Zimmerman Lehman : "Nonprofit Diversity"

SEE ALSO QUESTIONS BOARD MEMBERS SHOULD ASK TO FOSTER DIVERSITY

Recent disclosures in the tech industry on the make up of their workforce by Twitter, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn and others, since May of last year, have created a spotlight on diversity and inclusivity in the corporate environment. Diversity in the for-profit world can increase financial performance, boost reputation, attract talent, promote stability and innovation, and improve position in the marketplace, say studies done on for-profit companies by McKinsey, Catalyst, Credit Suisse and Center for Talent Innovation.

There is an assumption — not studied as much — that this is true for the nonprofit world. Many believe that diversity leads to a broader donor base, increases strategic thinking, improves responsiveness to the community and clients, and helps attract the most talented workers. There is an another assumption, which appears true, that the nonprofit sector cares about diversity but will not always walk the talk. The Level the Playing Field’s recent study found that while almost 90 percent of employees believe their organization values diversity less than 30 percent thnk their employer does enough to create a diverse and inclusive work environment.

Recent research found a disturbing lack of diversity in environmental nonprofits . People of color in leadership positions and staff ranged from 12-16% at any of the three types of institutions studied. Foundations fared no better, with 87% of board members and 82% all staff being Caucasian.

Research by California Association of Nonprofits found that in California one-third (34%) of nonprofits reported that (at least) 50% of their workforce is people of color. Moreover, the recent compenstation report by Guidestar confirmed a long-standing gender pay gap (between 11% at small organizations and 23% at large).

Here are four lessons in how to increase inclusivity in the workforce that private sector businesses have used.

1) MAKE DIVERSITY A TOP PRIORITY

Research shows companies that are serious about diversity make it a company priority, with the message coming from the CEO. A recent example involves Symantec’s top-level decision to set a 30% goal for the percentage of women on their board of directors, acknowledging that a diverse workforce is essential to exceptional products and performance. They directed a search firm to include women candidates and expanded criteria beyond the typical CEO and Board experience, with accompanying peer networks (who knows who), to focus on candidates with international, governmental and financial expertise and who could bring both age and cultural diversity to the team. In a relatively short time, Symantec identified two candidates and now has three female board members, a feat many technology companies find challenging.

A number of years ago Zimmerman Lehman was asked a similar question by the Equal Justice Society (an anti-bias nonprofit) Executive Director, Eva Paterson. She wanted us to create an inclusive candidate pool for a new development position, a field not known for its diversity. We analyzed the specific skills needed and broadened our search beyond those that labeled "Development Directors." We looked further than normal recruiting networks to include diverse philanthropic groups and organizations, and with the additional outreach, created a pool of candidates to consider that included men and women of color. Eventually, a Latino male was hired and went on to a successful career.

2) HOLD MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTABLE

The adage “what gets measured gets done” holds true. It is standard operating procedure for companies to analyze workforce data for self-assessment and improvement as well as to comply with government enforced legal requirements . But in the technology field it was new until last spring for companies to share the information with the public. That is the first step to doing something about it.

The CEO of eBay, Inc. made gender diversity a priority in 2011 . To measure progress or any slides in performance, eBay regularly looks at the share of women in jobs at all levels across the company and by division, function and region. In addition, eBay reviews hiring, promotion, and attrition data for its women leader population, and conducts an annual employee engagement survey, analyzing responses by gender and openly shares this data within the company. eBay reports that the numbers and proportions of women leaders have increased across all divisions, functions, regions and critical talent segments between 2011-2013. Recruitment, retention and promotion of women have all improved with this initiative.

Self-assessments and staff analysis of diversity based on factors of culture, ethnicity, race, age, sexual orientation, disability and gender are illuminating, and they can reveal where there are strengths and challenges in representative communities. Efforts like the Foundation Center’s Glass Pocket website promote transparency in foundations on a number of levels.

