aren’t I?), could I name the interests of the Social Security Administration about those issues as well, in order to make Diversity for Dr. Avilov to say my symptoms were caused presidents of the United States since Kennedy, Dialogues—and the issues it portrays—“discuss-able” by the mind, were psychosomatic rather than could I count backward from 100 by sevens? to as many people as possible. organic in nature. And what was in their interests During this series he interrupted me to provide a was also in Avilov’s. list of four unconnected words (such as train “A Measure of Acceptance” will be republished in argue barn vivid), which I was instructed to Floyd Skloot’s upcoming book In The Shadow of On high-tech scans, tiny holes in my brain make remember for later recall. Then he asked me to Memory, published by University of Nebraska Press, visually apparent what is clear enough to anyone explain what w as meant by the expression to be released in March of 2003. PDJ who observes me in action over time: I no longer “People who live in glass houses should not www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
page 15
Raising The Bar
careersin FASTFORWARD Abbott Laboratories
ADVANCING WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP:
“What we have accomplished in nine months has taken other companies several years to achieve.” Josita Todd, Divisional Vice President Pharmaceutical IT Operations
F
ounded 113 years ago, Abbott Laboratories “grew up” at a time when women and minorities did not yet have a defined place in corporate America. Times have changed and so has Abbott. Rather than letting change happen naturally and slowly, however, Abbott is taking deliberate steps to move capable minorities and women into the company’s leadership pipeline and to catalyze change.
Michelle W. Thomas Corporate Director Diversity and Work/Life Integration Abbott Laboratories Dept 39F Building AP51-2 100 Abbott Park Road Abbott Park, IL 60064-6048 Tel:
847.935.0181
FAX: 847.938.3401
michelle.thomas@abbott.com page 16
Abbott was because I knew of the company’s commitment to, and leadership in, advancing women and minorities. I knew I could make a difference by helping to further these efforts,” says Todd.
And that she did. As one of few women in executive positions in the information technology industry as a whole, Todd has set out to create opportunities for talented female IT professionals throughout her career. With To remain competitive, Abbott aggressively and intentionally infuses its people pipeline with even fewer women in international executive strong, talented minorities and women. While positions, she opened doors while leading Abbott has always provided opportunities for global organizations in countries such as Italy, advancement, the difference today is that Spain and Latin America. While at a previous employer, she evolved her all-male department advancing women and minorities is a business imperative, with measurable goals and objectives to a diverse, talented team with close to a 40 percent diverse representation within two years. to track performance. At Abbott, Todd continues to place a strong Leaders Being Leaders emphasis on ensuring that her team reflects the When current chairman and CEO Miles White demographics of the country and Abbott’s total took office in 1999, he made it a business priority employee population, with a goal of having to hire and advance women and minorities equal male/female representation. throughout all levels of the organization. Soon after, in September 2000, Abbott welcomed Josita In addition to Todd’s pioneering role in Todd, a divisional vice president who brought creating opportunities for women in what continues to be a male-dominated profession, much more than management and IT expertise she has forged new paths for women across all to her new role heading up the company’s disciplines within Abbott and at other pharmaceutical IT operations. Todd, a woman of color and single mother of a grown daughter, companies where she has worked. came to Abbott with a personal mission—to Laying the Foundation connect and engage women leaders throughout Abbott has developed innovative programs the organization in an effort to support one to hire and promote talented women and another and develop rising talent. minorities but never had a formal program in “Besides its global impact and vision for building place to connect the female leaders of the the world’s premier healthcare company, one of organization. Never, that is, until now. the reasons I was interested in coming to work at Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Careers in Fast Forward Raising The Bar Josita Todd is a role model for the women of Abbott. Here, she communicates her passion for the Women’s Leadership Initiative as a business imperative. Todd was able to reach more than 400 women in a recently completed pilot program.
Todd began laying the foundation at Abbott soon after she joined the company. She quickly connected with the company’s top 10 female executives to learn that “individually, these women were doing incredible work. They were mentoring people inside and outside the company, volunteering in the community, serving on boards and sponsoring women’s leadership events within their own organizations.” But Todd al so knew that collectively, they could be doing even more. Working directly with the CEO and other senior leaders, female and male, Todd developed and implemented a strategy to create the first women’s leadership initiative in the company’s history.
power of role models and mentoring, reinforcing leaders’ roles in both of these areas and, most importantly, collecting valuable data and feedback from women throughout the company that will help shape programs to attract and develop Abbott’s talented women leaders.
Today, the pilot phase has reached more than 400 of the company’s leaders with programs that address networking, mentoring and personal developme nt. Todd is quick to credit Miles White and the other executives who have joined her in making the initiative a reality. “The phenomenal outpouring of support for this effort makes it clear that Abbott is ready to continue the momentum.
Abbott’s Women’s Leadership Initiative is a forum where all women can listen to leaders in the company share their journey and encourage others to take the risk of achieving extraordinary Todd explained, “It was important to leadership performance. Here, Catherine Babington, vice involve and engage our senior executives president, investor relations and public affairs; Sue as a way to showcase the incredible Widner, vice president, Abbott healthsystems division; leadership talent we already have and and William Dempsey, senior vice president, international hold them up as role models for the rest of operations, field questions from pilot participants. the organization.”
Not an HR Initiative Launched as a pilot program in December 2001, Abbott’s women’s leadership initiative was developed to: • promote women’s leadership and development throughout the ranks at Abbott, • retain and attract the best talent, • build an internal mentoring support system, and • encourage diversity and inclusion at all levels. Emphasized from the start, the initiative is not an HR program but an Abbott business imperative. The initiative is managed for women leaders by women leaders at different levels and functions throughout the company. Todd is also adamant that it is not to be confused with a social network. While networking is an important aspect of the initiative, it is only one part. Through the initiative, Abbott is raising the leadership bar, demonstrating the www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
but Todd has taken on several new protégés who have requested her guidance in moving up the ranks.
A major component of Abbott’s Women’s Leadership Initiative is to facilitate connections by offering venues for networking. Women from different divisions were able to come together during the pilot events as in this photo where Todd mingles with Denise Kitchen, vice president, human resources, TAP Pharmaceuticals; and Lois Ford, divisional vice president, human resources, specialty products division. Todd has overcome many obstacles in her own career. “I know what it’s like to be excluded,” Todd explains. At one of the first WLI meetings, she shared with the group a story about a time when she excused herself to use the restroom at a meeting held on the executive floor of a former employer and was embarr assed to learn that there was not a women’s restroom located on that floor. Committed to the advancement of women, Todd is using her own experiences, like this one, to ensure that hundreds of women leaders at Abbott are connected to one another and afforded the opportunities they’ve earned.
What we have accomplished in nine months has taken other companies several years to achieve,” says Todd. Also impressive is the fact that Todd has engaged all of the Abbott’s Women’s Leadership Initiative company ’s male leaders pilot received the full support of the in the initiative, with company’s top leaders. Here Miles White kicking off Dave Goffredo, president of Abbott’s or speaking at several of pharmaceutical products division, shares the pilot events. his pride in having 57 percent women
Driving for Results
on his sales force and 36 percent women on his senior management team.
Abbott can already tout dozens of tangible success stories as a result of the women’s leadership initiative. One seniorlevel R&D scientist was so inspired by the insights she gained through her involvement with the initiative that she took a risk to apply for a high-level commercial job. She got the job. Another female vice president in manufacturing credits the initiative for connecting her with three of her most recent hires. Not only that, Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
As the pilot phase of the women’s leadership initiative comes to a close, Todd and her counterparts look forward to rolling the initiative out to the entire company. The Woman’s Leadership Initiative and others like it should ultimately further Abbott’s success. After all, an engaged workforce with a sense of belonging offers higher productivity and more innovative results. PDJ page 17
Raising The Bar
Waste Management, Inc.
houseofinclusion building a
“When people ask me about the turnaround in this company, they ask what’s the biggest challenge that we have. Clearly to me the biggest challenge is the cultural challenge.”
W
A. Maurice Myers Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President
hen A. Maurice Myers joined Houston-based Waste Management, Inc. in 1999 as CEO, he inherited a company in crisis. A difficult merger l eft a barrage of challenges: inadequate information systems, an ailing balance sheet, a plummeting stock price, legal issues and low employee morale. With two million commercial and 25 million residential customers, Waste Management was desperately in need of a new direction.
Carlton Yearwood Vice President for Business Diversity Waste Management, Inc. 1001 Fannin, Suite 4000 Houston, TX 77002 Tel:
713.287.2453
FAX: 713.328.7604
Waste Management’s diversity strategy is targeted to create and sustain a company culture where diversity is valued and leveraged and all employees and strategic partners are treated with dignity and respect. Support from senior leadership has been essential to getting the initiative off the ground.
The Board of Directors determined that a new strategy and a new management were required. Myers and the new Waste Management seni or team provided the leadership that has changed the company. Two years into a three-year turnaround strategy, the progress has been remarkable and profitable. Systems have been rebuilt, customer service is improving and the stock price has doubled. The company’s 55,000 employees responded to the massive challenge with energy, passion and creativity.
"A real concern for social equity in corporations yields a better working env ironment. It enables each employee to realize his or her fullest potential. And that is good business," added Cafferty.
With the company stabilized, Myers is pushing forward w ith a diversity inclusion strategy. He views diversity as a business initiative that is important to the bottom line and vital to the growth and development of the company.
Bob Dees, Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer for the company, agrees. "Diversity inclusion will allow for more creativity and insight and give our people significant opportunities to advance into leadership positions."
"During the last two years we have made major strides towards our goal, which is to be a worldclass organization with the highest standards for performance and service," said Myers. "Establishing a diversity inclusion strategy is an i ntegral part of this goal."
"That means utilizing diverse labor sources both insi de and outside of the company for the best available talent, developing those people and putting them in positions where they can be as effective and successful as possible," Dees added.
"I don’t know of any company that’s had a successful diversity initiative without complete commitment from the Board of Directors and senior management, from the CEO down," said Pastora San Juan Cafferty, Waste Management board member.
"We have an extraordinarily challenging job ahead of us," says Waste Management board
cyearwood@wm.com page 18
Commitment from the Top
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Building a House of Inclusion Raising The Bar
"A real concern for social equity in corporations yields a better working environment. It enables each employee to realize his or her fullest potential. And that is good business." Pastora San Juan Cafferty Member, Board of Directors member Jesse Arnelle. "But it’s one that will be of increasing benefit to Waste Management, which will bring even more financial strength to the corporation overall. The Board of Directors will assist Maury Myers in every possible way." "We need to build an inclusive culture where everybody feels that they’re treated equally and fairly and that everybody has the same opportunities to have a successful career with our company," added Myers. Earlier this year, Waste Management hired Carlton Yearwood as the company’s first Vice President for Business Diversity to drive the fledgling initiative. Yearwood is a nationally known authority at implementing diversity programs for Fortune 500 companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Allstate Corporation, where he worked for 20 years. Both PWC and Allstate are routinely recognized as two of the benchmark companies in the field of diversity leadership. His talent and experience will be tested at Waste Management, a company with 1200 operating locations in 48 states, Canada and Puerto Rico. Yearwood’s plan is on the fast track. He has set an ambitious goal for Waste Management to be recognized as a national leader of diversity and inclusion by 2004.
At the Starting Gate "When people ask me about the turnaround in this company, they ask what’s the biggest challenge that we have," said Myers. "Clearly to me the biggest challenge is the cultural challenge." The challenge is to transform a large corporation in an industry historically dominated by white male leadership, where minorities and women traditionally were underrepresented. A cornerstone of the transformation will be to relate to www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Waste Management employees that diversity inclusion is more than increasing minority and female representation. An effective diversity strategy includes everyone, ensuring that all employees are treated with dignity and respect and have full access to WM’s many opportunities. "Education and communication are key components that will be built into the strategy," said Yearwood. "We should not be turning t he initiative over to front-line managers who have good intentions but are not educated about the things they should be doing in order to build an environment of inclusion." Yearwood has already begun to reach out across the company to build a framework of "Diversity Champions"— Senior Leader Steering Committees and Diversity Action Councils at the corporate and field levels. Training these business leade rs at all levels early in the process to "walk-the-walk" and "talkthe-talk" will accelerate acceptance and understanding of diversity and inclusion. An intense, company-wide, diversity awareness communications program is about to be rolled out. "It is also important for me to get away from the corporate office and meet the people in the field, understand better what they do and the impact the "Diversity inclusion will initiative will allow for more creativity have on them, and insight and give our personally and people significant professionally," opportunities to advance said Yearwood. into leadership positions." Bob Dees Assessment of Senior Vice President and the current work Chief People Officer environment will follow. What is the representation of women and minorities at all levels in the company? Does everyone have equal access to developmental opportunities and assignments? Are there tensions between groups that inhibit peoples’ ability to work well?
"The company must also reflect the demograp hics of our communities. It’s not only good social economics, it’s good financial economics," said Arnelle. "We want the communities to know we recognize that we have a responsibility in terms of how our company reflects the diversity of the communities that we serve." Building metrics and accountability into management and senior leader compensation, and evaluation programs around diversity and inclusi on, will be another critical component. "I am a firm believer in what gets measured gets done, and what gets measured and rewarded gets done better," said Yearwood. The Board and senior manage"The company must also reflect the demographics of our communities. It’s not only good social economics, it’s good financial economics." Jesse Arnelle Member, Board of Directors
ment will be working together to establish longterm goals and initial objectives.
What is Success at Waste Management? What will Waste Management look like after diversity inclusion is successfully implemented? "Success, just in terms of how the organization looks, and I mean that literally, especially in our leadership positions, will definitely be an obvious factor," said Yearwood. "Also success in terms of the feel of the place— are all Waste Management employees experiencing the tenets of an inclusive work environment?" "When people show up to work, they should feel they are contributing to the success of the com pany and that those contributions are valued, regardless of where you sit. Equally important, those contributions will be appropriately rewarded," added Yearwood.
continued page 53 Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
page 19
Raising The Bar
New York Life
&
humanity integrity WHERE
GO HAND IN HAND
“A diverse workforce is essential to help New York Life achieve its long-term values of financial strength, integrity, and most importantly, humanity. Progressive, successful companies such as New York Life need diversity in their corporate culture. Bringing talented people together with different viewpoints creates synergies and fosters creative thinking, innovation and problem solving.” - Sy Sternberg, Chairman, President and CEO of New York Life Insurance Company
N
ew York Life is a company founded on strong values throughout our history: the values of financial strength, integrity and humanity that have served as our guiding principles. A diverse workforce is essential to allow us to put these pr inciples into practice. It also broadens our company’s pool of talent so that we can generate new ideas and approaches, and better serve our policyholders. We recognize that our society and our customers represent an evolving range of needs, values and perspectives. As a company, New York Life promises to ensure fair consideration and treatment of all the people with whom we do business. How does New York Life ensure that diversity exists throughout the organization? Recruitment, retention, tracking, and most of all, respect are among the key ingredients to our successful diversity efforts.
Recruitment
Angela Coleman Vice President of Human Resources New York Life Insurance Company For information, contact: Nancy Maksomski Senior Recruiting Associate 51 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10010 Tel: (212) 576-3940
www.nylcareers.com page 20
New York Life regularly participates in minority career fairs including the National Association of Black Accountants, Diversity Job Opportunity Fair, NAACP, Career Expo for the Disabled and Women for Hire. Our company representatives visit colleges with diverse student populations, such as New York University, Hampton College and Howard University. We also engage search firms to provide a diverse pool of qualified candidates to fill officer level positions within the organization. At New York Life, we understand the importance of supporting education to further our recruitment an d retention efforts. For years, we have participated in the Inroads Internship Program by recruiting high achieving minority college students to work at New York Life during the summer with the goal of having them join the company full time upon graduation. We also provide financial support to the Consortium Graduate School of Management, an alliance of 14 universities/colleges that recruits collegetra ined African-American, Hispanic-American and Native-American United States citizens, and invites them to compete for merit-based fellowships for graduate study leading to a Master’s Degree in Business. Finally, New York Life’s MBA training program provides a “fast track” to appointive officer positions.
New York Life actively recruits minority employees at all levels of the company. A committee comprised of senior executives sets the policy. This committee approves all hires or promotions at the officer level; director-level hirings are also monitored to ensure there is adequate minority and female representation. The committee reviews statistics for each business unit and analyzes the data on a monthly Retention basis. Additionally, each business unit has its At New York Life, our goal is to provide own Diversity Officer to ensure that corporate diversity goals are promoted and implemented in employees with tools to enable them to develop each department and that the applicant pool for and sustain a satisfying career, and give employees the opportunity to pursue their goals each open position is fair and balanced. and maximize their professional potential through numerous on-site programs. Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Where Humanity & Integrity Go Hand in Hand Raising The Bar National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) to enable us to provide greater support services and mentoring opportunities to female employees.
Corporate Vice President Rowan MacDonald (left) and Administrative Assistant Natalie Harris (right) participate in a recent Minority Interchange event. Through organizations such as Minority Interchange (MI), our employees participate in developmental and community activities that benefit both the employees and New York Life as a corporation. MI provides a forum for minority employees to develop new skills and techniques that can help their professional advancement. The program offers monthly career development workshops and seminars led by senior manag ers. In addition, a mentoring network was developed that matches MI members with executives in the company to help develop skills, address professional issues and create role models. Aside from MI, other programs exist in the organization to identify high potential females and minorities and provide opportunities for their continued growth at New York Life. For example, the company is a corporate spon sor of
Additionally, active participation in community organizations, such as the National Urban League and NAACP demonstrates our goal to provide career development opportunities for all qualified employees.
“Our goal is to ensure that diversity is not reduced to a buzzword. New York Life’s diversity policy is founded on principles of inclusion. There is no doubt that our support and encouragement of individual differences and the unique talents they produce have enhanced our business for over 150 years and will continue to do so for the next 150.”
