WILL DIVERSITY = OPPORTUNITY + ADVANCEMENT FOR BLACKS?

BLACK ENTERPRISE, NOVEMBER 1990

SHERYL HILLIARD TUCKER & KEVIN D. THOMPSON

Walter Davis really enjoys running the investment audit department of his company. Even though it was never openly discussed, he was sure that people credited his success to affirmative action. However, that never made Davis question his ability to do his job. Then one of his subordinates, an ambitious white female named Delpha, virtually blindsided him in an effort to impress Walter's boss Hank, the director of corporate finance. When he confronted her, Delpha apologized for not keeping him up-to-date on a project that she was working on, but then told Walter that she didn't really think he was interested in that part of the report. She informed him that Hank had asked her directly for the data.

Angered by this blatant disregard for corporate protocol, Walter confronts his boss. Hank agrees that both he and Delpha had gone around Walter and apologized for this mistake. But when Walter indicated that he felt the problem had racial overtones, Hank seemed puzzled. It was then that Walter outlined his suspicions that his bosses didn't really view him as a real contender for promotions or bigger assignments, and that by bypassing his authority, Hank only reinforced this perception.

Fiction or reality? Both. This scenario is part of an eight-part video training program designed to help companies learn how to value and manage the increasingly diverse work force of the 1990s. Based on real-life case studies, the program‹titled BRIDGES: Skills For Managing A Diverse Work Force‹ uses vignettes to foster candid discussions and skills-building training sessions to improve working relationships among minorities, women and white male managers. Unlike many cultural awareness and diversity training films, the BRIDGES program, owned and distributed by BNA Communications in Washington, D.C., does not focus on blatantly stereotypic cultural and gender-oriented traits. Instead, this innovative program explores subtle stereotypes and offers hard-hitting insights on the everyday frustrations of many blacks, women and other minorities who are forced to play out similar racist and sexist scenarios in corporate America everyday.

"The objective of this program," explains Marjorie Leopold, BRIDGES creator and veteran consultant on equal employment opportunity {EEO) issues, "is not only to sensitize companies to the challenges of managing a diverse work force, but to provide managers with concrete skills and resources on how to effectively motivate and develop everyone who works for them, regardless of race, sex or age."

Unfortunately the outcome for the real life "Walter" was not as promising as depicted in the video. In the module, Walter and Hank agree to get to know each other better and respect each other's turf. And, without accusing anyone specifically, Walter diplomatically discusses his suspicions about his image with his staff and then lays down the law about how he wants the department to operate. He then reassures his group that as a supportive manager, he will also help them position themselves for advancement in the company. The real Walter never confronted his boss or his staff. Soon after this incident he was let go on the basis that he was perceived as an ineffective manager.

Workforce 2000 Is Today

Managing Diversity. Valuing Differences. Valuing Diversity. Whatever the name of the initiative may be, corporate America is slowly waking up to the fact that the changing employee demographics outlined in the landmark Hudson Institute report "Workforce 2000: Work and Workers For the 21st Century," is already a reality. The ground-breaking 1987 report forecasted widespread shortages of skilled labor and pointed out that between 1985 and the year 2000, 85% of the entrants into the work force will be women, minorities and immigrants. The report also said that older workers and disabled employees will require more of their employer's attention.

Despite the fact that this report was issued three years ago, a recent survey of 645 organizations conducted by the management consulting firm Towers Perrin and the Hudson Institute, a policy research firm, revealed that although nearly three out of four companies noted some level of management concern over the added complexities of managing a culturally diverse work force, only 42% have minority recruiting programs in place. Even more disheartening is the fact that the survey, titled "Workforce 2000 Competing in a Seller's Market: Is Corporate America Prepared?" reports that although 57% of the respondents claim that diversity issues affect management decisions and corporate strategy, only 29% actually train managers to value diversity.

The report signals that the American business community is making feeble attempts to synthesize an increasingly diverse work force. It's obvious that if top management does not firmly believe that: 1. diversity is a business issue that affects the company's ability to effectively compete, and 2. comprehensive training programs are necessary to make this happen, then the divers! ty issue will disappear like many of the cultural awareness programs of two decades ago. (See "Back To School," this issue, for a sampling of the country's top management diversity programs.)

