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The Evolution of Diversity
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i4cp
The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), formerly the Human Resource Institute, is the world’s largest private network of corporations focused on improving workforce productivity. We connect corporate executives and human resource professionals from many of the world’s top companies in an exclusive network that allows members to interact with industry experts as well as peers in other organizations. Members utilize HR research and workforce productivity research on how to attract, develop and retain key assets: their employees.
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Anne Lindberg
November 07, 2009
We love it when our interviews and our hard data support each other, and that’s just what happened in our recent major study on diversity. If you haven’t read it, I recommend my colleague Mary Ann Downey’s TrendWatcher from early October, where she writes about the interviews she has done with various diversity practitioners.
Now the hard numbers are out, and they reinforce Downey’s contention that diversity is evolving into a bottom-line business issue. Although we’re still analyzing results, the initial data shows some fascinating trends.
Take, for instance, information about the business case for having a diverse workforce. Companies at all performance levels seem to agree that diversity is integral to their business strategy. But high-performing organizations are more likely to say diversity is also a way to “reflect customer base/community demographics” (26%) than are mid-range (12%) and lower performers (10%). And, in a kind of mirror image, high performers (6%) are less likely than mid-range (13%) and lower performers (18%) to say they concentrate on diversity because “it’s the right thing to do.”
Mary Ann Downey, who oversaw the survey for i4cp’s Diversity Accelerator group, argues this is an indication of an evolution. Back in the latter part of the 20th century, companies were almost shamed into diversity by the emerging cultural movements that demanded women and African Americans be given equal rights. That percolated into the business world as “it’s the right thing to do” to hire women and minorities.
As women and minorities gained more economic clout, the diversity driver changed for many organizations to the 1990s’ mentality of trying to reflect customer demographics. As the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close, the driver has now morphed into diversity as part of the corporate business strategy that’s becoming more embedded in corporate cultures and will eventually, Downey believes, become a major component of talent management – that is, a way to entice the best talent to come into the organization and to stay there.
Stan Smith, a recently retired partner of Deloitte and a member of the i4cp Diversity Accelerator group, describes the reasons behind this evolution from the right thing to the necessary business thing as an acknowledgment of reality. Organizations that are knowledge-based and high-performing “have had to face the fact that, whether they like the way the world is set up or not, they have to compete for people for whom [diversity] is a big issue,” Smith says. “I think they say, ‘Well, there’s a business imperative here.’”
Demographic changes are here to stay. Women are in the workforce and aren’t going to leave. People of all races, genders and beliefs are redefining success. To be successful at attracting talent, particularly those younger than 35, companies have to pay attention to these things as a way to discover what will motivate workers. That translates into a “compelling business need” to foster diversity “whatever individual managers think,” Smith says.