Angela Coleman, Vice President of Human Resources
Tracking At New York Life, we continually review and adjust our diversity program to reflect the needs of a constantly changing population. The Human Resources Department establishes annual diversity goals with respect to minorities and women in each department. With the support of Diversity Officers, this unit actively monitors a department’s hiring and promotional activity. To ensure the company is on track to meet our diversity objectives, the Execut ive
an employer of choice
Management Committee reviews monthly and quarterly diversity reports for the business units. In addition to tracking diversity within the company, we monitor our vendor relationships to ensure that our pool of suppliers includes minority- and women-owned business enterprises. Diversity flows through every aspect of our business and is evident in our employees, customer base and suppliers. The New Yor k Life Supplier Diversity Program is an integral and consistent part of our procurement process.
Respect Mutual respect is inherent to New York Life’s value of humanity, and all employees must participate in an educational program on the subject, which is facilitated by our in-house Equal Employment Opportunity staff. The program reinforces that diversity is beneficial and realizes that each person brings unique skills, background and experiences to the job. In addition to their participation in the Mutual Respect program, managers are coached on effectively supervising a diverse staff. The culture of accommodation and respect at New York Life supports an environment that helps each maximize his or her performance. Len Elmer, Vice President in Charge of Human Resources
New York Life Insurance Company has been recognized by numerous organizations as a business leader and outstanding employer. The following awards are a testament to our unwavering commitment to our Careers & the Disabled policyholders, employees and corporate values—financial strength, integrity and humanity. New York Life has been named one of Careers & the Disabled’s Top 50 Companies to Work Money Magazine Hispanic Magazine For, providing a workplace that supports the New York Life received an award from Money New York Life was named among Hispanic needs of all employees, including the disabled. Magazine for best company benefits. Magazine’s Corporate 100, a listing of the top Companies on this list are all Fortune 100 100 companies providing the most opportuni- The company adheres to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), federal legislation that corporations that are evaluated in key areas ties for Hispanics. Criteria included diversity prohibits discrimination. Additionally, such as assessing employee compensation training, ethnic representation of the board, and benefits. minority business initiatives, recruitment, and employees can ask for ergonomic office arrangements, such as special chairs, computer donations to educational programs. monitors or equipment to accommodate medWorking Mother ical conditions. Also available to employees New York Life is proud to be acknowledged Latina Style with disabilities are computer programs to among Working Mother’s Top 100 Companies New York Life has been named among Latina assist with dyslexia and computer software to for Working Mothers. This award is given to Style’s top 50 companies providing the best help individuals with visual impairments. companies that have taken outstanding strides career opportunities for Hispanic women in Additionally, our ADA Coordinator assists in providing childcare services, flexibility, leave the United States. with responding to questions, and working for new parents, work/life benefits and profeswith employees and managers to ensure that sional advancement for female employees. PDJ we are ADA compliant.
www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
page 21
Raising The Bar
Denny’s, Inc.
the roadto
redemption
“We learned the language of inclusion because we were forced to learn it: and then we learned to walk our talk to survive. What we’ve found over these past few years is that not only have we survived, we’ve flourished. Inclusion and diversity are something we focus on each day; they are integral to the way we do business. Instead of being a laughingstock, we’re now a model. And what we’ve done can be done by any company that’s committed.” - James B. Adamson, Former Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President from his book The Denny’s Story
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hen it comes to diversity success stories, chances are you won’t find one bigger than Denny’s. Today, Denny’s is easily the most recognized name in family dining. In fact, with more than 1,700 restaurants across America and sales of $2 billion, Denny’s is the largest full-service family restaurant chain in the United States. Yet only 10 years ago, this organization was under a shadow that seemed impossible to shake.
In 1993, a story of six African-American secret service agents being denied service was made public across the Unite d States and around the world. Almost immediately, dozens of instances of racial discrimination at Denny’s restaurants— from employees denying service to asking for prepayment for meals—were in the public light.
Ray Hood-Phillips Chief Diversity Officer Denny’s, Inc. For information, contact: Debbie Atkins Director, Public Relations 203 East Main Street Spartanburg, SC 29319 Tel: 864.597.8361
d_atkins@dennys.com page 22
“In some ways 1993 was Flagstar’s toughest year,” says former President and CEO Jim Adamson about Denny’s parent company in his book The Denny’s Story: How a Company in Crisis Resurrected Its Good Name. Flagstar was renamed Advantica to mark its reorganization in 1997. “It looked to outsiders—even to me—as though the company was about to fall apart. Public humiliation, painful revelations and a vague sense of shame took its toll on many good people who worked for this company. But even amid what looked like destruction, there were men and women at Flagstar who had begun the struggle to rebuild our business and our honor.” Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
And rebuild we did. It took the efforts and commitment of our entire organization to make the tremendous business and cultural transformation at Denny’s/Advantica a reality. Over the past several years, we have been asked by hundreds of organizations—corporations, colleges and universities, non-profits, churches, public agencies and community groups—how we managed to transform Denny’s, both culturally and structurally, in just five years. We have isolated 10 drivers or “keys” of our diversity change. We believe these are “the fundamentals” for transforming a company of our size.
Ten Keys to Change A Committed Leader. It begins at the top. The CEO of an organization must set the tone, values, expectations and operating philosophies for the company. He or she should be one of the company’s greatest champions of diversity, and must model the behaviors expected of the rank and file. “Even before we could start, and all the while we were engaged in the process, I needed to be the standard-bearer,” says Adamson of that “bumpy ride back” for Denny’s; and it’s a philosophy current President and CEO Nelson Marchioli is totally devoted to. Diverse Board of Directors. A diverse board— as opposed to one lacking racial and gender diversity—is more likely to examine the larger 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
The Road to Redemption Raising The Bar issues confronting the company, both short and long term, with diversity issues in mind. Advantica’s initiatives have staunch support throughout the company’s board of 11 directors, of which 36 percent are women and minorities. Accountability for Change. Someone of title and rank must be accountable and responsible for driving change through the organization. Don’t delegate the job to a diversity committee, task force or council or your diversity efforts will become “an appendage” to the business, not fully integrated into the company operations. Company-wide Ownership. Change is everybody’s job. Every worker must “own” his or her portion of the goal. Goals and programs should vary by restaurant concept, by division, by line, by staff. Company-wide ownership forces diversity considerations into all aspects of business operations. Education & Training. These are the key drivers of cultural change in any organization. There is no other way to inculcate a vision and an understanding of a new corporate culture among thousands of associates without education. The training should begin at the “top of the house” and cascade through the rest of the organization. It should be tailored to address the issues facing each key level of the organization, and it should be on-going. Our “We Can” and “We Can II” programs are our basic training tools, and have been a part of the Denny’s culture since 1994. All 70,000 Denny’s company and franchise employees, management and non-management, undergo diversity training tailored to their needs. Clear, Enforceable Non-discrimination Policies. The lack of a policy is, in fact, a policy. The absence of clear rules of conduct that outline what is acceptable and unacceptable in terms of how people will treat one another and the customer, regardless of who they are, will result in people making up their own rules as they go along. Eliminate all Structures Impeding Inclusion. What are structures? They are the company’s systems, processes, policies and practices, especially its “people systems”—how it hires, fires, develops and promotes people. The www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Currently 119 minority franchisees collectively own 450 Denny’s restaurants, representing 42 percent of all Denny’s franchise operations. Today, 64 restaurants are owned by African Americans; in 1993, there was only one. company must take care to eliminate all management and HR structures that impede inclusion, and build back structures that foster diversity. This component is a key driver of structural or systemic change. Monitor, Measure & Report Results. “What gets measured, is what gets done.” When measuring and reporting mechanisms are in place, people know it’s a management priority. We monitor our progress on a regular basis and report our findings to senior managers and the Board of Directors for feedback and direction. Finally, we prepare comprehensive external reports on a regular basis for other interested stakeholders and groups. Tie Diversity Progress to Our Reward & Recognition Systems. At Advantica, we make diversity a pocketbook issue for our workers. We have a set of competencies we want all our employees to eventually master—valuing and managing diversity is one of them. Also, for three years, we tied 25 percent of our senior managers’ annual bonuses to our diversity progress. Celebrate Our Success! Advantica’s senior management team salutes and honors the company’s top diversity champions before their peers at our annual Abrazo Awards. (“Abrazo” means “to embrace” in Spanish.) This sends a powerful message to the entire organization that embracing diversity is important to us, a priority for the Company, and everyone is expected to play a part.
Much to Celebrate The changes at Denny’s have been so sweeping that Fortune magazine ranked Denny’s and its parent company, Advantica Restaurant Group, Inc., Number One on its list of “America’s 50 Best Companies for Minorities” two years in a row. The National Organization of Female Executives, Asian Enterprise Magazine, Latina Style and other organizations that Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
have recognized Denny’s amazing transformation include: • the NAACP by awarding Advantica the 1998 Fair Share Corporate Award for Minority Business Development • The Center for Responsibility in Business (formerly the Council on Economic Priorities) by awarding Denny’s its 2000 Corporate Conscience Diversity Award. We knew early we were on the right road, because our community told us so: in 1996, the Anne Arundel Branch of the NAACP in Annapolis, MD named Denny’s “Corporation of the Year.” Annapolis was where the Denny’s class action suit regarding the six secret service agents originated in 1993. Along the way, we’ve learned some hard lessons, and often it’s been a struggle. But we’ve used those lessons to reinvent our company. And we believe staying on the right road means sharing those lessons. PDJ Ray Hood-Phillips is Chief Diversity Officer of Denny’s restaurants. Since joining the company in April 1995, she is credited with helping transform the Denny’s organization, both culturally and structurally. The practices and programs she and her colleagues put into place at Denny’s to drive the cultural and structural change was featured in the CBS 60 Minutes investigative report, "Turning Denny’s Around," which aired in spring of 1998. In 1999, HoodPhillips participated as a panelist in the nationally televised PBS special: Racial Legacies and Learning: Why Is It So Difficult to Talk About Race? She is also featured in the CNBC documentary, "The Denny’s Turn-around." These days, Hood-Phillips spends a great deal of her time advising other Fortune 500 companies on how to implement effective diversity interventions within their organizations. page 23
Raising The Bar
we are stronger as a whole
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin discovers that corporate diversity is much like system integration: the whole is definitely stronger than the sum of its individual parts.
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hen Lockheed and Martin Marietta merged in 1995, the new Lockheed Martin was literally an array of diverse companies with different cultures, practices and systems. Our challenge has been to draw from this tremendous source of skill and knowledge to create one company, one team that is commit ted to the success of our customers. Today, we are well on the way to this goal and we are seeing the strength that comes from the synergy of these diverse business units. It has shown in our performance. We’re “hitting the numbers.” We’re winning new business. We’re satisfying customers. And we’re becoming a team. Yet, like most companies in the global market, we know that we must go further to leverage the full talent and potential of a labor force that increasingly reflects the diversity of America and the world.
Dr. Vance D. Coffman Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lockheed Martin Corporation For more information, contact: Shan Carr Senior Manager, Workforce Diversity Tel: 301.897.6875 FAX: 301.897.6600 shan.carr@lmco.com Dave Waller Director, HR Communications Tel: 301.897.6875 FAX: 301.897.6252 dave.waller@lmco.com page 24
In short, the perspective of diversity as the right thing to do is converging with a compelling business case. Companies must attract and retain the diverse people of the labor market in order to have any chance at long-term success. Business leaders look to the numbers, and the numbers are s aying that industry must act. In our view, this means we must welcome everyone with the talent, energy, integrity and determination to be the best. We must find a way to support the infinite characteristics that make each of us unique individuals with unique contributions to make. All of which is easier said than done. At Lockheed Martin, our path to this kind of workplace logically builds on critical existing elements such as EEO and affirmative action, which continue to Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
demand our special attention and full compliance. Yet diversity is distinct from these programs. Creating an inclusive environment is more than a legal requirement and involves enlisting the support and involvement of all employees rather than splintering into factions of competing groups that do not work together as a team in support of business objectives. For example, we must continue to open up th e doors of opportunity for people of color and women without alienating other employees. We will need to find challenging opportunities for entry level to mid-career professionals without disenfranchising our more experienced employees. In an inclusive workplace, everyone means everyone. Each is valued and each has an important contribution to make. The good news at our corporation is that we expect tens of thousands of opportunities to open up over the next decade, and we will need the full focus and talent of qualified candidates within the labor pool to meet our goals. This creates a great opportunity to develop a work environment that leverages the individuality of each employee to achieve what we call mission success—meeting or exceeding the expectations of our customers. It also places us in a com petitive position if we mirror the diverse market from which we draw our customer base. So here’s how we have approached this challenge. Last year, we conducted extensive research, both internally and externally, to gather data about trends, workplace issues, best practices and various perspectives on how to proceed. We conducted interviews, surveys and detailed analysis. This gave us a foundation on which to demonstrate a business imperative and build our plan. In the fall of 2001, we established the Lockheed 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
We Are Stronger as a Whole Raising The Bar Lockheed Martin's core business areas are systems integration, aeronautics, space, and technology services. Our vision is to be the world's best in these areas; to be the company our nation and its allies trust most to integrate their largest, most complex, most important advanced technology systems. And our commitment to diversity underlies this vision: “One company, one team, all-inclusive, . . where diversity contributes to mission success.” .
Martin Executive Diversity Council, comprising a diverse group of respected leaders from across the corporation. I appointed Robert J. Stevens, Lockheed Martin president and chief operating officer, to chair this group to demonstrate the resolve, dedication and engagement of the top leadership of our enterprise. Our first efforts involved developing a definition of what diversity means in the context of Lockheed Martin, and an “engagement process” for assuring management accountability and employee involvement in reaching our goals. The diversity vision that emerged from this team was simple and direct: “One company, one team, all-inclusive, where diversity contributes to mission success.” This reflected our view that we wanted to make this a unifying approach. Some may see diversity as placing too much emphasis on individual interests to the detriment of the whole team. We believe that if everyone can fully contribute, we are stronger as a whole, more unified. This approach is directly analogous to our work as systems integrators. Lockheed Martin engineers integrate individual subsystems into complex, powerful systems with astounding results. The whole is definitely stronger than the sum of these i ndividual parts. This strategy also is in sync with our efforts aimed at continuing to pull together all the diverse business units of Lockheed Martin into one team, one company. The Executive Diversity Council quickly understood that the engagement process would be the critical path to the success or failure of our efforts. It was obvious that one www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
committee was not going to “dictate” the business culture or resolve each issue for a corporation of 125,000 employees. After considerable dialogue and healthy debate, we decided that our Executive Diversity Council would lead but not micromanage this effort. Neither would it be a sounding board for every single complaint or problem that could arise in a corporation of our size. We have existing channels for that. Fundamentally, our view is that each busines s
“All business areas in our corporation are held accountable to ‘own’ diversity as a business objective ...” unit and each leader must drive our commitment to an inclusive work environment or it won’t happen. So our first effort was to educate everyone on the business case for diversity. The mission of the council was then set as this: advising and recommending strategic direction and policy to the corporation’s executive leadership to achieve our diversity vision. All business areas in our corporation are h eld accountable to “own” diversity as a business objective and to oversee the creation of local diversity councils to support them. To help drive management accountability, our planned diversity training for the Lockheed Martin leadership team includes a major focus on the business case and will include the involvement of each local business executive. Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
This kind of process model has freed the Executive Diversity Council to focus on the most strategic kinds of issues that must be addressed in forging a fully inclusive environment. We have quickly begun work on overall strategy for initiatives that will really make a difference such as expanding our commitment to outreach, intern and coop programs; new employee orientation and mentoring; and career devel opment for both individual contributors and leadership positions. Our efforts involve all phases of recruitment, retention and the continual re-recruitment of our workforce. We must reach out to employees from the time they start school to the point at which they are approaching retirement. Consider the fact that the engineers of the future are in school now. Also consider the fact that our most experienced employees have a wealth of knowledge that we cannot afford to lose. One of many ways to build inclusiveness is for experienced employees to mentor recent hires and pass on some of their insight and knowledge. Another is to encourage employees at all levels to participate in outreach activities. The real work for all these efforts goes on in the business units at the grass roots level. That’s where success will happen, and that is where direct responsibility must lie. It takes leadership, accountability and the involvement of all employees. As we continue to work through the inevitable obstacles and issues in our path, we are continually stressing that our purpose is to be a unifying force that acknowledges everyone’s unique contributions to our business. And if we are successful, we believe the resu lt will be a work environment that reflects a strong business case and the best of our national values … e pluribus unum … out of many, one. PDJ page 25
Raising The Bar
Centre for Diversity and Business / United Kingdom
public/private PARTNERSHIPS
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Cross-sector partnerships hold great potential for bringing together complementary resources and expertise, thereby ensuring an effective and holistic response to the challenge of diversity.
ublic-private partnerships around diversity issues have grown in recent years in many European countries. Our new report, “Ethnic Minority Employment Through Partnership,” looks at the way in which ethnic minority integration into employment is being tackled in four countries. The research team identified 16 partnerships operating in different ways in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, with the aim of helping us promote good practice. They found a high degree of cross-sectoral co-operation working to improve the access and retention of ethnic minorities, both through direct services to individuals and efforts to change organisational practices.
Graham Shaw Director Centre for Diversity and Business London, UK Tel: +44 1892 825756
graham.shaw@ diversityandbusiness.com www.diversityandbusiness.com page 26
Understanding the wider context for the partnerships is crucial. Europe’s growing ethnic minority population, as well as the “ageing” of society, are raising vital questions about the utilisation of human resources and issues of social cohesion. The report also outlines the overall labour market situation of ethnic minorities (especially the problems of unemployment), the different national app roaches to the employment of ethnic minority groups and the legal frameworks against discrimination.
Translating policy into practice The partnerships represent a “site” where the public policies around ethnic minority employment can be translated into practical and operational activities. Much of public policy towards integration into employment requires the participation of the private sector as the major “supplier” of employment opportunities. Sources of training, expertise, guidance, etc. can be provided by public sector organisations, but in the final analysis the overwhelming criterion for success is whether or not ethnic minority people enter and are retained within the labour market—into what Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
we might call “real jobs,” i.e., unsubsidised jobs with a degree of security and development opportunities, contributing to long term employability. The partnership model is also an expression of the growing recognition that the private sector has unique competencies and experiences that, combined with those of the public sector, contribute to a more holistic and effective approach to addressing the issues.