In the meantime, blacks, women and other minorities are caucusing inside their companies, filing discrimination complaints and offering insight and advice on how to handle this controversial subject. It's not surprising that Honeywell Corp.'s diversity initiative, which included cultural diversity training sessions, was launched in 1987 after an employee survey revealed that minorities and women believed that their advancement in the company was more limited than that of white males. Others, however, are sitting back, waiting to see if the talk of creating a more open corporate culture will eventually die down. Yet both groups know that a big Fart of their individual futures rest on‹to put it quite bluntly‹just how ready the American business community is to give a greater piece of the action to managers who aren't white and who aren't male?

Affirming Diversity

It's no longer good enough, say leading authorities on diversity such as R. Roosevelt Thomas, director of the Atlanta-based American Institute For Managing Diversity Inc. at Morehouse College, for companies to wear their affirmative action and equal employment opportunity statistics as badges of commitment to minorities and women. For the past 30 years, companies have tried to enforce affirmative action and EEO policies designed to institutionalize the recruitment, retention and promotion of minorities and women. For some, affirmative action initiatives were developed as a matter of common decency; others proclaimed that EEO made good business sense; but for many, compliance requirements for lucrative government contracts was the overriding impetus.

Regardless of what initiated a company's EEO efforts, even affirmative action's staunchest critics can't deny its success in bringing substantial numbers of black professionals into corporate America since 1970. However, statistics aren't so encouraging when looking at the movement of blacks up the corporate ladder. African-Americans comprise 10.1% of the nation's 112.4-million employed civilians; 6.2% of its nearly 28 million managers and professionals and 8.5% of its 3.3 million technical and related support staff.

In his breakthrough article "From Affirmative Action to Affirming Diversity," which appeared in the March-April 1990 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Roosevelt Thomas took a less confrontational approach: "Affirmative action gets the new fuel into the tank, the new people through the front door. Something else will have to get them into the driver's seat. That something else consists of enabling people, in this case minorities and women, to perform to their potential. This is what we now call diversity. Not appreciating or leveraging diversity, not even necessarily understanding it. Just managing diversity in such a way as to get from a heterogeneous work force, the same productivity, commitment, quality, and profit that we got from the old homogeneous work force." The new litmus test of the progressive organizations of the '90s is reflected by not only how well companies recruit and attract minorities and women, but whether or not the company's corporate culture truly respects and promotes people who differ from the majority of managers and executives throughout corporate America.

Even so, says Thomas, whose diversity training seminars are ranked among the top in the country, "You can't manage diversity without a diverse work force and you're going to need affirmative action to get from here to there."

According to Ted Payne, director of Xerox Corp.'s Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity in Stamford, Conn., companies are still struggling to find ways to enforce their affirmative-action policies‹especially in the aftermath of major downsizing. "At Xerox, we have discontinued our practice of tying affirmative action goals with managers' compensation packages because some of the recruitment and retention problems that individual managers experienced had very little to do with their actions, but were inherent within the culture of the organization itself," explains Payne. (David Kearns, Xerox's chairman and former CED has molded the copier giant into the undisputed leader in the areas of EEO.) Adds Payne, "If the corporate culture isn't ready to embrace the entire diversity concept, then how can you hold an individual accountable to the numerical dictates of affirmative action?"

Surprisingly, some companies are finding less resistance to implementing diversity training from managers than enforcing EEO policies. That's because many white managers never got beyond regarding affirmative action as "preferential treatment" for blacks and women.

Although many companies still seem confused about the real difference between affirmative action and diversity initiatives, at Honeywell, the lines are clearly drawn in favor of the latter. In an April 1990 edition of the company's employee magazine, Barbara Jerich, director of work force diversity, describes affirmative action as a social justice effort driven by the U.S. government. It generally focuses on target minority groups and is geared toward compliance. In contrast, diverse work force is an inclusive, development-oriented Honeywell concept that aims at the empowerment of all employees.

