Social Impact Leadership Coalition

Diversity & Inclusion: Best Practices

The following are two companies who reflect the current best thinking and practices on how to bring diversity into companies who are committed to social responsibility.  These case studies provide insight on how a successful diversity program impacts the company’s vision, mission, strategy, structure, programs, policies, and day-to-day practices.

The first case study exemplifies a best practice for the internal work that needs to be done to attract and retain a diverse workforce.

[25 years – 800 employees, including retail stores.  Sales: $273 million]

Eileen Fisher’s commitment to Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) is a natural outgrowth of Eileen’s original vision of inclusion and collaboration.  These are core values of the company, and they truly guide how we work together.  Allowing different voices to be heard has always been a key component of this commitment. 

The challenge is that hiring and representation is predominantly white female. “We also have an undercurrent that we need to hire people that fit into our culture.  We have a very highly unusual and integrated culture.  But we need people who are going to work well in a collaborative environment.” 

“At our retail stores, D&I is more applicable because of customers who have different body shapes and body image.  We want to have clothes for any woman.  How do we interact with any customer?  We are looking at ways to help our store staff to have tools to work with our customer that way.”

“We’re trying to shake it up.  How do we hire diverse people?  We welcome and invite different perspectives and those who will challenge us.  HR has an intentional effort to reach out to communities of color to try to bring more people into the company.”

In addition to HR, Eileen Fisher recognizes that supplier diversity can help them better service a diverse customer base.  Currently, new vendors and business partners do not include a typical D&I schematic.

“We typically partner with businesses that have broader company values that include supporting women, and respect women. Traditionally, we rely upon conversation and gut instinct to identify businesses who want to have a positive impact on the world.  We want to do business with people who are like-minded, and who have a curiosity about the world, who want to do something for the wider community.”

Eileen Fisher used an outside consultant to help with diversity and inclusion.  Once they came to an understanding amongst themselves, they began rolling out their efforts in a seamless way.

“We selected 40 people to undergo diversity and inclusion training.  It was a very personal workshop.  Out of that grew a task force of people in the company who were passionate about this work and who wanted to carry it forward.  The D&I task force has been meeting ever since, arranging additional training throughout the company (at the wholesale and retail levels), identifying areas of need in the company, and ensuring that Eileen Fisher considers what it means to be inclusive at gatherings, in communication and in everyday life here.  D&I was identified as a key company priority at the Leadership level and continues to influence our work today.”

We have been on the “Great Place to Work” list for the past 4-5 years.  We have high retention, lowest among younger workers, with a 5% attrition rate overall.

“We have been on this journey for three years and have created a safe place on this topic, and we really wish we could create that for everybody in the company.  We help people to be able to communicate so that personal discovery is made.”

The second case study exemplifies how external outreach for recruitment, marketing and vendors to diverse communities can impact business growth.  CO-OP America is leveraging a unique and powerful connection with its target market and leveraging partnerships to deliver on project goals.

[23 years, 45 employees, $7 million in revenues]

“It’s in our DNA.”  Denise Hamler

“All the choices that we make have to be about all of us.  We have internal practices, external outreach through programs. Our diversity is integral to how we market our work.  Everything that we do has to reflect our earth and its diversity.  Graphics are people of color.  On our climate work, we are highlighting the work Green for All.  Every issue that we take on, we go right into our platform for all people. Our collateral feels inviting for people of color.  We are going to where the people are:  large community and inner city venues that people feel comfortable going to.”

Two women, both deaf, and at least one staffer are fluent with sign language.  We hire professional interpreters for all staff wide meeting and department meetings, parties – average twice a month.  Annual budget is $10,000 for interpreters.  We also offer classes for staffers to learn sign language.  Many interns take advantage of these classes.  Most often we have up to 5 people on staff at time who can sign. We’ve made a commitment.  They are part of our outreach and marketing tool to make sure that our festival is inclusive.  They work closely with Green Festival to engage and get interpreters, then they are at the festival to provide interpretive services.

We struggle with finding professionals in our member services, finance and marketing areas.  Our salaries are not competitive with mainstream so we compete with very generous benefits:  nearly 100% health care, metro card, and a retirement plan.  People make a decision to come here on a value proposition. 

San Francisco has been most difficult city attracting communities of color. We created an internship program to reach out to diverse communities.  We also focus on youth and their interests in Spoken word, Hip Hop,  and how to green our school.  Youth brings families and communities.  We make it easy for them to volunteer at events. All of our events have to accessible by mass transportation or we provide buses.  We use familiar venues such as the local convention center in urban cities such as Chicago, Seattle, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and adding Denver next year.

Our Green Festival team is 50 people who work across the country.  We contract teams to produce the website, provide PR, operations, sales and marketing.  Part of our criteria for selecting vendors is diversity. 

Our pipeline into the community helps us ferret out interested people. Our biggest challenge is to stay ever vigilant on this issue.

Check out a video on the Green Festivals "green diversity" at SanFranciscoIAM.com.

Many of the companies listed as “Best Companies to Work For” or “Most Admired” have best practices in diversity and inclusion. To find out more about how these successful companies are doing diversity, visit them online:

American Airlines:
www.aa.com/diversity

Toyota Motor Sales, N.A.
www.toyota.com/diversity

Pitney Bowes
www.pb.com/diversity

Procter&Gamble
www.pg.com/diversity

Google
www.google.com/corporate/diversity