Creating wider opportunities The partnership approach also helps to change recruitment, attraction and retention practices within organisations (both public and private), as it challenges the organisational “culture” and ways of doing things. In fact, the partners’ openness to change seems to be a decisive element in making both the partnership itself, and integration process as such, successful. Although, in most partnerships, there is little evidence of participation of ethnic minority communities as formal and active partners, the partnership approach can play a role in addressing this lack of participation. Greater participation itself creates wider opportunities for ethnic minorities, as well as helping to overcome operational difficulties relating to communication, awareness and the relevance of of activities for ethnic minority target groups.
Developing new skills and capacities There has been a development of capacities and competencies for those involved in the partnerships as partners. Operating in new fields, mediating among different types of actors, reflecting on existing practices, looking for synergies among different practices and negotiating different priorities are some of the skills increasingly being developed by a cadre of personnel in the different sectors who are operating at the partnership “interface.” These new 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Public/Private Partnerships Raising The Bar ADECCO: SKILLS FOR MIDDLE MANAGEMENT TO END DISCRIMINATION Adecco is the leader in France of “travail temporaire”(temporary work). It has 150,000 part time workers and 35,000 companies as clients. Senior management of Adecco decided on the need to adopt new “good practices,” focusing on ensuring that discrimination does not occur in the placement of employees with its client companies. In 2001, the company signed an agreement with the French government to work against discrimination. The company is confronted with contradictions between the company client who, sometimes, use discriminatory criteria (directly or indirectly) and the professional ethics of the sector, current French law and the business need to send the right person to the right job. A specific team, “pôle lutte contre les discriminations,” has been established within the company to lead and plan programme of research, dialogue and training across the whole of France. skills and competencies are likely to benefit the partner organisation as such, as they most often are useable in other contexts. The report notes that some partners see the work of the partnerships as contributing to the development of awareness and practices of how to manage diversity. Peer group involvement, public sector promotion and exchange of experience amongst partners also encourage the adoptio n of diversity management strategies. Where the organisation is not currently predisposed to adopting work on diversity, the partnership can provide an impetus for action. Where the organisation has started on the road of diversity management, the work of the partnership can help support and sustain future developments.
Sources of innovation Associated with creating wider opportunities is the role of the partnerships in developing a diversity of practices. A glance at the detailed case studies reveals a diverse range of personnel and organisations with many different perspectives, approaches, services and institutional arrangements. The partnerships are engaged in combining these in different ways in order to
meet their objectives. This diversity increases the possibilities for innovation through the exchange of ideas and perspectives. Whatever the limitations of the partnerships, for example due to funding uncertainty, there is no doubt that they have contributed to change and innovation, both internally in partner organisations and in the field of minority employment. Wider participation by ethnic minorities would further contribute to not only increased relevance of programmes but also greater innovation. Here seems to lie both an unused potential and a challenge for the partnerships: to engage ethnic minorities not only as target groups but also as active partners.
Contributing to enhanced reputation There is some evidence that building better relations with stakeholder groups associated directly or indirectly with the partnerships contributes to a better reputation for the organisation. For example, private sector partners vary from those with passive to those with very active roles in the partnerships. Respondents in the latter category see their enhanced reputation as one of the positive outcomes of their participation. Within the
TRAINING AND RECRUITING MINORITIES INTO FINANCIAL SERVICE JOBS In the UK, there has been an increase in financial advice occupations but concerns remain over the level of expertise of professionals providing advice to the public. HSBC is seeking to recruit people into these occupations. As a “high street” bank, HSBC has had an extensive business and community oriented equal opportunities programme for many years. It seeks to make connections between its business needs and impact with local communities. The bank’s UK head office is in the City of London, next to the borough Tower Hamlets, one of the UK’s most deprived areas. Working in co-operation with a local education college, HSBC has established “Removing Barriers: Building Bridges”—a programme to tap into a local talent pool with a diverse character; train and recruit people into an occupational area which is expanding (financial advice); and equip company managers to be able to deal with a diverse workforce. www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Profiles in Diversity Journal
MINORITIES INTO EMPLOYMENT IN LARGE COMPANIES In 1998, a task force of Dutch government, private sector and other social partners looked into the problems faced by ethnic minorities in accessing employment. From 2000, the Government established the “Covenants for the Recruitment and Promotion of Minorities into Large Companies.” These agreements between the government and the management of large companies operating in the Netherlands are designed to increase the representation of minorities and to ensure that companies adopt better multicultural human resource policies. By the spring of 2002, 100 such agreements had been signed with companies such as ABN Amro, Coca-Cola, C&A, Fuji Photo Film, Heineken, Hewlett-Packard, IKEA, ING, KLM, Mars, Nestle, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Rabobank, Scania, Shell, Siemens, TNT, Unilever and Xerox. The government established an independent organisation, “Ruim Baan voor Minderheden,” to manage the agreements and help transfer good practice between the companies. public sector there is some awareness that their reputation as organisations that provide services to the whole community depends to some extent on their support for such partnerships. For some of our respondents the work of the partnerships is part of a wider process of breaking down barriers between sectors as well as between ethnic minority communities and the majority population. Participation by t he European operations of US companies is becoming increasingly common— IBM, Coca-Cola and Manpower to name only three. However, as for European-based companies, there is a need for greater awareness of the new skills required for successful partnership working around diversity issues. The Centre for Diversity and Business will be following up the report to improve the level and methods of engagement by the private sector. PDJ
MINORITY ENTREPRENEURS . PROVIDE NEW EMPLOYMENT . In 1998, research showed that nearly 7 percent of German companies were minority owned. Yet by and large they were generally not involved in providing apprenticeships or training for young people. It was estimated that over 10,000 new training places could be created with these companies. In 1998, the Association for Foreign Entrepreneurs was established to promote the participation of minority entrepreneurs in the German apprenticeship system and to increase the participation of minority young people in the system. With the support of the local and regional government, the Association has raised awareness amongst its members of the importance of training and development, and recruited growing numbers of minority young people into raising their skill levels. • July/August 2002
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Raising The Bar
Bank of America
amongourassets STRONGEST
“Our commitment to diversity is a commitment to individuals and to the team. It’s about creating an environment in which all associates can fulfill their potential without artificial barriers, and in which the team is made stronger by the diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives of individuals. It’s about giving all of us— individually and together—the best possible chance to succeed.” Ken Lewis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
T
he work environment at Bank of America draws on the strength of every associate to build an atmosphere of personal and professional growth. And that translates into coworker and client relationships based on trust, confidence, dignity and integrity.
Liz Ferrer Diversity Executive For information, contact: Lanette Hart, APR Bank of America FL9-001-23-15 50 N. Laura Street Jacksonville, FL 32202 Tel: 904.791.5654 FAX: 904.791.5382
lanette.hart@bankofamerica.com page 28
Liz Ferrer, Premier Banking Personnel executive, has served as the company’s corporate diversity executive since February 2001. Ferrer oversees corporatewide diversity results and serves as a diversity resource to business lines, working closely with the Diversity Advisory Council. Chaired by Milton Jones, Quality & Productivity executive for Consumer and Commercial Banking, the Diversity Advisory Council consists of 25 leaders from major businesses and support units throughout the company. The council is charged with developing and implementing initiatives that will further the goal of establishing a work environment in which all of our associates are welcomed and included, respected for who they are, empowered and supported to do their best work, and rewarded for their contributions. Thirty-two Diversity Busines s Councils address inclusion issues across Bank of America’s business groups. These councils identify issues and recommend strategies to make their business groups a place where all associates can do their best work. Their focus includes mentoring programs, diversity assessment tools and alternative work assignment programs.
teams of associates throughout the company organize local events in their communities, including diversity and cultural awareness activities and workshops on diversity issues and career management. These networks are designed to encourage and capitalize on the diversity of our associates, while promoting associates’ personal and professional development.
Building Inclusion One Associate at a Time Bank of America provides diversity training for managers and all associates to learn more about creating and contributing to an inclusive environment. Building Inclusion is a companywide training program for associates in nonmanagerial roles that builds personal awareness of inclusion and diversity-related issues, encourages teamwork, and helps create an environment where our associates can understand how they contribute to their own as well as their fellow associates’ growth and development. The program provides participants with support to act consistently with the Bank of America Leadershi p Model, especially to help sustain an inclusive meritocracy, which will aid in increasing productivity and ultimately have a positive impact on the bottom line.
Managers participate in a Managing Inclusion training program that builds personal awareness and leadership skills essential to creating an inclusive meritocracy. It focuses on the causes The Diversity Network is one of six networks and consequences of negative associate treatthat make up Team Bank of Ameri ca. More than ment, the benefits of building a climate of quality treatment for all associates, and the effect of 50 diversity networks consisting of volunteer these issues on productivity and the bottom line. Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Among Our Strongest Assets Raising The Bar Serving a Diverse Nation Bank of America has a long history of commitment to immigrants of diverse origins and to the growth and well-being of multicultural communities in America. Thoroughly dedicated to understanding and respecting the unique cultures of our diverse communities, we are constantly finding new ways to meet the changing financial services needs of individuals and families. We have built banking centers in multicultural markets and staffed them with associates who speak Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Spanish, to name a few. We provide in-language brochures and marketing materials in major multicultural markets. We offer a Spanish-language option on ATMs. In California, more than 200 ATMs offer text in Chinese. We provide special customer service telephone lines in Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Korean. In April, Bank of America launched new brand and product advertising campaigns developed for and targeted specifically to Asian-American, Hispanic and African-American consumers. To reach these markets, we have developed an aggressive multiBuilding on a tradition of providing innovative service to multicultural communities, Bank of America is launching strategic initiatives to expand access to bank products and services for Hispanic consumers, who have an estimated $452 billion in buying power. “We will work to create a holistic multicultural approach to business, so that each area of operation ... is accessible and user-friendly to people of various cultural backgrounds,” says Wendy Dixon, Multicultural Marketing Executive.
cultural marketing and service strategy, doubled our spending for each cultural segment and increased our investment in multicultural resources—advertising, marketing, infrastructure and support tools—from $10 million in 2001 to more than $40 million in 2002. “Bank of America will use specialized, targeted marketing programs, products and services to become the bank of choice among key customer www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
One of Our Industry’s Leaders in Diversity Practices
Bank of America has been widely recognized for pioneering and promoting many progressive workplace practices and initiatives to support diversity and promote inclusion within the banking community: • Bank of America engages women and minority representation on the Risk and Capital Committee, which is responsible for the development and implementation of strategic, financial and talent plans throughout Bank of America. Minorities and women also serve as presidents for lines of business and in key markets nationwide, as well as on the expanded Management Operating Committee. • We ensure senior executive management develop annual goals to increase diversity in their businesses and have incentive pay tied to progress in hiring, promoting and retaining minorities. • We provide extended family benefits and have an equal opportunity policy that includes a nondiscrimination clause regarding sexual orientation. • We partner with and sponsor national multicultural professional associations to recruit new talent and develop new business relationships. • Our facilities provide multilingual and talking ATMs, as well as Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) and multilingual services for customers. segments: Asian-American, Hispanic, AfricanAmerican, Native-American and emerging markets,” said Wendy Dixon, Bank of America Multicultural Marketing executive. “We will work to create a holistic multicultural approach to business, so that each area of operation— sales, fulfillment and service—is accessible and user-friendly to people of various cultural backgrounds.”
Supporting our Multicultural Communities Our strategy at Bank of America goes beyond advertising to offer more products, services, technology, information and capabilities in Spanish and Asian-American languages. We continue to support diverse communities during various stages of economic growth with products and services tailored to meet the needs of customers throughout every stage of their lives. We are committed to the communities in whi ch we do business: • To further demonstrate our commitment to the Hispanic segment, Bank of America launched SafeSend, a new international remittance service that is being rolled out in Southwestern states beginning in May.
The Diversity Advisory Council is chaired by Milton Jones, Quality & Productivity executive for Consumer and Commercial Banking. SafeSend is a safe, trustworthy and convenient international remittance service that uses the telephone, Internet and ATM networks and enables consumers in the U.S. to send money by phone or electronically to loved ones in Mexico. The recipient uses a secure personal identification number (PIN) to access the money at any of 20,000 ATMs in Mexico. • To meet rising home ownership needs within multicultural communities, we will market innovative mortgage programs and services. Bank of America also will partner with community organizations to educate buyers about our programs’ benefits and services. (In 2001, we led home financing to multicultural customers, increasing financing to both African Americans and Hispanics.) • Bank of America will continue strategic alliances with influential community organizations in key markets, to further identify the needs within various multicultural segments. We currently work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), National Council of La Raza and the National Urban League to increase home ownership, encourage the growth of small business and provide financial literacy education. We also work with organizations such as the U.S. Hispanic
continued page 54 Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
page 29
Profile of a Champion
globalstrategy
Henry O. Hernandez, Jr., Pitney Bowes Corporation
THE
OF HENRY HERNANDEZ: an intimate interview with a true Champion of Diversity by Teri Wingender
Henry O. Hernandez, Jr., Executive Director, Global Diversity Leadership at Pitney Bowes, understands the strength in numbers—in more ways than one. He is on the leading edge of diversity professionals who are aligning and integrating their company’s diversity initiatives with bottom line business goals. "Diversity has to be viewed as a process that enhances and creates value for a company, no different from financial systems,
strategic planning, market planning and business planning," says Hernandez, who has global responsibility for the strategic design, development and implementation of business and corporate diversity initiatives throughout Pitney Bowes. Hernandez is a founder of the National Society of Hispanic MBAs, which provides educational and professional development support to foster business leadership
Q: Are there stages in Pitney Bowes’ long his- Q: What advice would you offer diversity tory of diversity that companies can track and benchmark?
A: Especially as our diversity program relates to targeting multicultural markets, yes. Before I came on board, much of our branding and outreach was related to creating a positive image of Pitney Bowes as a company that embraced diversity. Our focus was on the communities that we were targeting from a recruitment and an image-building perspective. I originally came to Pitney Bowes as a director of business diversity development. Six months later, we combined our corporate diversity and business diversity initiatives and renamed our department Global Diversity Leadership.
Q: What’s your sense of where most companies are today in their diversity programs? A: I think their immediate focus tends to be on the talent side. I think even when they do have initiatives, they focus either on the marketplace or the workplace or their supplier base. There tends not to be a strategic approach that links the three together. Combining our corporate and business diversity initiatives under one department made it much easier for me to have a handle on what’s going on in those areas.
page 30
managers about how to make the case to the powers that be for consolidating their diversity initiatives? A: Diversity managers have to internally benchmark the level of awareness of business diversity within their company. Get their attention with empirical data and then drive home the business imperative of diversity. The other side of it is being able to communicate demographics and market-related information. It’s important to build strong alliances with the business stakeholders, i.e., field marketing and sales, on the emerging marketplace and multicultural businesses. We are also trying to leverage the importance of diversity to our corporate and institutional clients.
Q: What kinds of challenges did you face in moving toward a consolidated program? A: There were a lot of dynamics involved, most significantly, to be more market-oriented and customer-driven in all of our diversity initiatives. The challenges we faced also arose from the fact that Pitney Bowes is not a consumer-based company. It’s kind of a no-brainer if you’re a consumer-based company and have a market share that is fairly well-defined in terms of its revenues a nd market penetration. When you’re on the business-to-business side, it’s more of a
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
among its members. His previous professional experience includes management consulting with Soza International as well as positions with Lockheed Martin, TRW and the Central Intelligence Agency In this interview, Hernandez details his efforts with Pitney Bowes to build on a consolidated, market-driven diversity program to win customers, find talent and diversify its supplier base. challenge to identify how much of your market is actually within multicultural markets, and to identify what your current share is.
Q: How are you figuring that out? A: We have a formal and institutionalized diversity strategic planning process. In that process, we measure each of the business unit’s goals against what they’re trying to do in diversity on an annual basis. We look at five categories: communications and training, representation and development, work life initiatives, business diversity and community outreach.
Q: Can you give readers an idea of the measurement process in one of those areas? A: We define business diversity, for example, as the way we diversify our supplier base of service providers, and the way we leverage that diversity with our customers. Customers drive what we’re doing in diversity because they actually ask us what we’re doing. And when they ask us that question, they’re really interested in our supplier diversity reputation. Many times, they already have a fairly diverse marketplace, in particular if they’re a consumer-based company. For example, a bank may have a fairly diversified customer base but they’re trying to expand their base of suppliers. If we’re a major prime for that bank, they’re going to challenge us in terms of 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
The Global Strategy of Henry Hernandez Profile of a Champion: a Special Feature what we’re doing to diversify our supplier base, not only in our total procurement, but also in subcontractors that are helping us deliver products and services to that bank.
Q: How do you recommend companies begin to align diversity with business goals? A: First, diversity has to be viewed as a process
that enhances and creates value for a company, no different from financial systems, strategic planning, market planning, or business planning. It can’t be viewed as a quick fix or a compliance-driven process. The other challenge is to sell the concepts to senior management and get their buy-in. Many bottom-line-driven managers have trouble understanding the importance of diversity—they’ll say, for example, ‘If people want to come work for us, they’ll send their resume.’ They don’t understand that diversity really is a business imperative. Building the business case requires observing the demographics and figuring out what the impact will be on the company given shifting demographics.
Q: What skill or mindset helps diversity managers communicate the business imperative? A: Making the transition to a market orientation, to a customer-driven approach. Many of my peers relate back to EEO or affirmative action or their origins are in procurement on the supply diversity side. This is not to be critical of my peers. My background is in strategy and market development. Although I haven’t been in an HR role until I came to Pitney Bowes, I understand what it means to have a customer and market orientation and how to apply these concepts to diversity.
Q: Along with a national publication such as Profiles in Diversity Journal ® or industryspecific publications, are there other resources or organizations you would recommend to professionals trying to create world-class diversity programs within their companies?
A: The Conference Board Diversity Council has been a great resource. It’s made up of
professionals doing what I’m trying to do. Last year they published a great piece of work, ‘The Diversity Executive—Task Competencies and Strategies for Effective Leadership,’* that outlined what it means to build a world-class diversity initiative. What I really like about it is that it understands that it’s more than the workforce— it’s about the marketplace and the supplier base. Many times when companies talk about diversity it doesn’t include those dimensions. And too often the definition of diversity is focused on gender or ethnic representation. (*Editor’s note: For a copy of this publication, go to www.conference-board.org, enter publication title in Search Bar, then scroll down to "Publications.”)