"Managing diversity well means addressing, simultaneously, the needs of every segment of the employee population, including white males," Jerich is quoted as saying "When we're doing it right, no individual will be advantaged or disadvantaged because of race, sex, creed, geographical origin or any other form of classification."

According to Alan Zimmerle, corporate manager of equal opportunity, valuing differences and affirmative action, at Digital Equipment Corp. in Maynard, Mass., "The concept of 'differences' is broadly defined at Digital, extending beyond race, age, gender, national origin, and language to include the more subtle characteristics of personality, work ethics, lifestyle and educational background. "The purpose of this work," explains Zimmerle, "is to help employ ees to recognize the importance of individual differences through self-development. By learning about others, we learn about ourselves. In 'the process, individuals become empowered to view differences as assets and to put these assets to work creatively. This translates into productivity, profitability and competitive advantage."

Observes Payne: Unfortunately I've seen some companies where the lifeblood of their affirmative-action policies were drained when diversity became the major thrust. The truth was that although many of the white male managers of these companies were uncomfortable with the idea of 'valuing' talents of people who were different, they quickly resolved themselves to the fact that this may be easier than putting their feet to the fire in keeping up with strict affirmative action goals and timetables."

The "Good Old Boy" Factor

According to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, white males now comprise only 45% of America's 112.4 million employed civilians. However, it will be this group that will be forced to make severe changes in their attitudes and work habits as demographic changes hit home.

"There's no way around it," explains Dr. Anna Duran, founder and director of Columbia University's Executive Program on Managing Cultural Diversity, "as a result of any diversity efforts, white males will be required to share valuable resources, rewards, incentives and promotions with a wider range of people than ever before. For some, the reaction may be disappointment, for others, feelings of betrayal and even anger will color their opinions about the fact that the old rules are changing."

Alfred T. Jackson, director of Employee Counseling, Development and Affirmative Action at the National Broadcasting Corp. and adviser to the BRIDGES program agrees: "We are asking white men to change their entire value system. More than likely, a good number will be threatened by the fact that being a white man no longer automatically entitles them to any natural advantages. Therefore, human resource professionals must replace this sense of entitlement with the clear understanding that white men, along with women and minorities, will continue to be rewarded and promoted on a basis of merit as well as how they integrate good diversity management skills within their own areas of authority."

These issues, plus what Joseph Gibbons, director of Towers Perrin's Human Resource Management Center describes as "pure inertia," have limited the number of companies exploring how to improve opportunities for advancement among non-white workers. ''Many human resource managers just don't have the status or the ability to get top management excited about diversity issues," says Gibbons. "Some companies believe that business as usual is just fine. The skeptics are saying, 'Why bother? Nothing is really going to charge.' And most line managers are too concerned with the bottom line."

Commitment From The Top

It's not surprising, therefore, that the companies who have been cited as the most aggressive with managing diversity initiatives are also among the companies that BLACK ENTERPRISE listed as the leading places for blacks to work. (See, "The 50 Best Places For Blacks To Work," Feb.'88.) When looking for leadership on the diversity issues, past star performers in areas of EED and affirmative action such as Avon, Apple Computer, Digital and Xerox remain at the top of the list. These companies view diversity as a competitive issue and a top-down initiative that requires overhauls in their corporate culture as well as dedicated personnel and resources to help the company attract, nurture and develop top talent.

"At Apple Computer, we factor in a different cultural perspective as a value-added skill that will give the company a real competitive advantage," explains Santiago Rodriguez, director of Multicultural Programs at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. "Multiculturalism enhances the quality of our working life here in California with its extremely diverse population. We respect our differ" ences at Apple and encourage managers to actively extend themselves to people who are different."

Says Yvonne R. Jackson, vice president of human resources for Avon Corp. in New York City, "We no longer focus on the numbers. We have the numbers. (Of 7,090 Avon employees, a whopping 5,318 are women and 883,12.5%, are black. Seventy-six percent of the professional staff are women and 16% are minority.) Now we are creating an environment that ensures everyone has an opportunity to move up."

