What color comes to mind when you think about corporate diversity?
For the panelists at the AASU program on leading diverse organizations, it was green, green and green again.
"Diversity is a bottom-line issue," said Westina Matthews Shateen, First Vice President and Senior Director of Corporate Responsibility at Merrill Lynch. "It shouldn't be seen as something that you do because it's morally right. It has to be business. It's about economic investment, supplier diversity, outreach."
"Diversity is something that companies focus on if they are serious about identifying and keeping the best talent," added Teri Williams (HBS MBA '83), Senior Vice President for Marketing at the Boston Bank of Commerce and a former vice president at American Express. "It's not about philanthropy, but about doing what you must to survive."
Diversity is a must for companies that want to reach out to new markets, both in the U.S. and abroad, said Linda Wheeler, founder and President of Phoenix Rising 2000 and author of The Executive Alley. "There is an increasingly growing global market, where there is money in all pockets of the universe," she said. "There is money to be made everywhere," but businesses have to be prepared to reach out to the markets they want to serve.
But if the bottom line is the reason corporations should embrace diversity, asked moderator Maureen Alphonse-Charles, Co-Head of the Diversity Practice at Executive Recruiter Pendleton James Associates, who in the corporate sector is most responsible for making it happen?
"It has to come from the top," said Williams. "It starts at the board level, and after the board level it has to come from the CEO." You hear from a lot of CEOs, she said, that they view their main role as attracting talent - from the lowest levels of the organization to the highest - and it's their responsibility to put procedures into place to attract and keep that talent.
At Merrill Lynch, said Shateen, leadership on this issue comes from the board. In fact, part of their compensation is tied to diversity. But, she added, it's equally important to have the involvement of people two or three levels down -those who are closest to where the people of color tend to be. "It's not just how big the pie," she said, "but who holds the knife that cuts the pie."
At the same time, said Williams, African-Americans can't sit back and wait for corporate diversity programs, as important as they are, to make things happen. "No matter how much diversity is pushed and structured throughout the organization," she said, "from an individual perspective we need to fight for our right to have a seat at the table. More and more it is the employee's responsibility to manage his or her own career. Only you can protect your career."
Wheeler agreed. "We are up and coming and serious about creating a talent pool to be chosen from," she said. "In order to be competitive and considered, you have to go out and prepare yourself."
A member of the audience asked about the lack of diversity among the people doing diversity recruiting at corporations. They tend to be black women, she noted, and questioned whether that was a good thing, "especially in dealing with managers, convincing them that it [diversity] is a bottom-line issue and not a feel-good thing."
The panelists agreed on the need for a diverse team for recruiting, but noted that diversity of work experience was as important as diversity of race or gender. "I would recommend to those that want to specialize in HR or diversity that you make sure early in your career that you get some line experience," said Williams. "When you're talking to a manager on the line, saying 'We want you to do this,' you have more credibility if they see you've been out there."
Now that many corporations have diversity programs in place, asked moderator Alphonse-Charles, how should the success of those programs be measured?
Measurement is crucial, said Wheeler, and it should look at not just whether people are being hired, but whether they are being retained.
Shateen agreed: "It used to be as fast as we hired them, someone went out the door." Today, she said, "we measure quantitatively and qualitatively." It's not just who is being hired, but "What are the career moves they're making? What kind of assignments are they being given? How are they moving around to learn about the business?"
Williams, whose Boston Bank of Commerce is the only black-owned bank in New England, sees an important cultural side to the issue of diversity. "When we look for talent, we look for a wide range of people," she said, "but we look for people who would be comfortable in an environment where the majority of our employees, our customers are African-American.
"There's something just culturally comfortable. It's a little scary, because it makes me think about how comfortable non-African-Americans are in their environment.
"There are cultural differences here," she continued. "The issues are more than just employment. How do you meld all these cultures so that we are all comfortable where we are? We as a country need to get better with how we deal with the cultural issues."
Until that happens, said Merrill Lynch's Shateen, diversity programs will continue to play a key role. "People are naturally attracted to what they're comfortable with. That's why diversity is important as a formal activity, otherwise we fall into the same old ways."