Q: Does Pitney Bowes have a Web-based initiative in progress? A: We are trying to leverage the Web as a tool to position ourselves. We entered into a pilot relationship with diversityinc.com to further awareness of Pitney Bowes as a company that embraces diversity, and as a way to start reaching out for recruitment purposes and identifying potential suppliers. It’s also another mechanism on the communications and training side. On the supplier diversity front, we piloted a new initiative with a company called Div 2000. Our address is Div2000.com/p itneybowes. It’s an outsourced portal that gives us a mechanism to gather information about prospective suppliers
so they can actually register their capabilities online. Also, because of our interest in targeting women- and minority-owned enterprises and multicultural companies as prospective customers, we are providing information about our products and services via hotlinks that take them back to our website.
Q: Can readers access diversity information on the Pitney Bowes website as well?
A: We’re revamping the diversity content on our external pb.com website to offer a lot more substantive information for companies who are trying to benchmark against us or get ‘best practices’ kind of information. It’s practical, hands-on content for the diversity professional, prospective supplier or prospective employee who wants to learn about us.
Q: Are senior executives at Pitney Bowes involved in diversity initiatives on a daily, weekly, monthly basis? A: Yes. Direct involvement by senior executives in diversity initiatives is of real significance to us and one of the things I look for as I assess how well a business unit or department is doing in terms of diversity. I have observed that companies are often focused on hosting ‘look good, feel good’ events that are positive as far as awareness building and providing information, but many times senior management is not directly involved in diversity outreach and events.
Q: What diversity leadership initiatives does Pitney Bowes sponsor? A: Pitney Bowes is a key sponsor of the National Society of Hispanic MBA (NSHMBA), and because of my direct involvement as a founder and as a past Strategic Advisor, we have strong ties at both the national level and chapter
continued page 54 www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
page 31
Raising The Bar
thebestminds
Schering-Plough Corporation the search for
I
It takes truly aggressive and innovative college relationships to recruit the best and the brightest talents necessary for Schering-Plough to pioneer and market its array of prescription, healthcare and animal health products worldwide.
f you want only one idea, listen only to one point of view; one can only imagine how life would be different if Schering-Plough only listened to one point of view. Headquarte red in Kenilworth, NJ, Schering-Plough is a researchbased company engaged in the discovery, development, manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceutical products worldwide. This worldwide pharmaceutical company has a rich product portfolio that spans the globe and a reputation among the scientific community for progressive research and development.
Schering-Plough’s consolidated worldwide sales totaled $ 9.8 billion in 2001, with $3.2 billion attributed to Schering-Plough’s International division. In all, products are sold in more than 125 countries worldwide.
Eugene Tucker Director, EEO/Diversity Schering-Plough Corporation 2000 Galloping Hill Road Kenilworth, NJ 07033 Tel: 908.298.4144 FAX: 908.298.3505
eugene.tucker@spcorp.com page 32
Schering-Plough has an innate appreciation for the value of integrating the perspectives of people from across a spectrum of personal and professional backgrounds. With over 29,800 employees worldwide, Schering-Plough’s talent pool is as diverse as the markets it serves. Today, minorities make up approximately 25 percent of the U.S. workforce; female employees comprise 48 percent. In managerial and professional roles, the percentages are just as great, with women holding 43 percent of corporate managerial and professional positions and minorities holding 26 percent. Of eight Division Presidents in the corporation, four are ethnic minorities . One of the presidents, Cecil B. Pickett, Ph.D., President, Schering-Plough Research Institute, has been recognized by Fortune magazine as one of the “50 Most Powerful Black Executives in America.” Dr. Pickett was cited as the only African American head of R&D for a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company. In fact, the diversity of Schering-Plough’s corporate board further illustrates its commitment to diversity: Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
of 14 board positions, three are held by women and two by African Americans. Schering-Plough has been recognized as one of Fortune magazine’s “Top 50 Companies for Minorities” for two consecutive years (2000-2001).
In Search of the Best: Aggressive College Recruitment Programs In the high-stakes world of pharmaceuticals, efforts to attract the best and the brightest talent begins early. Schering-Plough supports programs for minority students in science and business at several colleges and universities, including three Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Florida A&M, North Carolina Central and Tuskegee). That support increases the number of qualified minorities and strengthens the talent pool. Some of the year-round programs include: • A Schering-Plough Foundation grant totaling $260,000 to North Carolina Central University for the support of Biomedical/Biotechnological Research and Training at the university. As a result of this relationship, one of the science laboratories in the university’s new biotechnology buildin g bears the Schering-Plough name. Additionally, a number of students enrolled in the Biomedical/Biotechnology Research program have been designated “Schering-Plough Fellows” and part of the grant will support those students’ education. Moreover, this funding will help the university develop and enrich undergraduate science education, particularly for under-represented minority students and increase th e number of minority scientists being trained for entry-level pharmaceutical positions. Schering will also provide summer internships at its research facilities in New Jersey to help students obtain hands-on laboratory experience. 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
The Search for The Best Minds Raising The Bar • Schering-Plough has been involved in a strong relationship at Florida A&M University (FAMU) since the late 1980s. Students from FAMU’s School of Business and School of Pharmacy have been recruited for internships in the company’s finance, marketing, sales, manufacturing and research functions. These students get the opportunity to work in areas that they intend to pursue as careers. The goal of this relationship is to employ those students who have performed well in their internships. Since 1997, nine business school students have been hired in finance, marketing, sales and manufacturing positions.
Tumor Biology, Animal Care, Process Development, and Microbial, Aerosol, and Semi-Solid Formulation.
"Providing internships is just one of the many diversity recruitment strategies that Schering-Plough utilizes to maintain a constant flow of qualified minority candidates. Internships give college students the opportunity to gain valuable knowledge and experience about careers and our Company. The internship experience also gives management the opportunity to observe • Schering-Plough has long been a sponsor of and evaluate the interns’ performance Purdue University’s School of Pharmacy’s and potential. Both the intern and Minority Student Association and the Purdue management can use this African-American Cultural Center. Since valuable experience to make 1997, 14 minority students have been employment decisions." employed as summer interns and one has converted to being a full-time employee.
• Last year, Schering-Plough initiated a strategic objective to develop a partnership with Tuskegee University. The focus of the partnership is to attract African Americans and other diverse candidates for their Veterinary and Animal Science related positions. This summer, Schering-Plough has employed one Veterinary Me dicine student in an internship in its Research Institute facility.
Building Roads to the Top: Internship Programs Much of Schering-Plough’s recruitmentthrough-education efforts are focused on a variety of diversity programs. For example, Schering-Plough has been involved with INROADS, Inc., a national organization dedicated to training and developing minority managers and professionals, since 1989. Over the course of its relationship, Schering-Plough has employed some 56 INROADS interns during their college careers. Four of those interns were offered, and accepted, full-time positions. Schering-Plough has benefited from its relationship with Technical Training Project, Inc. (TTP) since 1968. TTP is a private non-profit organization incorporated by New Jersey based pharmaceutical companies to prepare inner city minority adults for careers in science. Since 1968, Schering-Plough has sponsored approximately 300 African-American and Hispanic students for training in Drug Metabolism, Animal Research, Microbiology, www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Gene Tucker Director, EEO/Diversity Over 50 African-American and Hispanic former students have been hired as lab technicians in the Schering-Plough Research Institute and Quality Control. In 2000, Schering-Plough sponsored the development of a laboratory animal technician program, with a focus on careers in Laboratory Animal Husbandry. The purpose of the program is to provide an academic background in science to include on-the-job-training (OJT) in a research quality control laboratory, which will lead to certification and full-time employment. Another successful program is the Schering-Plough Summer Challenge Program. Implemented in 1998, the Summer Challenge Program was designed to help build relationships within the minority communities surrounding its major operations in Union and Kenilworth, New Jersey. Each year, Schering-Plough works closely with area Urban Leagues to select students for summer employment. St udents are placed in various summer positions throughout the organization. Between 7 to 36 minority students participate in the program each summer. This year a Summer Challenge student from the 2001 program was hired into a full-time Managed Care Finance position. Many additional summer internships at Schering-Plough appeal to minority students interested in a specific line of pharmaceutical Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
work. For example, the Summer Sales Internship Program, designed to train a new generation of pharmaceutical sales representatives, is one of the most successful. Since its inception in 1993, 350 minority students have participated in the program and 21 have been hired into full-time sales positions.
Many Points of View: Reaping the Benefits of Diverse Recruiting Schering-Plough recognizes that there are benefits that result from being a leading multicultural company. The benefits of the diversity recruiting policies are obvious—to the employees, the shareholders, and to the buying public—now, and for the future. In 2001, Fortune magazine’s most recent survey of “America’s Most Admired Companies” ranked Schering-Plough among the top 10 companies in the U.S. pharmaceuticals category. Fortune’s criteria for selecting companies comprised “eight key attributes of reputation:” innovativeness, quality of management, employee talent, financial soundness, use of corporate assets, long-term investment value, social responsibility and quality of products and services: all attributes that foster a fundamental commitment to diversity in the workforce that produces diversity in ideas. Looking at things with a fresh eye is the key to innovative health research. Schering-Plough is committed to finding the “fresh eyes” that will take healthcare into the future. PDJ page 33
The Changing Landscape
Medelia Communications
T
he world is changing more rapidly than ever before and its customer base has changed dramatically in the past 20 years. Most companies are not keeping up with the shifts in con sumer spending and growing market segments whose buying power continue to strengthen, and those that are lagging behind will suffer where it hurts most—sales!
Women have always been important customers, but their spending power has increased significantly in the past years. The average woman now not only makes household decisions but she has considerable purchasing power in business. Her total purchasin g power in America makes her today's most valuable customer, especially considering she spends more money than the combined GNPs of Japan and England! The Hispanic and African-American spending power continues to rise and is not far behind
Delia Passi Smalter President Medelia Communications 1 Osceola Avenue Irvington, NY 10533 Tel: 914.591.9700 FAX: 914.591.2759
dpassismalter@medelia.com www.medelia.com page 34
women. Interestingly, corporations have not caught on to the fact that women, Hispanics, African Americans and Asians have their buying preferences and a key ingredient in the buying process is how they're sold to. This presents an enormous opportunity for diversity departments to provide awareness and initiate multi-cultural training programs to better educate the sales force and drive revenue.
The best was a story a female colleague shared with me of her experience as the president of a lending institution. Meeting with a banker she was considering as a lending partner, she arrived with a man who was one of her regional directors. She was almost never addressed throughout the meeting and when she indicated that she was ready to leave, the banker gave his business card to her associate. Obviou sly the banker never saw one dime of It's common for sales training to be generic to her billion dollar account. Any woman can the masses; a one-size-fits-all approach to selling. provide similar stories. I'm sure if you look into your company’s training you'll find a common training program The opportunity for Diversity and Human with little or no multicultural training. In the Resource departments to make an impact and event that they have incorporated diversity change the selling attitude of most sales statistics and research, it’s common for the representatives while growing the bottom line is training to be without the tactical training clearer now than ever before. The evidence is information necessary to increase market share compelling that human resources and diversity through effective selling. The corporations for initiatives can have a direct effect on customer which I've recently begun consulting have been satisfaction and they do this through hiring the frustrated by their current attempts to educate right people, coaching and training. They can their sales force and, for the most part, it’s build a very customer friendly culture by probecause the minority segments of their viding employees the tools and support they trai ning were developed to create awareness, need to build successful relationships with the not practical application. customer. Sound training for growth markets can definitely increase revenues, but the training Since I like to get out into the field and speak must be compelling. It must also provide the with sales reps, I'm always amazed at how they tools and insights to adjust perceptions, build continue to sell to customers as if it’s 1955. At a respect, enhance salesmanship and fine tune the car dealer recently I overheard a sales rep tell a approach used to sell to diversity markets. woman that when she's ready to buy she should bring her husband. When traveling in Dallas I In light of current economic conditions, it is was introduced as the “little lady” and when in a best to remember that building customer loyalty major department store I overheard an appliance can support a company during the worst of rep ask the husband, “Who wears the pants in times, so it makes great economic sense to the house?” chuckling as the couple debated over invest in multicultural training that will increase products. Needless to say that salesman was out sales and develop brand loyalty among our of a significant sale that night. growth segments . Southwest Airlines is an example of a travel company that actually
effortsinto gains
TURNING DIVERSITY
CORPORATE
How to close the gap and convert your marketing into sales.
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Turning Diversity Efforts into Corporate Gains A Changing landscape managed to post a profit following the September 11 terrorist attacks and attributed it to their strong customer satisfaction and loyalty. They keep in mind that it costs at least 30 percent more to acquire a new customer than it costs to maintain an existing customer, which is even more reason to better understand how to sell and service your valuable customer base.
So what's a marketer to do? Close the gap in converting marketing to sales.
Let me explain this marketing gap concept further. Selling to women and people of color, and marketing to them are two very different arts, and advertising is yet another. One without the others creates a weaker return and platform for growth. Visualize a stool that will support the foundation of a successful diversity marketing Success in marketing and selling to women and people of color hinges on a company's com- program. Each leg of the stool represents a critical mitment to get to know them, their wants, needs, component to the sales conversion process. One issues and preferences. With customers leg is marketing, the second leg is advertising and in any given day receiving over 5,000 media the third leg is sales training. impressions, the competitive environment today demands that the marketer makes a connection As the former Group Publisher of Working Woman and Working Mother magazines, I've to the customer in a meaningful way. Making worked with most large companies that have had contact, creating a message that has relevance, a marketing program directed toward working forming a bond, and inspiring an acti on are all part of the process. But that's only half the women and working mothers. Through the years battle if the purchase is influenced by a sales rep- the one discrepancy that has become abundantly resentative. The real win happens when the sales clear from the readers is that the woman rep has the attitude and training necessary to customer feels as if she is being treated “badly” make the sale. during the sales process. This is especially true in such industries as auto, financial and home improvement. She has been vocal about this issue
through numerous consumer reports and surveys but most marketers are not trained to correct this problem or will not concede to this issue because it crosses corporate lines into an unfamiliar territory—sales training. As marketers recognize that women and people of color want to be sold with specific considerations, concerns, issues, desires and preferences, they will capitalize on sensitivity training efforts and the customer in turn will respond to these smart marketers with dollars and loyalty. In short, it's time to take the question seriously: “What do our customers want?” And because it’s now politically correct to acknowledge that women buy differently from men and that multicultural markets have specific preferences, it’s time to close the marketing gap and engage in sales training. The next step is to remember that diversity marketing and advertising should not operate in a vacuum; each leg of the stool should work together to maximize efficiencies and return. Its time to capitalize on our growth markets in a way that makes sense to our consumers. PDJ Its called a win/win.
n— ! itio GO d d E al d an t i a ig r D wnlo u O do t jus
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With all the features, case studies and ideas from today’s successful organizations and thought leaders that make Profiles in Diversity Journal your essential diversity benchmarking and education tool—and the same full-color layout and the same original articles, graphics and advertising as the printed edition! • Immediate access anytime on your computer • Perform search on any person or topic through keyword searches • Save time by keeping past issues on your computer, with full digital capabilities, for quick reference later Download a single issue of PDJ today for only $12.95, • Print copies of any page
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page 35
Raising The Bar
forgingthelink
BMO Financial Group/BMO Groupe financier—Canada
Between Diversity and Business Strategy
un lien stratégique à établir entre la diversité et la stratégie commerciale
F
orging the link between strategy The bank’s people strategies focus on the and people steers BMO Financial importance of talented, engaged and high perGroup’s Human Resources mandate. forming employees. Developing an equitable and This means that our people strategies supportive workplace which reflects the diversity must clearly result in outcomes which of the communities in which we do business is enable the bank to successfully execute an objective explicitly aligned with strategic iniits customer-focused business strategies. tiatives from the top and, subsequently, is carefully measured and connected to performance. BMO Financial Group’s corporate Tony Comper, Chairman and CEO, BMO Financial Group strategy is to expand selectively and According to Rose Patten, Executive Vice with diversity advocates from across the enterprise. President, Human Resources and Head, Office Tony Comper, président du conseil et chef de la direction / substantially in the U.S. while BMO Groupe financier en compagnie d'intervenants en continuing to invest in our core of Strategic Management, “The impact of HR matière de diversité des différentes divisions de la Banque. Canadian f ranchise. While we have been on the bank’s strategy can be and must be investing in the U.S. since our bank was founded measured. HR practices must measurably add in 1817, our most recent phase of serious interest value. And all of this requires analysis and in U.S. investments began in 1984, about 15 years constant assessment.” ahead of our Canadian peers, when we had the foresight to purchase century-old Harris Bank. For several years now, BMO Financial Group has been committed to diversity on both sides of the border. Continuous evaluation and assessment L’établissement d’un lien entre la stratégie et l’ef- d’un effectif compétent, motivé et hautement fectif constitue la pierre angulaire du mandat du productif. La création d’un milieu de travail équitable et positif, qui tient compte de la diverService des ressources humaines de BMO sité des collectivités où nous exerçons nos activGroupe financier. En d’autres mots, nos stratéités, est un objectif explicitement lié aux projets gies en matière de ressources humaines doivent donner des résultats tangibles, qui permettront à stratégiques de la haute direction qui, en conséquence, doit être soigneusement évaluée et liée la Banque de mettre en œuvre des stratégies au rendement. commerciales axées sur le client.
Judy Phillips
Director, Enterprise-wide Diversity BMO Financial Group and Senior Vice President, Harris Bank la directrice / Diversité globale BMO Groupe financier et premier vice-président, Harris Bank
La stratégie de BMO Groupe financier cons iste à effectuer une expansion à la fois sélective et vigoureuse aux États-Unis tout en continuant d’investir dans ses activités de base au Canada. Si la Banque est présente aux É.-U. depuis sa fondation en 1817, notre plus récente phase d’activité intense dans ce pays a démarré en 1984, soit avec une quinzaine d’années d’avance sur nos principaux concurrents canadiens, lorsque nous avons pris la décis ion judicieuse de faire l’acquisition de Harris Bank, une entreprise en activité depuis près d’un siècle.
For information, contact / Pour information, contact: Audrey Wubbenhorst
Advisor, HR Communications conseillère / Communications, RH
Diversity and Workplace Equity BMO Financial Group 55 Bloor Street W., 6th Floor Montreal, Canada M4W 3N5 Tel: 416.927.2852
diversity.workplace-equity@bmo.com page 36
Les stratégies de la Banque en matière de ressources humaines soulignent l’importance
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
« L’incidence des ressources humaines sur la stratégie de la Banque peut et doit être évaluée et les pratiques en la matière doivent être un facteur objectif de plus-value; par ailleurs, ce processus se fonde sur des analyses et un suivi constant », estime Rose Patten , vice-présidente à la direction – Ressources humaines et chef du Bureau de section stratégique. Depuis plusieurs années déjà, BMO Groupe financier fait la promotion de la diversité des deux côtés de la frontière. L’évaluation constante de ce programme a donné lieu à des changements objectifs et quantifiables.
1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Forging the Link Raising The Bar have driven positive, measurable change.
A History of Diversity In 1990, Chairman Tony Comper, then President of the Bank of Montreal Group of Companies, took an industry leadership role in breaking the “glass ceiling” with his milestone decision to sponsor the Task Force on the Advancement of Women. As exemplified by the Task Force’s first report written twelve years ago, we were just beginning to understand how accurate data could move diversity forward. The Task Force assembled a statistical profile which gave us the facts about ourselves—who we were, and (even more revealing) who we really weren’t. The statistics revealed that the advancement of women was not a strategic imperative. Twelve years ago, while three-quarters of permanent employees were women, they represented only 9 percent of executives and 13 percent of senior managers. The numbers told a compelling story. In order to address the situation, the drive towards creating an equitable workforce was highlighted in the bank’s 1990 Corporate Strategic Plan, and a series of other executive-sponsored employee task forces were established to identify relevant issues including the Advancement of Aboriginal Employment, Employment of People with Disabilities, and the Advancement of Visible Minorities. The findings from these reports generated fact-based diversity and workplace equity goals.
Un passé marqué par la diversité
In 1992, the bank established a National Advisory Council on the Equitable Workplace to oversee enterprise wide implementation of all workplace equality initiatives. That same year, the bank created the Office of Diversity and Workplace Equity. Chaired by Tony Comper, and comprising the bank’s most senior business line and corporate executives, the Council set the strategic direction for quantitative and qualitative diversity goals, and measured performance against those goals on a quarterly and annual basis. Today, the council is known as the Chairman’s Council on the Equitable Workplace.
Measuring Change Recognizing the value of metrics, the bank’s commitment to diversity and workplace equity continues to be supported by a comprehensive system of goal setting, monitoring and evaluation processes. Through an extensive suite of online management information reports, the Chairman and executives monitor progress towards these benchmarks on a quarterly basis. Through annual performance appraisals, executives are held accountable for meeting their diversity goals. The Chairman’s Council on the Eq uitable Workplace approved greater accountability for the achievement of executives’ diversity and workplace equity qualitative and quantitative goals in the fall of 2000. Executive variable pay is currently impacted by plus or minus groupes de travail composés d’employés ont été mis sur pied avec l’aval des dirigeants pour des questions importantes, comme la promotion de l’emploi des autochtones et des personnes handicapées ainsi que l’avancement des minorités visibles. Les résultats de leurs travaux ont permis d’établir des objectifs tangibles en matière de diversité et d’équité en milieu de travail.
En 1990, le président du conseil, Tony Comper, alors président du Groupe de sociétés de la Banque de Montréal, a fait figure de pionnier dans notre secteur d’activité et pulvérisé un tabou en décidant de cautionner les travaux du Groupe de travail sur l’avancement des femmes. Comme en faisait état le premier rapport du groupe de travail il y a 12 ans, nous commencions à p eine à saisir l’importance de l’exactitude des données pour la promotion de la diversité. Le profil statistique dressé par le groupe de travail nous a permis de découvrir qui nous étions et, surtout, ce que nous n’étions pas. Les statistiques recueillies ont révélé que l’avancement des femmes n’était pas un impératif stratégique. Il y a 12 ans, même si les femmes représentaient les trois quarts des employés permanents, elles ne représentaient que 9 % des dirigeants et 13 % des membres de la haute direction, ce qui en disait long. En 1990, pour redresser la situation, la Banque a élaboré une stratégie de développement qui insistait sur l’importance d’assurer l’équité au sein de l’effectif, et un ensemble de
En 1992, la Banque a créé la conférence annuelle du Conseil du président sur l'égalité en milieu de travail afin de supervi ser la mise en œuvre dans toute l’entreprise des projets d’équité. Cette même année, la Banque créait le Bureau de la diversité et d’équité. La conférence, présidée par Tony Comper et regroupant dirigeants hiérarchiques supérieurs et membres de la haute direction, a permis d’établir l’orientation stratégique des objectifs tant qualitatifs que quantitatifs en matière de diversité et de faire le point, sur une base trimestrielle et annuelle, sur les résultats obtenus. Aujourd’hui, la conférence est désignée sous le nom de Conseil du président sur l’égalité en milieu de travail.
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Profiles in Diversity Journal
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10 percent based on their ability to meet diversity goals.
Maintaining the momentum While quantitative indicators are critical, we understand that it is our employees who implement the bank’s diversity strategy. Ultimately, employee engagement in workplace diversity has had an impact. In 2000, the Chairman’s Council on an Equitable Workplace also initiated the articulation of our Corporate Values: • We care about customers, shareholders, communities and each other. • We draw our strength from the diversity of our people and our businesses. • We insist upon respect for everyone and encourage all to have a voice. • We keep our promises and stand acco untable for our every action. • We share information, learn and innovate to create consistently superior customer experiences. These Corporate Values represent the bank’s core beliefs. They stand as our collective commitment to each other, to our customers, to our shareholders and to the communities of which we are a part.
continued page 38 Évaluation du changement Tenant compte de l’importance de mesures objectives, l’engagement de la Banque en matière de diversité et d’équité en milieu de travail continue d’être soutenu par un ensemble de processus d’établissement d’objectifs, de suivi et d’évaluation. Un large éventail de rapports de gestion permet au président du conseil et aux dirigeants de la Banque de suivre la progression de ces objectifs chaque trimestre. Les dirigeants sont responsables de la réalisation de leurs objectifs en matière de diversité, qui fait l’objet d’évaluations de rendement annuelles. En automne 2000, le Conseil du président sur l’ég alité en milieu de travail a entériné l’élargissement de la responsabilité des dirigeants à l’égard de leurs objectifs qualitatifs et quantitatifs en matière de diversité et d’équité en milieu de travail. Les résultats obtenus à ce chapitre peuvent faire augmenter ou diminuer leur rémunération variable d’un maximum de 10 %.
page continue 388 continued page page 37
Forging the Link/ un lien stratégique à établir Articulating our Corporate Values to every employee within the bank, the Executive Council is supported by Diversity Advisory Councils (16 in the U.S. and 8 in Canada) and Affinity Groups, which draw members from all levels of the bank. Although often led by senior executives, these groups fulfill a grassroots role by collecting and disseminating information to provide advice and counsel to senior decisionmakers. Across the enterprise, groups are actively involved in increasing awareness and advocating for inclusion within their business. The groups themselves reflect the organization’s diversity—Aboriginal sharing circles exist in Canada; U.S. Affinity Groups offer mentoring and career support for Afric an Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanics; networks of employees who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as a transnational group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered employees—all address workplace issues and initiate change.
Soutenir la tendance Malgré l’importance cruciale de nos indicateurs quantitatifs, nous estimons que la mise en œuvre de la stratégie de la Banque en matière de diversité repose sur les employés et que leur engagement en matière d’équité en milieu de travail est, au bout du compte, essentiel. En 2000, le Conseil du président sur l’égalité en milieu de travail a entrepris l’élaboration de nos valeurs : • Nous nous soucions de nos clients, de nos actionnaires, de nos collectivités et de nos collègues. • Nous tirons notre force de la diversité de notre personnel et de nos secteurs d’activité. • Nous préconisons le respect mutuel et encourageons tout le monde à exprimer son opinion. • Nous tenons nos promesses et assumons la responsabilité de chacun de nos actes. • Nous partageons l’information, a pprenons et innovons, afin de toujours mieux servir nos clients.
Raising The Bar
Positive change has been reflected in our numbers, and the numbers speak for themselves. In 1990, 91 percent of the Bank’s executives were men; today, the percentage of female executives has increased to 35 percent. Visible minorities accounted for 12.5 percent of the Bank’s population in 1991, while today they make up 19 percent. Similarly, in 1992, Aboriginal people made up only 0.5 percent of our workforce; now, that number has increased to 1.5 percent. While only 1.8 percent of employees were people with disabilities in 1992, now that number has grown to 3.1 percent. Minority representation at officer levels in the U.S. grew 23.2 percent from 1999 to 2001 and female representation at officer levels increased 18.2 percent over the same time period. Our progress towards the goal of a diverse workforce and an equitable and supportive workplace has also been recognized externally. Some of the honours we have received include groupes d’affinité, qui regroupent des employés appartenant à tous les niveaux hiérarchiques de la Banque. Bien qu’ils soient souvent dirigés par des cadres supérieurs, ces groupes assurent la collecte et la diffusion de l’information à la source afin de conseiller la haute direction. Dans toutes les divisions de la Banque, des groupes ont pour mandat de sensibiliser l eurs collègues à l’importance de la diversité et à en assurer la promotion dans le cadre de leurs activités. La nature même de ces groupes reflète la diversité qui caractérise la Banque. On retrouve ainsi des agoras autochtones au Canada, tandis qu’aux ÉtatsUnis, des groupes d’affinité proposent des services de mentorat et de soutien professionnel aux employés de souche afro-américaine, asiatique ou hispanique. Par ailleurs, des réseaux d’employés malentendants ainsi qu’un groupe transnational créé à l’intention des employé(e)s gais, lesbiennes, bisexuels ou transsexuels, collaborent à la résolution de problèmes liés au milieu de travail et à la mise en œuvre des changements qui s’imposent.
Les statistiques concernant notre effectif révèlent certains changements réels. Les chiffres sont éloquents. Le pourcentage des femmes occupant un poste de dirigeant s’élève maintenant à 35 %. Les membres de minorités visibles ne représentaient que 12,5 % de l’effectif en 1991, contre 19 % Afin de promouvoir nos valeurs auprès de aujourd’hui. De même, le pourcentage d’aul’ensemble des employés de la Banque, le Conseil tochtones est passé d’à peine 0,5 % à 1,5 %. Les est appuyé par des conseils consultatifs sur la employés handicapés ne représentaient que 1,8 diversité (1 6 aux É.-U. et 8 au Canada) et des % de l’effectif en 1992, contre 3,1 % aujourd’hui. Ces valeurs constituent le credo de la Banque. Elles soulignent notre engagement collectif envers nos collègues, nos clients, nos actionnaires et les collectivités auxquelles nous appartenons.
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Profiles in Diversity Journal
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being the first Canadian company to win the Cata lyst Award in 1994, the Vision Award from Human Resources Development Canada (the first organization to win this award twice), and the Optimas Award from Workforce Magazine. Harris Bank’s progress towards diversity has also been acknowledged. In 1997 it received a recognition award from the Network of Women Entrepreneurs. In 1994, Harris Bank earned the Small Minority-Owned Advocate of the Year Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Reflecting on our remarkable progress and the bank’s deep commitment, Tony Comper, now Chairman and CEO, BMO Financial Group, comments that “the rightness—in every sense— of an equitable workplace and a representative work force has embedded itself into our corporate culture. We believe in it, we’re committed to it and, we know how to make it happen.” PDJ Aux É.-U., au niveau de la directi on, le pourcentage des membres des différentes minorités a augmenté de 23,2 % entre 1999 et 2001 et celui de la représentation féminine, de 18,2 %. Les progrès accomplis dans le cadre de notre objectif visant à promouvoir la diversité et à offrir un milieu de travail équitable et accueillant ont été reconnus à l’externe. Parmi les honneurs qui nous été décernés, mentionnons le prix Catalyst en 1994 (ce prix était décerné pour la première fois à une entreprise canadienne), le prix Vision de Développement des ressources humaines Canada (la Banque de Montréal a été la première entreprise à recevoir ce prix deux fois) et le prix Optima décerné par Workforce Magazine. Les progrès réalisés par Harris Bank sur la route menant à la diversité ont également été salués, comme en témoigne le prix de mérite que lui a décerné le Network of Women Entrepreneurs en 1997. De plus, en 1994, Harris Bank a remporté le prix Small Minority-Owned Advocate of the Year de la U.S. Small Business Administration. Considérant les progrès remarquables accomplis par la Banque et son ferme engagement, Tony Comper, maintenant président du conseil et chef de la direction de BMO Groupe financier, estime que le bien-fondé, dans tous les sen s du mot, d’un milieu de travail équitable et d’un effectif représentatif est désormais intégré à notre culture d’entreprise. Nous y croyons, nous nous y engageons et nous sommes convaincus de PDJ pouvoir y parvenir. PDJ 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
The Changing Landscape
The Winters Group, Inc.
T
he success of diversity and inclusion initiatives lies directly with the individuals who make up each organization—do they wholeheartedly embrace the concepts? Do they internalize them? Do they believe in them? Too many corporate initiatives fail because they don’t get widespread grass roots support. There is often push from the top with pockets of support scattered throughout the organization, but not enough for the initiatives to gain momentum and take root. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point, (Publisher: Little Brown Company, February 2000) he makes the analogy that an idea becomes an “epidemic” in the same way as an illness or a disease. Ideas that spread through cultures like “germs” are called Memes in social science. In epidemiology, the point where there are enough carriers to allow an explosion that will infect a large number of people is known as the “tipping point.” Gladwell says that the way new
social movements take root is through the tipping point concept. He identifies three types of individuals who can influence social change. Connectors are well networked people who seem to know everybody and will spread the word. Mavens are those individuals who do not know everybody but appear to know everything and want to share their ideas with others. They are opinion leaders. Salespeople are not necessarily well connected or knowledgeable but are extremely persuasive. Those responsible for developing diversity initiatives should understand the importance of reaching enough individuals for the tipping point phenomena to occur. You need the core philosophies of inclusion to be embraced by enough individuals that they become woven into the fabric of your culture. Using the tipping point concept, here are five ways to spread the word and make diversity stick. 1. Identify your connectors, mavens, and salespeople. Who are the informal leaders? The natural salespeople? The opinion leaders who are always a step ahead? 2. Make sure that they are well grounded in diversity and inclusion concepts. Invest a disproportionate amount of time and effort in educating this group. It is imperative that your mavens, connectors, and salespeople become role models. In addition to a strong personal self-concept and understanding, this group must be well versed in the global business strategy and the business case for diversity.
Mary-Frances Winters President and CEO The Winters Group, Inc. 2509 Browncroft Blvd., Suite 103 Rochester, NY 14625 Tel: 716.218.9820 FAX: 716.218.9816
maryfwin@aol.com www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Traveling the Personal Diversity Journey
There are eight steps that The Winters Group has developed as necessary to the "personal diversity journey:" 1. Know self first. Who am I? What do I stand for? What makes me "me"? 2. Value self. What are my unique gifts? Who is my best self? 3. Acknowledge your prejudices. In what ways do I exclude? How do I contribute to intolerance? What are my blind spots? 4. Open yourself to change. What are my opportunities to grow? To be my best self? 5. Learn about others. How are other individuals/groups different from me? How are they the same? 6. Value differences. How do differences enhance who I am and can become? What can I learn from differences? 7. Include others. Expand your circle to optimize diversity. 8. Embrace personal growth. Constantly ask yourself, where am I now? Am I growing in my journey to be more inclusive? What changes do I need to make? nectors, and salespeople. Give them a structured framework and provide the resources for them to be able to influence at the grass roots level. An example of a framework is learning communities within natural work teams. I define diversity learning communities as natural work team venues which occur on a regular basis for the purpose of gaining knowledge and insights. As an example, the Manufacturing S ervices
g n i p ip
3. Seed the organization with the diversityknowledgeable and -competent mavens, con-
the diversity
t
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point
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A New Curriculum
University of Maryland
a leadership
building
environment
the Student Intergroup Dialogue and Leadership Program at the University of Maryland “Our students must learn to live productively in a world in which their lives will increasingly intersect—in the marketplace, in the political arena, in cultural activities, in the neighborhoods— with the lives of others whose perspectives and backgrounds differ remarkably from their own. And our democratic ideals have taught us the profound merit of a society that recognizes the inherent values and rights of each individual, a society we hope to realize in our country and throughout the world. Through a variety of campus-wide programs and activities, we have sought to engage faculty, staff, and students in the process of creating a diverse and inclusive community and have maintained this goal at the forefront of our attention.” C. D. Mote, Jr., President
I
n the spring of 1999, the University of Maryland’s Office of Human Relations Programs (OHRP), an arm of the Office of the President, conducted focus-group interviews with undergraduate students regarding their experiences with respect to diversity and, more specifically, diversity programming on campus (OHRP, 2000). Results of these interviews illustrated significant differences in the experiences of Students of Color (Black, Latina/o, Native American, and Asian) and White students.
Christine Clark, Ed. D. Executive Director Office of Human Relations Programs Office of the President University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 Tel:
301.405.2841
FAX: 301.314.9992
ceclark@deans.umd.edu page 40
Students of Color generally indicated feeling that the university was not doing enough to promote the comprehensive integration of diversity in all aspects of campus life—focusing primarily on "one-shot, all glitz and no substance" events, posters, and slogans, instead of more substantive initiatives like recruitment and retention of Faculty of Color, curricula diversification, and long-range multicultural programming. Students of Color also expressed feeling particularly unsafe on campus because of their sense that the administration had been largely unresponsive to their race-specific, security-related concerns and needs. Most expressed feeling the need to frequently "bite their tongues," or refrain from speaking fre ely and openly about controversial aspects of diversity from their perspectives and experiences. Moreover, when they did speak out, most perceived being either penalized, largely ignored, or dismissed by White peers, faculty, staff, or administrators. Despite these feelings, most Students of Color wanted to develop Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
relationships with students from other racial groups—including White students—but expressed not knowing how to go about doing this. On the other hand, White students saw increases in the enrollment of Students of Color as evidence that "things are equal now." Resultantly, many perceived scholarship opportunities based on race as disadvantaging White students. Most also perceived that Students of Color "s tick to themselves," but failed to recognize this same behavior among White students. Few had any understanding of their privilege based on race, nor how such privilege translated into the social construction of institutional norms regarding behavior. For example, campus spaces not expressly identified as the purview of Students of Color were not understood to be White student spaces even though th ey function in exactly, and often exclusively, that way. Most White students expressed valuing diversity, but felt that the university was doing too much to promote its comprehensive integration into all aspects of campus life—for example, by over-promoting diversity through events, posters, and brochures. While Students of Color and White students had different experiences of diversity efforts on cam pus, neither Students of Color nor White students were satisfied with these efforts. Further, both Students of Color and White students expressed the need for diversity efforts to 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Building A Leadership Environment A New Curriculum facilitate meaningful and sustained cross-group interaction, dialogue, and relationship building, rather than to simply present an academic perspective on diversity via a didactic lecture, or a social context for the expression of diversity through food or entertainment. These results led OHRP to research the kinds of long-term, student-centered diversity efforts that were being undertaken at peer insti tutions, and the results they were garnering. Three model intergroup relations programs at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMASS), the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Michigan), and Arizona State University (ASU) were studied (IGRCC, 2001; SJE, 2001; Walker, 2001). While all three of these programs are unique, they shared the common focus on facilitating discussion between and among students from different social identity groups. To respond to the expressed needs of University of Maryland students, OHRP set out to develop its own Intergroup Dialogue and Leadership Program (IDLP), building on the strengths of the UMASS, Michigan, and ASU program models, but tailoring it to the unique characteristics, experiences, and needs of the University of Maryland student body and larger campus communit y. The first step in the development of Maryland’s IDLP was establishing OHRP’s Student Intercultural Learning Center (SILC), in 1999, as the umbrella under which all of its studentcentered diversity efforts would be housed. The second step was securing a William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Unity and Pluralism grant, in 2000, earmarked as three-year start-up monies for Maryland’s IDLP.
of fostering positive, meaningful, and sustained cross-group relationships. The Diversity Leadership Retreat (DLR) is a tuition-free, non-credit, weekend-intensive, short course format intergroup dialogue, held at an off-campus location (usually a hotel or executive camp). It brings together a diverse group of 15-20 current and potential, formal and informal student leaders, who have participated in at least one intergroup dialogue, to facilitate them in the building of partnerships across student organizations/groups. As mentioned, Maryland’s IDLP has drawn on elements of the UMASS, Michigan, and ASU program models, particularly the elements of these programs that have been most successful—UMASS’ and Michigan’s conceptualization of intergroup dialogue as academic, and ASU’s leadership focus and retreat idea. It has done this in three specific ways: • First, the programs of all three predecessors select program participants only via a blanket recruitment system from the entirety of the student body. Maryland’s IDLP systematically targets student leaders and other student advocates. In so doing, it necessarily configures groups of participants that are immediately more diverse and already have some of the skills needed to make the program work—in particular, the ability to represent and mobilize a constituency and the interest in so doing.
Maryland’s IDLP, while only two years old, is already completely distinguishable from the programs of all three of its predecessors. Obviously, it is unique to the University of Maryland campus because the idea for it was based on Maryland’s students’ identified needs. Student participants in the IDLP are also engaged in its on-going development, implementation, and evaluation. It is also unique because it integrates the earlier, more traditional models of intergroup dialogue that rely on what diversity experts say students need, with newer intergroup dialogue models that rely on what
Intergroup relations programs enable institutions of higher education to graduate students who are not only academically prepared, but also interpersonally principled. A growing body of research indicates that students exposed to cross-cultural initiatives
Program Description
that teach multicultural interaction competencies
The Intergroup Dialogue and Leadership Program (IDLP) at the University of Maryland has two components: its Intergroup Dialogue Program (IDP), and its Diversity Leadership Retreat (DLR). Intergroup dialogue brings together diverse groups of students to engage them in discussion of issues related to their diversity, broadly conceptualized; for example, on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. The purpose of intergroup dialogue is to enable participants to develop comfort with, and skill for, discourse on difficult topics toward the goal
dialogue junior facilitator training initiative. This supports participants’ further interest in, and prowess for, cross-cultural interaction by engendering their development into skilled initiators and sustainers of intergroup relationship building. Subsequently, it folds them back into the IDP and DLR as junior facilitators of the dialogue in which thei r peers are engaged. • Third, the programs of all three predecessors are compartmentalized into either the Student Affairs or Academic Affairs arenas of their campuses. This limits both program scope and, thus, impact. Because Maryland’s IDLP is initiated out of OHRP, an arm of the Office of the President, it has campus-wide scope and, therefore, broader impact. It is not defined by, nor confined to, a s ingle aspect of student life within the university setting.
and promote multicultural relationship building are, upon graduation, promoted faster and earn higher salaries earlier than their peers who are absent this exposure. • Second, the programs of all three predecessors encourage student participants to get involved with the parent-programs sponsoring their IDLP-like initiatives, but do not structure opportunities that guarantee such involvement will occur. Maryland’s IDLP mentor s its student participants into SILC’s intergroup
students say they need. Thus, Maryland’s IDLP is not only student focused, but student centered. In these ways, Maryland’s IDLP has had the best of all possible worlds—the ability to: 1) identify gaps in the programs of its predecessors and fill
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Raising The Bar
Ford Motor Company
it takes a village... Ford’s unique partnership with seven high schools in the Dearborn, Michigan area helps give students the support they need to make the most of their future.
S
tuart was a student at one of the poorest high schools in inner city Detroit. His principal believed that he was an intelligent and capable boy who simply needed a positive role model in order to turn his life around.
University of Detroit-Mercy, and three Ford Employee Resource Groups—the Hispanic Network Group (HNG), the Ford African Ancestry Network (FAAN), and the Middle Eastern Community (MEC).
She asked for assistance from Manufacturing and Quality’s High School Pa rtnership Program, an innovative series of initiatives that have forged a dynamic working relationship between Ford Motor Company and seven Detroit area high schools that predominantly serve urban minority communities. As part of the program, Stuart was assigned to Blanca, a manager at Ford who had agreed to be his mentor.
The program, which literally involves hundreds of Ford volunteers, is one way to give something back to the communities located near our headquarters in Dearborn, Mich. Not only does it support our corporate citizenship initiatives, it’s also good for our business. Through the program, we are exposing a new generation of kids to the fields of math, science and engineering. It is our hope that some of the students we visit will return to Ford as fut ure employees.
Stuart failed to appear for their first several meetings. Blanca, however, refused to fail in her mission. She continued to follow up with Stuart until he finally agreed to meet with her. From that point on, they formed a bond that continues to this day. Stuart graduated from high school and is now part of a Ford-sponsored program that trains technicians for work in automotive dealerships. When he graduates in nine months, Blanca will be at his side. I have heard many other success storie s since I returned from my retirement to lead the High School Partnership Program last year. I can Business, Education, and School Administrator honestly say that this comprehensive program Ford Motor Company truly is helping students who need it most.
Bill Vaughan
550 Town Center Drive
Dearborn, MI. 48126-2716 Tel: 313.323.9308 FAX: 313.621.6984
bvaughan@ford.com page 42
The program was launched in 2000 by Jim Padilla, then our group vice president of Global Manufacturing and Quality. (He is now group vice president, Ford North America.) It is a partnership between our Manufacturing Oper ations, the United Auto Workers, the Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
Our growing program has many separate components and initiatives. All work in tandem to provide a comprehensive support system to the participating high schools. These include: • Job Skills Enhancement and Education. What skills are needed to build a career, either in manufacturing or any other field? As part of this initiative, Ford volunteers regularly conduct mock job interviews and resume writing sessions with students at the high schools. Because we want both students and their teachers to understand the skills needed for a career in manufacturing, we also sponsor ongoing plant tours and job shadowing. And this past summer, we provided 24 paid internships to high-achieving students from our participating high schools. Many of the students worked on long-term projects, which were pres ented to their supervisors at the conclusion of the three-month session. A highlight of the program was a special 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
It Takes A Village Raising The Bar Ford interns (L to R) Courtney Wornum, Chastity Graham and Melany Silva inspect an engine block during a plant tour and (below) take a close look at a classic Ford Model T. The recent Detroit high school graduates worked at the company for three months as part of the Ford Manufacturing and Quality High School Partnership Program.
luncheon and meeting between the students and Jim Padilla. • Engineering as a Career. There is a great need for new engineers, particularly from among minority populations. We hope to inspire interest in math, science and engineering— and persuade graduating students to consider Ford as their employer of choice. This initiative includes crash test demonstrations and our active participation in science an d career fairs, Junior Achievement projects and academic games. An important component of the initiative is the College Club, an after-school program that brings together students and Ford engineers for discussions and mentoring. • Non-Engineering Technology Careers. In partnership with our UAW Local 900, Ford volunteers have held a series of sessions for students who want to explore careers in technolo gy and skilled trades. At one high school, a group of hourly employees conducted a class on home maintenance and building repair by constructing a new wall within the school—complete with studs, electrical components and piping. We also support participation of selected students in the Ford-sponsored light auto repair programs, held at training centers throughout the Detroit area. Our obsolete automotive parts— including complete engines—have found new use at auto shops within the high schools. We also encourage the development of computer skills through the donation of computers and software and by offering offsite training for students and teachers at the Ford Training and Development Center in Dearborn. • Mentoring. There is no better way to lead than by example. Our vital and active one-onone men toring program, at work within all the schools, already has touched the lives of many students. Central to these efforts is the www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
what we offer to the schools has been greatly enhanced by the partnerships we have forged with area institutions of higher learning, local training centers and other corporations. We hope to involve more and more organizations in our programs so we can continue to grow. One of the most ardent supporters of Manufacturing and Quality’s High School Partnership Program is Dennis Profitt, site manager of the ma ssive Ford Rouge Manufacturing Center. Though he has a huge job to do within Ford, he has nonetheless devoted many hours of his time to the high school partnership program. Dennis, an avid rock collector, shared his hobby with students from one school and discussed how iron becomes a car. Several groups of students have spent the day “shadowing” his plant employees and one teacher spent the summer on site to learn more about the world of manufacturing.
involvement of HNG, FAAN, and MEC, all of which have members committed to improving the futures of students. Within this initiative are programs that specifically target Dennis believes the best part of the Ford at-risk students, as well as students who are program is its sustainability. “We don’t simply learning English as a second language. drop off a check and leave. That is what is • The Science, Technology and Engineering significant about this program,” he said. “Of Summer Camp for Girls. This new initiative, course, the schools value the financial support launched at the request of Jim Padilla in and resources we provide. But even more partnership with the Society of significant is our donation of time, skills and Manufacturing Engineers (SME), challenges leadership. I truly believe that the partnership is 9th and 10th grade girls to expand their helping students set and achieve goals, whether knowledge of science, engineering and math. they choose manufacturing as a career or not.” It was held on the campus of the University of Detroit-Mercy for Manufacturing and the first time this When we as corporate citizens Quality’s past summer. High School focus our efforts and • Community Service. Partnership our resources, we can provide Through the partnerProgram is ship program, Ford a powerful an all-encompassing and employees have and living meaningful experience donated many hours of example of service to the schools and the adage, that truly has the power to their surrounding “It takes a village to change lives. communities. This has raise a child.” When we included everything from maintenance work as corporate citizens focus our efforts and landscaping to technical assistance in and our resources, we can provide an allsetting up media centers and science labs. encompassing and meaningful experience that • The Ford Speakers Bureau. Our subject truly has the power to change lives. matter experts are available to speak on specific topics, as requested by the school Together, we are supporting both students and administrators. their communities in the ongoing pursuit of excellence. PDJ Many other plans and programs are in various stages of development. Our ability to expand Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
page 43
above
Legal Briefings
Holland & Knight LLP
I
the glass ceiling
n today’s marketplace and tomorrow’s workforce, diversity in senior executive management is not merely a social ideal, it is one of a number of diversity-related “business imperatives.” The business reasons necessitating a change in the face of the senior executive corps are readily apparent from current demographic data. Some corporations, however, have been quite slow to recog nize the problem, much less implement effective solutions. Rapid changes in buying power and talent pools require a much more dramatic response to avoid adverse business consequences.
Weldon H. Latham Senior Partner Holland & Knight LLP 2099 Pennsylvania Avenue Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20006-6801 Tel: 202.663.7252 FAX: 202.663.7249
www.hklaw.com page 44
The question is: who makes up corporate senior executive management? Several different measures are used to define senior executive management. One is utilized by the American Management Association (AMA), which includes the Chief Executive Officer, the direct reports to the CEO, and the lead executives of each major organizational division or department of the company. Another measure, notably benchmarked by Fortune magazine for its “America’s 50 Best Companies for Minorities,” is the 50 highest paid executives. The utility of this measure is its easy application across differing companies; its uniformity for measuring progress; and the inherent relationship between compensation and authority— i.e., the highest paid executives in most companies are the most senior, and most powerful. Perhaps the least precise of commonly used measures is based on job group categories utilized by the Department of Labor, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), in its Affirmative Action Plan 1 (AAP) regulatory process. Regardless of the measure, each is useful for different purposes. One very important purpose is to ensure diversity of gender, race, experience, and ultimately creativity of thought—at the highest levels of the company. Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
That’s where the break must be made to ensure diversity in Senior Executive Management.
Indeed, when placed in historical context, the issue of diversifying this elite stratum of Corporate America is anything but new. What is new is the recognition that diversity is an important business issue. The term “glass ceiling,” commonly used to describe the invisible and often impenetrable barrier preventing women and minorities from reaching the executive suites of this nation’s top corporations, entered the public lexicon in the mid-1980s when it was used by the Wall Street Journal to describe what was then identified as a “puzzling new phenomenon.” In 1995, The Glass Ceiling Commission, established pursuant to Congressional mandate, released its report concluding unequivocally that there was a “glass ceiling” in Corporate America. Still just a social issue, breaking the “glass ceiling” from below became the aim of many women and minority professional, civic, and civil rights organizations, but the cracks in the glass were slow to occur and even slower to spread. It remains true that the “glass ceiling” limitations on minority and fema le advancement to the top still persist. As we move into the future, widespread breaking of the “glass ceiling” is much more likely if it comes from above, as a result of the highest levels of an organization making a conscious decision to promote senior minorities and women from within and, when necessary, hire externally to diversify the most senior level of management. In fact, breaking the “glass ceiling” from above is now seen as a preferred business strategy, due to numerous long-term positive financial impacts that can accrue from senior management diversity. Grovewell LLC, a global management consulting firm, found that when decision-makers have similar backgrounds, their decisions are not usually as creative because they all view the world from similar perspectives. According to a surve y released by both the 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Above the Glass Ceiling Legal Briefings Business and Professional Women’s Foundation and the AMA, polling 1,000 companies of various sizes and industries, companies whose senior management consists of a mixture of genders, ethnic backgrounds, races, and ages, achieve significantly better sustained corporate performance. Thus, in a rapidly shifting business environment, a diverse mix of perspectives yields superior decisions and business per formance. As Virginia Clarke, the co-head of the diversity practice at the executive search firm, Spencer Stuart, remarked, Corporate America is indeed accepting a new “establishment” business model, i.e., the “correlation between strong financial performance and a multicultural workforce.” The Chief Financial Officer of Cummins, Inc., Tom Linebarger, identified the impact of diversity on the bottom line on CFO.com, stating, “Everything I do takes diversity into consideration, just as it would take profit into consideration, because at some level, they’re inseparable.” As legal and policy advisor to numerous Fortune 200 CEOs, it has been my experience that a commitment to diversity from the top, i.e., CEOs and the Board of Directors, is essential to achieving success. Additionally, both the commitment and actual implementation must be disseminated broadly throughout the corporation. A December 2001 Korn/Ferry International study revealed that 85 percent of executives and 82 percent of minority professionals surveyed cited the commitment of senior management to diversity as the single most important attribute essential to achieving the goal. The commitment cannot be a hollow statement. It must be fo rtified with decisive actions. In the OFCCP June 1997 study, The Glass Ceiling Initiative: Are There Cracks In the Ceiling?, the companies that achieved significant representation of women and minorities in senior management shared several common characteristics; chief among them was the commitment and action of top management. Such actions include: (1) diversity as an evaluation performance factor for top managers (some included it as a basis for bonus payments), and (2) diversity performance monitored and reported directly to the CEO (as a key measure for promotions). Accountability is the driving force behind the realization of any successful diversity program, particularly one as important as integrating the executive www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
suite. Here, too, the old adage applies: “What gets measured, gets done !”
"Everything I do takes diversity into consideration, just as it would take profit into consideration, because at some level, they're inseparable." Tom Linebarger CFO, Cummins, Inc. Accountability is created through programs designed to achieve and measure progress towards established diversity goals. Several tools have been helpful in achieving diversity in executive management. Internal tools used successfully by major companies include: targeted recruiting, mentoring, strengthening diversity in the management pipelines, diversity as a component of succession planning, and u ltimately, diverse promotions to important, significant, and visible positions. For example, a recent recipient of a corporate leadership award for diversity, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, has a program that pairs current partners with promising female and minority managers to help accelerate their ascension, which was recently highlighted on CFO.com. The OFCCP study also found that common internal programs, when used effectively for this purpose, propel companies toward diversity success, including: (1) a system to identify high potential employees internally; (2) management development programs; (3) succession planning; and (4) mentoring. As Richard Parsons, the new CEO of AOL Time Warner, stated on DiversityInc.com, “There are not enough senior-level AfricanAmerican executives to go around.” This deart h of minority and female senior level executives is precisely the motivation for companies to identify, create, and develop their own internal talent pools. When internal pools prove insufficient to meet the growing demand for highly qualified minority and female senior executives, companies must also utilize external resources, such as executive search firms, specializing in diverse candidates, to a chieve positive results. Basic principles of supply and Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
demand will cause the system to produce more minority and female senior executives (absent outside interference).2 Virginia Clarke recently commented in the Fortune Diversity Career Guide that she is fielding more and more calls from companies looking for minorities for senior management, even in a slowing economy. Some of her clients might include Fannie Mae, Cummins, and Medtronic, whose CEOs and CFOs acknowledged on CFO.com that they are committed to ensuring that their diversity initiatives thrive despite economic conditions that could severely test that commitment. Recognition of the “glass ceiling” was the first step, but much more must now be done to improve minority representation, both in the workforce and the largest corporations’ executive suites. Even some of the companies that have bee n recognized for diversity performance have failed to achieve significant executive level representation. On average, the percentage of minorities in the 50 highest paid executive positions of Fortune’s 50 Best is 22 percentage points below the percentage of minorities in the overall workforce of those companies, with differences ranging from a low of 3 percentage points to as much as 55 percentage poin ts below. Though most companies acknowledge that diversity is critical to future fiscal viability, competitive market edge and social responsibility, far too many have failed to take action to secure diversity in executive management. Acknowledgement of the problem is critical, but it is not enough. There must be serious, concerted action. Lastly, any CEO who is truly committed to real diversity sends an unmistakable, resounding message, not only by proclaiming the business imperative of diversity but, more importantly, by the appointment of direct reports that look like the rainbow of America. In short, actions speak much louder than words! PDJ 1
2
The Federal government requires contractors to create job groups based upon similarity of opportunities, responsibilities, and wages. Discrimination is not solely overt—some managers also use the lack of an abundance of minority and female candidates as their excuse for maintaining the status quo, rather than devising affirmative measures to solve this management problem like any other.
Weldon Latham is a senior partner and Practice Area Leader of the Holland & Knight LLP Corporate Diversity Counseling Group He serves as Counsel to the Coca-Cola Procurement Advisory Council; Co-Chair, Deloitte & Touche LLP Diversity Advisory Board; and General Counsel, National Coalition of Minority Businesses. page 45
The Changing Landscape
PRISM International
getting employees
onboard
“D
IVERSITY is the best-kept secret in my organization,” a frustrated corporate diversity manager recently said. “When we rolled out our corporate diversity initiative,” he continued, “we had high expectations that our employees would be supportive of the process. But now, months later, most of our employees just aren’t on board.” Other organizations share similar stories. Diversity stakeholders launch their diversity initiatives and later discover that employees retain little knowledge of the business case for diversity. Nor do they understand their personal role in the process of transforming their organization to strategically leverage diversity. Even though launched with great fanfare, the company’s diversity initiative may well become the company’s best-kept secret.
Failing to Communicate
Linda Stokes President PRISM International First Sanford Tower 312 W. First Street, Suite 301 Sanford, FL 32713 Tel: 407.324.5290 FAX: 407.324.0148
Research conducted at the recent Summit on Leading Diversity Conference revealed that many organizations are not effectively communicating their diversity initiative—starting with the business case. The diversity communication (message) or the manner in which it was communicated (medium) was not compelling enough to personally connect employees to the diversity initiative. The success of a diversity initiative is highly dependent upon employees clearly understanding how diversity impacts their personal role, their professional success, and, ultimately, the company’s organizational success. Additionally, the diversity business case must be communicated in a compelling and engaging way so as to involve all employees.
An Effective Diversity Communication and Learning Model PRISM utilizes a 4-Point Diversity Communication and Learning Model that assists organizations to create more effective diversity communication, learning and buy-in.
How to keep your company’s diversity initiative from becoming the company’s best-kept secret.
The PRISM 4-Point Diversity Communication & Learning Model is designed to: 1. Create and present a compelling fact-based business case for diversity 2. Present the organization’s diversity strategy in an intense, comprehensive and meaningful way 3. Involve participants in understanding the diversity strategy through an engaging intervention 4. Measure immediate understanding, buy-in and support Research indicates the optimal learning environment promoting change is one in which participants are immersed in a learning experience that’s relevant to their own situation. Such an environment needs to contain a process where they can explore, collaborate and share views using a dialogue-based methodology. This is the learning environment that PRISM created using Knowledge Map TM technology.
An Effective Communication and Learning Experience Knowledge MapsTM create a learning environment in which the experience is the communication. CIGNA HealthCare, Duke Energy and Nestlé are some of the many organizations using Knowledge Maps TM successfully. Their employees are engaged in a learning process that enables them to understand the critical factors driving their business. The Knowledge Map TM experience provides individuals with the opportunity to collaborate with peers to draw their own conclusions by exploring new marketplace information. As people shed old assumptions and draw new conclusions, they identify new roles and responsibilities and provide an impetus to act on them.
linda@prism-international.com page 46
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Getting Employees On Board The Changing Landscape PRISM’s On Board With Diversity Knowledge MapsTM create a learning environment in which the experience is the communication.The Knowledge MapTM experience provides individuals with the opportunity to collaborate with peers to draw their own conclusions by exploring new marketplace information.
The experience is the learning. In less than two hours, individuals participate in an accelerated learning process that is immediately measurable and transferable to the job.
Creating an Effective Diversity Communication and Learning Experience PRISM combined their 4-Point Diversity Communication & Learning Model, key learning elements from their diversity training programs and the Knowledge Map TM technology into a new turn-key diversity communication and training tool called the On Board With Diversity Knowledge MapTM (or the Diversity Map). The Diversity Map provides: • an engaging and interactive experience • consistent learning outcomes • accelerated learning • group size flexibility • easy, turn-key implementation • learning that compels change.
Participants in a Diversity Map experience learn and discuss: • the impact of today’s business realities on the workforce, workplace and marketplace • the diversity process for organizations • each person’s role and responsibility • the advantages of a diversity process and strategy • barriers to fully leveraging diversity. www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
The Diversity Knowledge MapTM Process: How It Works An engaging and differentiated learning tool, the Diversity Map is a 3’ by 6’ colorful picture that displays a diversity metaphor that creates a common “mental model” for the group to explore. The Diversity Map draws participants into the process, but, more importantly, since many of us are visual learners, it improves learning and retention. “The Diversity Map immediately draws you in. The visual helps to explain the process and results in very high acceptance,” comments Nathan Forde, Vice President of Human Resource Development for Florida Hospital in Orlando, Florida. Small groups of eight to ten gather around the Diversity Map. This enables participants to share their knowledge and opinions. This is a key aspect of adult learning. The Diversity Map requires participation. The small group ensures no one can “check-out” of the learning process. Nancy Breen, Director, Organizational Effectiveness and Human Resources at Siemens Power Generation Group in Orlando, Florida, states: “The Diversity Map process is powerful and beneficial … it allows for so much conversation.”
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
A series of conversation questions and data cards promotes dialogue. The conversation questions ask participants to interpret information and draw conclusions regarding what that information means to them. The conversation questions also ensure a common experience is had by all participants (in various other Diversity Map sessions) and can be shared after the session. The data cards are used to provid e real context to what participants are being asked to discuss and act upon. They also bring interactivity to the session. Participant handbooks are provided so participants can take notes, record their thoughts and access key information explored during the Diversity Map session. The participant handbooks also serve to improve retention and act as a reference after the session. The Diversity Map utilizes a fact-based learning method. This enables participants to challenge their assumptions. Rather than telling participants what to think, they draw their own conclusions that can lead to changes in thinking and behaviors.
The Learning is the Change After a two-hour On Board With Diversity Knowledge MapTM experience, employees understand the big picture of diversity. They have a shared mental picture of the strategy and are able to communicate it using a common language. Phil Reed, Diversity Manager for the Siemens Corporation in Chicago, remarks: “The Diversity Map brings in everyday situations and shows how they impact us. It’s a more creative way of learning, of getting people to understand what diversity is PDJ all about—it’s a great tool.” page 47
The Changing Landscape
The Diversity Leadership Academy of Atlanta
diversityleadership
competencies
Why it’s not enough
to “do the right thing.”
What has become increasingly clear in the dynamic business environment of the 21st century is that even the most committed leaders sometimes struggle to achieve sustained success with diversity programs. The reason is that sustained success requires leadership competencies that are not always developed in the typical executive’s business experience. Creating or shifting organizational culture; understanding and managing the interdependent links of diversity and core business competencies, processes and systems; differentiating high valueadded activities for resource prioritization: these are all required skills for leaders intent on sustaining long-term success in diversity management. Yet, finding leaders who are applying these skills in their organizations, particularly in the context of diversity management, is clearly the exception rather than the rule. The Diversity Leadership Academy (DLA), highlighted in the last issue of Profiles in Diversity Journal, offers resources to business and community leaders for building diversity management leadership competencies. These competencies not only contribute to their ability to successfully lead their organizations’ diversity agendas; they also enhance their ability to lead their organizations in general.
Juan D. Johnson Vice President, The Coca-Cola Company President, Diversity Leadership Academy American Institute for Managing Diversity, Inc. 50 Hurt Plaza, Suite 1150 Atlanta, GA 30303 Tel: 404.302.9226 FAX: 404.302.9252
jdjohnson@na.ko.com jjohnson@aimd.org page 48
In the following articles, President of the Diversity Leadership Academy, Juan Johnson, helps us uncover the thought processes we’ll need to build these competencies. It is designed as a two-part “lesson” to encourage readers to take the time to examine their responses to these scenarios. In part two, we’ll examine possible responses and their outcomes, and delve further into the development of diversity mature behaviors.
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
S
cenario 1:
Al, a vice president for a regional advertising agency, is interviewing a candidate for one of the firm’s advertising director slots. The candidate is José, a Hispanic male who has impressed everyone on the interview team with his knowledge, experience and creativity. Long a proponent of diversity in the firm, Al excitedly tells José, “This is going to be great … with your Hispanic heritage you’re just the man to guide our creative work for clients trying to penetrate that market.” Confused and concerned, José responds, “I thought this position was a general advertising director role.” “It is,” Al replies. “But with you in the job we can focus it on Hispanic advertising.” After a long pause, José disappointedly conveys, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is the job for me … Certainly, I can do Hispanic ads, but I’m not a Hispanic advertising professional. I’m an advertising professional that happens to be Hispanic. As reflected in my experience, I can also do work across multiple demographic groups. I’m interested in the job, Al, but I’m not prepared to be pigeon-holed with a focus only on Hispanics.”
Scenario 2: Pat, a fast-tracking female manager in a Fortune 500 manufacturing firm, was recently promoted to a new position, making her the only woman in a group historically composed of men. The hiring director, Jerry, was generally considered to be a good manager with sound people skills. In a meeting, Jerry sought to comfort Pat that she would be operating on a “level playing-field” with her male peers. He said to her, “I want you to know that I am going to treat you exactl y like everyone else on the team … the same expectations, the same requirements, the same basis of evaluation. Everyone in my group is treated exactly the same. Welcome to the team.” Upon leaving her new boss’ office, Pat paid a visit to her long-time 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
Diversity Leadership Competencies The Changing Landscape female mentor in the company. the company’s viability performance. Twenty years ago, management “I’m not sure what to do,” could be at risk, theorists defined competencies to include a While “skills” generally relate she exclaimed. “I complains and wide range of attributes, including motives, to the capability for effective action, thought this would be a “competencies” include a broader set of attributes insists on a aptitudes, traits and behaviors (Boyatzis, 1982). good move for me but new account Nearly ten years later, a model was introduced and focuses on those associated with after that conversation, I’m representative. that codified High Performance Competencies high performance. concerned. My husband and I Should the company pull (HPC) based on groundbreaking research were planning to start a family next year. But if the account representative? Should it insist that (Schroder and Cockerill, 1989). Little has been Jerry holds everyone to the exact same expectathe client accept the representative and risk done to codify such competencies as specifically tions, I’m worried that I won’t be able to take a losing an indispensable account? A query of the related to diversity management; however, Dr. R. maternity leave without it affecting my career. company’s stakeholders would likely yield Roosevelt Thomas, Jr.’s description of diversity Obviously, no one else in the group will have this varying perspectives on “the right thing” to do. mature behaviors, analysis of diversity tensions, as an issue.” and his codification of action options, based on Adding to the complexity is the growing many years of action research at the American The scenarios above demonstrate how recognition that diversity tensions are drawn Institute for Managing Diversity, offer a well-intended leaders sometimes do not fully along multiple dimensions beyond personal resource for leaders in search of a framework understand or appreciate the complexities of attributes like race, gender, age, ethnicity and for quality diversity decision making. diversity. It never occurred to Al that José would sexual orientation. Loden and Rosener’s model consider it “career-limiting” to focus only on the of internal and external diversity dimensions, Following is another scenario creating a Hispanic market. And Jerry was quite sincere in along with Gardenswartz and Rowe’s expanded complex diversity question that challenges the his effort to assure Pat that he would be fair and recognition of organizational dimensions, “do the right thing” model. Test your diversity equitable. Yet, each of these conversations highlighted the multiple levels and complexities maturity by selecting from the four alternative yiel ded unintended negative consequences. of diversity. Tensions between union and nonanswers provided. In part two of this article the While it would be tempting to dismiss these union employees; corporate headquarters cost solution will be provided with supporting examples as simple misunderstandings, the centers and field operations profit centers; rationale and will be used to demonstrate the reality is that both scenarios reveal how permanent employees and temporary service concept of diversity maturity as a required underlying assumptions and attitudes, on the workers; these and innumerable other mixtures diversity leadership competency. part of all involved, can be barriers to effective create diverse perspectives and needs which diversity management. Despite the numerous leaders must rationalize to have test your diversity maturity and dynamic diversity dimensions that drive the an engaged and productive You manage a store in a large retail chain that has a busy perspectives of today’s workforce, many leaders workforce. This rationalizati on electronics department. The store is located in a opera te under the erroneous assumption that requires not only the ability to predominantly Korean neighborhood, and you have hired managing diversity is simply about “doing the manage individuals and groups members of the Korean community to work in the store as right thing.” To quote a senior partner of a but also the capability to create clerks, cashiers and sales people. Televisions and radios in national professional services firm, “I think environments that enable and the store are tuned to Korean channels that can be heard people overcomplicate this diversity thing … If support the engagement of all throughout the store all day, especially in the computer everybody just followed the golden rule, there personnel. Here it is argued that . Your best salesman in the computer department would be no need for diversity management.” these challenges and complexities department is African American and complains constantly Perhaps in a homogenous environment where all require new leadership skills and about unintelligible Korean language and music blaring out participants held the same values, beliefs an d competencies that build on the of the electronics department. He says he’s even dreaming in aspirations that would be true. However, in the inspiration to “do the right thing” Korean at night. He’s fed up and wants to transfer to anoth21st century’s workforce, workplace and and provide an added framework er store in a different neighborhood. What do you do? marketplace, with dramatic demographic shifts for quality decision making. and contrasting cultural values and ideologies, what works for one can scarcely be assumed to work for all. Each day leaders are faced with diversity dilemmas that cannot be easily resolved with a “do the right thing” model. Consider the case of the small company whos e top sales person, and the account representative for its largest client, announces that he is gay. Company management is indifferent on the announcement. It is pleased with the account representative’s performance and views his sexual orientation as irrelevant. However, the client, without which
Much has been written about leadership skills and in recent years an increasing amount of research has been dedicated to leadership competencies. However, little has been done to identify and codify diversity leadership competencies. While “skills” generally relate to the capability for effective action, “competencies” include a broader set of attributes and focuses on those associated with high
www.diversityjournal.com 1-800-573-2867
Profiles in Diversity Journal
a) Call the manager of another store in a different neighborhood to see i f there is a job for a good computer salesman. b) Instruct the staff in the electronics department to lower the sound levels on the televisions and radios. c) Direct the electronics department staff to tune the televisions to multiple channels, giving customers a broader sense of various picture and sound qualities. d) Let the African-American salesman know that you understand how he feels and remind h im that your core customer base is the Korean community. The televisions and radios will remain on PDJ Korean stations.
• July/August 2002
page 49
Raising The Bar
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
understanding each other’s diversity
The Diversity Leadership Academy of Atlanta provides cutting edge leadership development for champions of diversity from all segments of the business world. In the Fall of 2001, Booker Izell of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution attended the institution’s inaugural class, and shares the lessons he learned with all of us.
Booker T. Izell Vice President Community Affairs & Workforce Diversity Atlanta Journal-Constitution 72 Marietta Street Atlanta, GA 30303 Tel:
404.526.5091
FAX: 404.526.5199
I
n my 36 years with Cox Enterprises Inc., I have had the opportunity to work in several of their communication businesses and divisions: Newspapers, Broadcast, Cable and Automobile Auctions. About half of my career has been spent on the business side of the organization, areas such as circulation, advertising, labor negotiations and production. In 1985 Cox Corporate started a diversity department and asked me to head it up.
As a result, for the past 17 years I have had the opportunity to work in an area that, until recently, was really not a recognized profession. Back then, the managers that were selected to be the driving force of diversity initiatives and who had the responsibility to educate the workforce in understanding, valuing and managing diversity really did not know what was expected of them. The senior employees who selected the divers ity managers didn’t know how to direct them. In other words, no one knew what to do, how to do it, or what resources were needed, so everything was —and, in some cases, still is—in turmoil. That is why I think the Diversity Leadership Academy can play such an important part in the diversity profession. Today, as vice president of workforce diversity and community affairs for the Atlanta JournalConstitution, the largest newspaper in the southeast, it is my responsibility to assist our managers in understanding, valuing and managing diversity. That’s why all of us need education on diversity in our newspapers and the communities. As a charter member of the 2001 Academy class, the one concept I believe was most important to all 35 participants—representing businesses, non-profits, religious organizations , civic organizations and the arts—was “how in the world would we be able to get the same understanding as to WHAT IS DIVERSITY.”
bizell@ajc.com page 50
Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
In my experience, most of us have different interpretations of the meaning of diversity, and no strategy on how to integrate diversity into our business and personal world. I was pleasantly surprised when, after the second full day meeting with the group, most of us understood each others’ thoughts about diversity; after the fourth full day most of us understood more about how, in order to make diversity a part of our company strategic plan, we have to take different approaches and stay focused on the outcome.
From a business point of view, I believe that the FOUR APPROACH SYSTEM is the key to changing the culture and measuring where you are in the process of diversity: 1. Diversity representation 2. Understanding differences 3. Managing workforce diversity, and 4. Strategic diversity management. If we can understand and recognize where we are in the different areas, then we can move forward in workforce diversity, and that’s what I think is the most valuable thing the Diversity Leadership Academy has to offer an organ ization. It can assist diversity professionals with programs, systems, communication, and strategic diversity planning. I am hopeful that the Diversity Leadership Academy will become the national think-tank for diversity initiatives. The focus of the last meeting brought all the lessons learned together: the group was to present a reality-based project that dealt with diversity issues in the community. This really pushed all of us to use the diversity education we had received over five days of meetings and put its concepts to practical use. Because of my participation in the Diversity Leadership Academy I think I am much better prepared to assist our employees at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on understanding, valuing and managing our diverse workforce. PDJ 1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
IntroduCIng thE CorporatE ExECutIvE SErIES A Vital Opportunity for Top Leaders
SENIOR EXECUTIVES • DIVERSITY COUNCIL MEMBERS • CHIEF MARKETING OFFICERS BUSINESS UNIT PRESIDENTS • ENGINEERING CHIEFS • GENERAL COUNSELS • CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICERS AIMD’s Diversity Leadership Academy introduces the Corporate Executive Series, a new resource for senior management champions of diversity. While there are scores of resources available for practitioners who make diversity their day-to-day jobs, few resources exist for the top-level managers who are held accountable for managing diversity and its impact on business results. Now there is a resource for executives seeking the leadership competencies and skills needed to champion this increasingly critical component of effective organizations. The Corporate Executive Series is an intensive five-day program, taught in two and a half day segments, that gives participants a unique opportunity to develop cutting-edge, practical leadership competencies in a peer-to-peer setting exclusively for top-level corporate executives. Participants in the Spring 2003 session include: • A senior partner in a big five accounting firm • The Chief Financial Officer of an $8 billion manufacturing and marketing firm • The Chief Operating Officer of a national advertising agency • A division president of a global manufacturer of electronic instruments The series prepares organization leaders to: • Build organization cultures that support all-inclusive work environments • Access varied talents and perspectives and challenge conventional wisdom when attacking complex business issues • Manage complex non-traditional diversity mixtures and tensions like integrating disparate business functions, global expansion, post-merger/acquisition transition, union/non-union labor issues, business/brand portfolio resource allocation, etc. The first Corporate Executive Series program will be held March 18-20 and May 20-22, 2003 in Atlanta, Georgia. Tuition is $5,295. To request registration and application information, visit www.aimd.org, email aimd@aimd.org, or call 404302-9226. Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., the nation’s foremost thought leader in diversity management and president and founder of the American Institute for Managing Diversity, leads the Corporate Executive Series. Dr. Thomas has been at the forefront of diversity research for over two decades and is recognized internationally for his groundbreaking work in the field of effective diversity management. He is the author of several published books including Beyond Race and Gender: Unleashing the Total Power of Your Workforce by Managing Diversity, Redefining Diversity and Designing a House for Diversity: A Blueprint for Personal Diversity Effectiveness.
At New York Life, diversity is much more than a buzzword. It is a necessity. By recognizing and appreciating differences we grow, as individuals and as a company. Diversity allows us to better communicate and represent the ideals of financial strength, integrity and humanity. It is also an important part of what makes New York Life THE COMPANY YOU KEEP.ÂŽ If you are interested in career opportunities at New York Life, please visit www.nylcareers.com to submit your resume. For sales and sales management career opportunities, send your resume to New York Life Insurance Company, Room 1207 WM, 51 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010 or visit www.newyorklife.com.
tipping point
The Winters Group, Inc. Continued from page 39
Division of Eastman Kodak has adopted an ongoing Learning Lab approach for leaders and individual contributors. Leaders become teachers by cascading the learnings throughout the organization.
5. Develop effective ways to measure results. How will you know when the tipping point has occurred? Measuring real culture change can be difficult. Some of it is intuitive because culture, by definition, is the unwritten rule of the organization. Therefore it is necessary to explicitly decide upfront what measures you will use, such as pre- and postattitudinal surveys, productivity gains, complaint volume, etc.
a house of inclusion
Waste Management, Inc. Continued from page 19
"I think it begins with the senior leadership team. The senior team has to reflect our employees, the client base and the customer base that we serve," said Dees. "It also has to allow for representation 4. Provide opportunities for these “seeds of of multiple views on issues. As senior leaders of change” to come together as a group to the organization, we need to set the example and dialogue about their experiences. In larger drive a philosophy of performance and meritorganizations, it is easy for disconnects to based rewards and recognition into the fabric of occur, inhibiting the opportunity to share and a culture in which the highest our culture, promote best practices. Change happens one person at a time. It is only performers and most deserving are recognized with constant attention to the dynamics of the and advanced based on merit versus seniority." New Book Release! individual that enough momentum will occur Maury Myers believes that success will be measured by listening to the employees. "We to “tip” the organizaWorkplace Wisdom for Baby Boomers really need to listen to all of our employees and tion to the type of Learn to master change! have them tell us, "This is a great place to work. culture that supports Value diversity! Unleash your authentic self! This is a place where I feel respected." and fosters inclusion.
Only Wet Babies Like Change: Read it . . . for a life-altering experience.
Dr. Mary-Frances Winters is founder, president, and CEO of The Winters Group, Inc., an 18-year-old diversity and organization development consulting firm with offices in Rochester, NY, Washington, DC, and St. Thomas, USVI.
“ With insight, enthusiasm and faith, Mary-Frances Winters puts forth a roadmap for personal change.” Katherine M. Hudson, President and CEO Brady Corporation
“ Only Wet Babies is a corporate America must-read in 2002!” Emerson U. Fullwood, Corporate Vice President and Executive Chief Staff Officer, Xerox Corporation
Dr. Mary-Frances Winters is an internationally recognized consultant in organization development, diversity, and marketing.
Waste Management has positioned itself as a company w ith a "change" mindset—"a neverending quest for ways to improve what we do and how we do it.” Building an inclusive employee base, attracting more women and underrepresented groups and diversifying leadership are key goals of company senior management. Employees are anxious to see PDJ changes actually happen.
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Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
page 53
hernandez
Profile of a Champion Continued from page 31
level. We see it as building a strategic relationship That’s where you really see the impact, when with an organization that can benefit us as far as your senior level executives are prominent in these various organizations, and can talent. We’re doing that with other communities represent your company at diversity conferences as well—the president of Pitney Bowes Credit and events. Services will be keynote speaker at the What other standards has National Black MBA Pitney Bowes implemented Association confer“Many bottom linedriven managers that companies can ence in Nashville in have trouble understanding emulate? mid-September. Our the importance of diversity ... legal counsel, Sara they don’t understand that A: I think the structure of Moss, is a champion diversity really is a accountability for diversity within with the Minority the company has to be well Corporate Council business imperative. defined in order for companies Association, whose Building the business case requires to achieve good results and mission is to increase observing the demographics and move toward a best-in-class diversity among legal figuring out what the impact will be orientation. At Pitney Bowes, for organizations, both example, we have a corporate outside counsel and on the company responsibility committee within major given shifting demographics.“ composed of several members of corporations. In our the company’s board of directors. The CEO is search for technical talent, engineers, and IT, the person we are accountable to. I report to the our executives work with the Society of VP of HR and as far as accountability and Women Engineers, the National Society of visibility—I can’t ask for more visibility Black Engineers, and the Society of Hispanic than that. Professional Engineers.
Q
Q:
among our strongest assets
Also, there must be metrics associated with diversity—I described our diversity strategic planning process briefly and tied to furthering accountability, the senior management of not only a business unit, but a department needs to be accountable for implementing what they say they’re going to implement. Incentive compensation is tied to that. Finally, you have to create recognition, not only among your peers outside the company or within the community, but also for company leaders of diversity—individuals, business units and departments that embody diversity best practices. We’re looking forward to hosting an event early next year to recognize our own diversity leaders for the results they’re achieving. PDJ
Teri Wingender writes for national consumer and business magazines and internal corporate publications. She lives in Pound Ridge, N.Y.
Bank of America Continued from page 29
Bank of America has plans to install Chamber of Commerce, the San Francisco aggressive goal of spending 15 percent more than 7,000 Talking ATMs coast to Chinese Chamber of Commerce and others. of our procurement dollars with coast by the year 2005 to enhance their • We will continue our commitment to multiculservice to the visually impaired. businesses owned by multicultural, tural communities through donations and in some of the fastest-growing female and disabled individuals. Since the community development banking. (In 2001, initiative began in 1990, we’ve spent more than multicultural markets in the the Bank of America Foundation contributed world, being recognized for $1 billion with multicultural-, female- and more than $85 million in cash to nonprofit, our diversity practices and disabled-owned business enterprises. We have multi-segment organizations across the country policies is quite an accomplishalso received more than 60 regional and 10 in support of education, community developnational awards in recognition of our supplier ment,” said Ferrer. “It helps enforce our message ment, arts and culture and health and human that we want our company and associates, our diversity efforts. services, including more than $12 million customers and clients, and our shareholders to • The Bank of America Foundation partnered pledged to historically African-American with the National Conference for Communities profit from our diverse mix of experience, style colleges and universities and a $1 million grant and savvy.” PDJ and Justice (NCCJ) to underwrite a national to the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.) survey called Taking • In 1998, Bank of America pledged an America’s Pulse II, designed unprecedented $350 billion over a 10-year to gauge Americans’ period for community development lending perceptions and attitudes of and investment. To date, we have delivered race and discrimination. more than $113 billion to provide affordable Through this $1.3 million mortgages, build affordable housing, support grant, we will work with small business and create jobs in NCCJ to develop programs historically underserved and in six key cities to address disadvantaged neighborhoods. issues raised in the survey. • Under the Bank of America Supplier Diversity “When we consider that and Development Initiative, we have set an Bank of America operates page 54
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Raising the Bar
The LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario)—Canada
M
aking a statement of diversity support in a busy retail environment was the task: For LCBO, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the answer was the Workplace Diversity Calendar. LCBO is the world's largest retailer of alcoholic beverage and has about 6,500 employees, of whom 80 percent are unionized, and 600 retail stores across the Province of Ontario.
Now in its third year, LCBO’s Workplace Diversity Calendar has been received with much appreciation by managers and store employees who are not only pleased with its new colorful pictures, but that it helps them keep track of cultural events and religious, national and international observances to help increase awareness of Ontario’s diverse communities. Promotional activities the LCBO is planning also coincide with some of those events. The colourful 28-page calendar runs from April 1, 2002, to March 31, 2003, to coincide with the LCBO’s fiscal year.
Mr. Bob Peter, President and Chief Operating Officer of the LCBO, introduced the third Calendar to Directors, Managers and Supervisors and expressed that, "valuing and managing diversity in our workforce forms part of our vision as an organization committed to change and progress." Undoubtedly, sending a message from a senior executive helps to increase the awareness of the benefits of diversity. Janet Naidu, Manager of Workplace Diversity at the LCBO, felt that a regular tool for managers would help signal the importance of ongoing diversity education as critical to organizational strategic consciousness. She believes the Calendar serves to bring a daily recognition of the various cultures, religions, celebrations and observations in the diverse communities of Ontario. She comments, "We’re living in a multi-cultural society and we need to be aware of what events and religious observances are important to our customers. We need to be sensitive to them and know what the
Janet Naidu and the crossdivisional staff that contributed to the creation of this year’s Calendar. From left to right: Rosa Grima, Janet Naidu (author), Francois Chartes and June Castanha.
For Information, contact: Janet Naidu Manager of Workplace Diversity LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) Human Resources Division 55 Lakeshore Blvd. East, 2nd Floor Toronto, Ontario CANADA M5E 1A4 FAX: 416.864.6852
janet.naidu@lcbo.com page 56
LCBO is doing to help remember and celebrate them." “The Calendar was distributed at Head Office and across the Province to about 900 managerial staff. Our operation consists of about 600 Retail Stores, 5 Distribution Centres and 4 Regional Offices situated throughout the Province. Each Store Manager was asked to post the Calendar in a visible place (a coffee room, for example) for employees to share. We did not intend for the piece to be shared with customers, but often our agents and suppliers visit us and will see it in the coffee room or Manager's office. It has quite a wide appeal. It was also distributed to some community organizations and diversity practitioners to share what we are doing.” The new calendar includes a wide range of events, from Christmas and New Year to Hanukkah, Chinese New Year, First Nations Day, Caribanna and International Women’s Day. Each month we feature background information on several holidays. For example, in April you will read the history, observations and practices that come with Easter as well as the Sikh festival of Baisakhi and Songkran, the Buddhist celebration. Also mentioned are the LCBO in-store promotions. The new calendar also includes a monthly message about human rights and respect for individuals in the workplace and a list of the 21 languages, in addition to English and French, spoken by our customers and the peoples of Ontario. Managers and employees are encouraged to continue their roles in promoting a harmonious work environment, increased customer service and awareness of the many benefits of diversity. PDJ
aconstantreminder
LCBO creates a yearround testament to the diversity of their region Profiles in Diversity Journal
• July/August 2002
1-800-573-2867 www.diversityjournal.com
leadership environment them; 2) learn from the resultant mistakes, to avoid repeating them; 3) build on the achievements of these programs; and, 4) share the group’s own achievements back with its predecessors and other peers seeking to establish their own intergroup relations programs. Thus, new learning, garnered through both challenge and success, has been continually shared and reinvested into the national intergroup rel ations effort, increasing its effectiveness in an exponentially generative fashion. This is a particularly valuable contribution to both the professional and ethical development of students and, therefore, our world.
University of Maryland Continued from page 41
Intergroup relations programs enable institutions relations programs enable students to learn and of higher education to graduate students who are practice (Milem, 2000). not only academically prepared, but also interpersonally principled. A growing body of research The realization of authentic intergroup dialogue—that oriented toward the end of fosterindicates that students exposed to cross-cultural ing meaning and sustained cross-group relainitiatives that teach multicultural interaction tionships—requires examination of personal competencies and promote multicultural relationship building are, upon graduation, promot- and institutional shared values. As intergroup dialogue illustrates, it is only by engaging in ed faster and earn higher salaries earlier than their peers who are absent this exposure such examination, on an on-going basis, that (Hurtado, et al., 1999; Milem, 2000; Milem et al., the possibility exists for the real resolution of injustices, no matter how small or large a scale. 2001; University of Michigan, 2000; Zúñiga, 1998; Ultimately, intergroup dialogue calls for our Zúñiga & Nagda, 1995; Zúñiga, Nagda & Sevig, 2000; Zúñiga & Sevig, 1997). Increasingly, global- understanding of the concept of community to ization requires workforce participants to possess embrace commitment to work for social justice. It is toward this end that intergroup dialogue both the skill sets and values that intergroup and the IDLP at the University of Maryland are dedicated. PDJ
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References: Hurtado, S., Milem, J. F., Clayton-Pedersen, A. R., Allen, W. R., ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education, & Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE). (1999). Enacting diverse learning environments: Improving the climate for racial/ethnic diversity in higher education. Washington, DC: Graduate School of Education and Human Development, The George Washington University. Milem, J. (2000). The educational benefits of diversity: Evidence from multiple sectors. In Chang, M. J., Witt-Sandis, D., Jones, J., & Hakuta, K., Eds., Compelling interest: Examining the evidence on racial dynamics in higher education. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 27-42. Milem, J. F., Umbach, P., Ting, M., Sherlin, J., Liang, C., & Kelly, R. D. (2001). Educating students for their roles as citizens in a diverse democracy: Assessing the democratic outcomes of diversity. Paper presented at the Maryland Student Affairs Conference, University of Maryland, College Park, September 23, 2001. Office of Human Relations Programs (OHRP). (2001). Report on student focus groups on diversity on campus. College Park, MD: Office of Human Relations Programs (OHRP). Schoem, D. L. & Hurtado, S. (Eds.). (2001). Intergroup dialogue: Deliberative democracy in school, college, community, and workplace. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Schoem, D. L., Frankel, L., Zúñiga, X., & Lewis, E. A. (Eds.). (1995). Multicultural teaching in the university. Westport, CT: Praeger. Social Justice Education (SJE). (2001). University of Massachusetts Social Justice Education Overview [On-line]. Available: http://www. umass.edu/sje/overview.html. Retrieved November 30, 2001. United Cultures. (1997). United Cultures' by-laws. College Park, MD: Student Government Association (SGA). University of Michigan. (2000). Project description. Available: http://www. umich.edu/~divdemo/about.html. Retrieved July 5, 2000. Walker, T. (2001). Arizona State University Intergroup Relations Center Founding Proposal [On-line]. Available: http://www.asu.edu/ provost/intergroup/geninfo/proposal.html. Retrieved December 6, 2001. Zúñiga, X. (1998). Fostering intergroup dialogue on campus: Essential Ingredients. Diversity Digest (Winter), 10-12. Zúñiga, X., & Nagda, B. A. (1995). Dialogue groups: An innovative approach to multicultural learning. In E. A. Lewis (Ed.), Multicultural teaching in the university (pp. 233-248). Westport, CT: Praeger. Zúñiga, X., Nagda, B. A., & Sevig, T. D. (2000). Intergroup dialogues: A practice model for cultivating student engagement across differences. Unpublished manuscript. Zúñiga, X., & Sevig, T. D. (1997). Bridging the "us/them" divide through intergroup dialogue and leadership. The Diversity Factor (Winter), 22-28.
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Profiles in Diversity Journal
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In our humanity, we find unity. In our diversity, we find strength. A single shared belief is enough to build our future on. We believe in the power of diverse perspectives and backgrounds to enhance our creativity and give us deeper insight into ourselves and our mutual challenges. We celebrate our differences and unlimited potential.
Visit us at bankofamerica.com.
Bank of America, N.A. Member FDIC. Š2002 Bank of America Corporation. NBR-64-4P-08501100-AD
takes you places
Exceptional performance is driven by exceptional people — working at a place where they can leverage their experiences, strengths and perspectives. At JPMorgan Chase, we’ve created an environment where everyone can reach their fullest potential. Our people build strong networks, meet new challenges head-on, grow their careers and take themselves — and our firm — to new heights.
© 2001 J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. All rights reserved. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. An Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer M/F/D/V. JPMorgan Chase is a marketing name for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and its subsidiaries worldwide.