Jackson notes that managing diversity is more than an abstract ideal or philosophy. It's a management issue that has bottom-line considerations. "We're in a unique business. We reach millions of women a year through direct sales. As a consumer-oriented beauty company operating in over 100 countries, our multicultural and predominantly female customer base expects us to be a company that hires and promotes minorities and women," says Jackson. "For us managing diversity throughout all levels of the company‹from senior management on down‹just makes good business sense."

Jackson credits Avon's Chairman and CEO Jim Preston as the company's chief drum major in its pioneering efforts to be a top company for minorities and women. In a recent speech at Utah State University, Preston underscored his commitment to diversity "Talent is color blind. Talent is gender blind. Talent has nothing to do with dialects, whether they're Hispanic or Irish or Polish or Chinese. And we need talent‹all we can get. If America is to regain its competitive supremacy in the world, we won't do it just by re-stoking the blast furnaces in Pittsburgh, or cranking out more automobiles in Detroit. We'll do it by harnessing the human power of all the diverse groups that make up this country."

Since the early 1980s, Avon has actively engaged experts in culture awareness programs developed by diversity consultant Ron Brown. Several years ago the company empowered black, Hispanic, Asian and women networks to provide support and mentoring programs for each other and advice and feedback for senior management about issues of concern to these groups.

Although both management and the groups agree that Avon still has its work cut out to get all managers fully trained to handle diverse employees, as chairperson of the Black Professional Association (BPA), Sharon Hall gives the company a thumbs up for trying. "Without specific training, where does the average white male really learn how to effectively deal with people who are different from himself‹people who respond to his direction in different ways?," asks Hall, who is Avon's director of marketing planning. "And it is up to black employees to meet white managers halfway. We have to help our supervisors really learn how to accept where we are coming from."

Adds Hall, "The BPA Academy offers black employees seminars and workshops on resolving some of these issues for themselves by giving them the insight and strategic career planning skills."

"We're scrutinizing the diversity issue very carefully at Xerox," says Xerox's Ted Payne. "Five years ago we put the Xerox Balanced Work Force strategy in place which set specific goals for the numbers of minorities and women at every level throughout the organization. But although we have been quite successful at getting minorities and women in the door and up the career ladders, I realized that something was still missing. Now, our goal is to improve the environment to optimize the potential of our diverse talent pool."

Payne is assured that the company s new president and newly elected CEO Paul Allaire will continue David Kearns' full commitment to affirmative action. Right now blacks make up 14% of Xerox's 53,162 employees and 12% of its 7,191 officials and managers. A. Barry Rand, who is black, is president of Xerox's largest domestic division and the company has 26 black vice presidents.

That's why companies such as Corning Glass Works, Ortho Pharmaceutical and Pfizer Corp., that were not included on BE's "Best Places To Work" list, are working particularly hard to empower both their affirmative action and diversity offices, often by giving their EEO managers monitoring and enforcement responsibility for diversity. Others, like Corning, are creating positions with the sole responsibility of managing diversity. "At Corning, diversity is listed as among the top corporate goals along with quality and performance," says Dawn Cross, Corning's director of cultural diversity. "Our Chairman and CEO, James R. Houghton, has given management a clear message: Corning is striving to be a world-class corporation and one of the top 10 companies for women and minorities." To address these issues and the fact that minorities and women at Corning suffer an attrition rate of twice that for white males, Corning has established powerful task forces, advisory councils that monitor the firm's EEO policies, diversity goals and quality of life issues. Managers at Corning are required to undergo intense diversity training and their compensation packages and performance appraisals both will reflect their success in managing diversity.

Nevertheless, the question remains: Will diversity initiatives really translate into more opportunity and real advancement for blacks? "If companies practice diversity as a way of life," answers Thomas, "Black professionals will realize results. But first companies must accept the fact that the melting pot concept is dead. Not everyone wants to be assimilated. However, that doesn't make their skills and talents less valuable to the organization."

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Carl Gutierrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106
E-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu