Chief diversity officer role takes on greater importance amid racial justice movement

Photo | Contributed Synchrony Financial Chief Diversity Officer Michael Matthews (far right) speaks on a panel during the company’s 2019 Diversity Symposium.

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By Sean Teehan

A couple decades ago a new position began to pop up in corporations: chief diversity officer.

Some businesses went with the CDO moniker, others called those holding the position vice president of diversity and inclusion. But whatever the title, the person holding it was largely focused on compliance with nondiscrimination laws, said Tina Shah Paikeday, leader of the diversity and inclusion advisory practice at management consulting firm Russell Reynolds Associates.

“Companies are [now] stepping back to say, ‘What is the [CDO’s] mandate?’ And it’s quite often far beyond the HR mandate, and I think we’ll see that pendulum swing,” Shah said.

Tina Shah Paikeday, Leader of the Diversity and inclusion Advisory Practice, Russell Reynolds Associates

Since those early days, the demographic trajectory in the United States trending toward an increasingly ethnically diverse population and a recent social movement promoting racial justice is altering attitudes about the business community’s role and responsibility regarding inclusion, for both large companies and small businesses.

These factors are leading companies to bolster efforts to hire and promote minority and women employees, and in some cases to include the CDO role in external decision-making.

Diversity professionals at some of Greater Hartford’s most prominent companies say there’s a long way to go in achieving representation in corporate America that better resembles America’s population. But they also say initiatives like employee resource groups and an increasing focus on fostering diverse talent after employees are hired have created an infrastructure that has pushed some companies in a direction more capable of grappling with the current zeitgeist.

Sharon Hall, Partner, Spencer Stuart

The scope of a chief diversity officer’s job largely depends on what a particular company needs, said Sharon Hall, the longest-serving Black partner at Chicago-based leadership advisory and executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart.

The role

At its most basic level, a CDO usually advocates for hiring and promoting minority and women employees, and organizes employee resource groups — support systems for workers who belong to ethnic or other minority groups like Blacks, Hispanics and LGBT. From there, Hall said, CDOs can work to entrench the diversity platform in the company’s operations, and over time strategically leverage its diversity for recruiting employees or to bolster its branding.

But companies that establish a CDO role don’t always provide diversity professionals with the resources they need to enact change, Hall said.

“It has been more than 20 years [since the CDO position has existed] and very few companies have achieved the kind of progress that they would have thought,” Hall said.

It seems like every four years or so something sparks a conversation about diversity in corporate America, and executives release statements and sometimes new company policies meant to boost diversity, Hall said. But then it fades.

That’s not necessarily indicative of indifference to CDOs, Hall added. Oftentimes the business environment shifts, changing the company’s priorities, and sidelining diversity initiatives.

But with demographic changes shifting ever quicker — Census data shows whites making up about 60% of the U.S. population last year, compared with 69% in 2000 — and more public attention to racial disparities, Hall sees that changing.

“Nobody is going to be able to get away with not managing diversity effectively,” Hall said. “Since the George Floyd murder [in Minneapolis] that function is taken evermore seriously and is elevated … and I do believe that there is more opportunity for sustainability [in diversity policy] then there ever has been.”

CT companies weigh in

Photo | Contributed

Gail Jackson, vice president of diversity and inclusion, Raytheon Technologies Corp.

Gail Jackson has been involved with diversity issues in the corporate world since the mid-1980s, when she ran the HR department for Stratford-based Sikorsky.

It wasn’t long before executives began seeing the business advantages of expanding their recruiting to attract employees from a wider pool, said Jackson, who earlier this year became vice president of diversity and inclusion for defense manufacturer Raytheon Technologies Corp., following the company’s $180-billion merger with Farmington-based United Technologies Corp. Previously, she held the same role for UTC.

“If we wanted to have access to the best talent, we needed to make sure we approached our business practices with a diverse mindset,” Jackson said.

In recent years, Jackson’s purview in this area has merged into workforce development, driving the company’s philanthropy toward nonprofits like Girls Who Code and the Boys and Girls Clubs that encourage minority and female students to pursue STEM fields. She’s also set up a mentor program, in which younger minority workers can form working relationships with company higher-ups.

In addition to professional advice, the program gives visibility to employees who otherwise could fall through the cracks when managers are mulling possible promotions.

Sheryl Battles, Vice President of Diversity, iInclusion and Engagement, Pitney Bowes Inc.

Stamford mail processing-equipment maker Pitney Bowes Inc. runs a one-year program for early career employees (with a focus on women and minorities), in which participants are given a mentor and an assignment to research and solve a problem the company is focused on, said Sheryl Battles, the company’s vice president of diversity, inclusion and engagement.

“Particularly with people of color and women, we like to make sure that we are paying attention to our diverse talent, in terms of their visibility, in terms of making sure that they are being considered for opportunity,” said Battles, who added that minority employees have historically had a difficult time getting their work noticed by managers who could help advance their careers.

To make sure that all departments in the company are staffed by people from diverse backgrounds, Battles has a seat in Pitney Bowes’ “enterprise talent planning.” The annual budgeting exercise is basically an audit of who the company employs in which positions, and which departments could use more or fewer people, Battles said. In her role, Battles elevates women and minority employees who would fit well in higher positions.

Diversity and inclusion has become a priority at Stamford-based financial services firm Synchrony Financial over the last six years or so, said Chief Diversity Officer Michael Matthews.

“Diversity and inclusion was just defined as one of our primary strategic initiatives,” Matthews said.

At the beginning of this year, Synchrony established a data analytics-based initiative called Advancing Diverse Talent (ADT). It’s like Pitney Bowes’ enterprise talent planning, but it’s singularly aimed at tracking how many workers from different racial, gender and sexual orientation groups Synchrony employs, and whether it’s trending toward greater diversity.

Since Matthews established the program he’s built on it with ADT Leadership Academy, which has different development and training programs meant to put participants on a pathway to the C-suite.

Matthews has been in his current position for just over a year, and said Synchrony’s top management takes the CDO role seriously. But even with corporations seeming to renew commitment to diversity in recent months, Matthews suspects creating equal opportunities for all employees is still a work in progress.

“There really isn’t a finish line,” Matthews said. “You’re never going to get to a point where you say, “That’s it, we’ve achieved it.’”

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