Include diversity, as a factor in your performance appraisals of top management, and you will begin to see results. This happens at IBM, which evaluate managers on how well they retain and advance women and minorities. IBM states it “wants a work force as broad and diversified as its customer base.”

3) ENCOURAGE FLEXIBLE WORK ENVIRONMENTS

Some nonprofits have managed this one area better than the for-profit world. With lower salaries, all, we can sometimes offer, is a more flexible work environment but this too needs to be embraced from the top down. The millennium workforce is looking for a more relaxed attitude about work hours and location, and the ubiquity of the interent is a game changer in this regard. The business case strongly supports flexible work environments, and the Urban Institute reports that it leads to increased innovation, quality, productivity, market share and lower turnover.

Research into redesigning work by Stanford’s Clayman Institute has uncovered new ways to think about these issues. Part-time, flextime, job sharing, compressed weeks, shift predictability, results-only work environment (ROWE ), and on and off ramping are all options. Leaders must find the best-fit policies for their organizations and ensure that upper-level positions are representative of them. Publicizing the contributions of these high-level individuals will help the work environment adapt to the realities of working people today.

4) CREATE AN INCLUSIVE ENVIRONMENT

If, in fact, diversity is a strong value in the nonprofit world, how can we walk the talk? It starts with honest conversations about difficult subjects of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability and cultural stereotypes. This is followed by recruitment efforts that go beyond the normal networks to include having a diverse pool of both candidates and interviewers for each opening. We in the nonprofit world need to learn much more about creating career pipelines, customizing professional plans for each employee, developing mentorship programs, and policies that building diverse candidates skills.

Intel, in January 2015, established a $300 million fund to improve the diversity of the company's work force, attract more women and minorities to the technology field and make the industry more hospitable to them once they get there.

At Deloitte, I helped the company's western regional office undertake a gender audit, to analyze whether they were doing its best to promote gender equality throughout the organization.

Bias exists, and stereotypes are ripe, often outside of conscious awareness, but there are new methods for combating what is now called "Implicit Bias." One example,"Inclusion Nudges"pushes the unconscious mind to help the brain make better decisions and promote behavior that is more inclusive. For example, “Instead of setting targets for women in leadership, or a percentage of minorities in the workforce, set a team composition objective that focuses on reducing the homogeneity, such as 70 percent maximum of team members of the same nationality/ethnicity, gender, generation and educational/professional background. With this approach, the implicit association is no longer gender=women or diversity=minority, rather becomes less homogenous teams=better performance and innovation. This helps motivate leaders to compose more inclusive teams and cultures.

The recent corporate buzz is that “sponsorships” will help diversify leadership positions. Sponsoring individuals goes beyond mentoring to giving candidates of diverse backgrounds a chance to shine in worthy opportunities. The Center of Talent Innovation found that creating executive presence (what it takes to become a leader) is 67% gravitas, 28% communication and 5% appearance. You can have sponsors coach on all of these issues.

About 60% of Fortune 500 companies have diversity officers, who play a key role in the highest levels of strategy, decision-making, priority setting, and action. While outside of the nonprofit education field, this position is not that common, ensuring that a diversity officer holds a high-level position is a strong signal of a group's commitment to inclusivity.

Research on for-profits companies demonstrates quite convincingly that diversity of thought and people does make a better team, product and service. It would be foolish not to take advantage of this. The nonprofit world can learn something from the for-profit models to create an equitable 21st Century workforce and leadership body

A WORD ABOUT DIVERSITY AND NONPROFIT BOARDS OF DIRECTORS

The Urban Institute in 2007 reported that people of color held 14 percent of board positions nationwide and in 2009 reported that 72 percent of board members in California were held by non-Hispanic whites. Guidestar recently created a new tool nonprofits can use to compile demographic data on their board members, employees, and volunteers, including their gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, and any disability they might have.

See the checklist of questions below. Ask yourself - is your board doing all it can to promote inclusivity?

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