Human Capital Institute (Creelman at Large), July 3, 2006, Monday

Human Capital Institute

CREELMAN AT LARGE
Monday, July 3, 2006
http://www.humancapitalinstitute.org/hci/research_reviews.guid

Metzler on Diversity
An Interview with Christopher Metzler Director, EEO, Cornell University
Christopher Metzler is director, EEO, Diversity and Inclusion at Cornell University's ILR School, he leads a department devoted to studying diversity and inclusion from a research perspective and practice perspective to determine the efficacy of whether the research . Christopher is an employment defense lawyer. He is interested in how to proactively address issues of diversity so that they don't become legal matters as well as proving the business relevance of Diversity
What is the next step in building diverse organizations?

BY DAVID CREELMAN
Diversity and inclusion are no longer new topics, but they remain on the agenda of CEOs and boards. Social responsibility reports generally devote a good deal of text to diversity topics. How do organizations continue to make progress on inclusion? I spoke to Christopher Metzler, director, EEO, Diversity and Inclusion Studies and Diversity at Cornell.
DC: Let me start from the point of view of a grumpy manager who says, "Didn't we do diversity five or 10 years ago? Why are we still doing it now?"
CM: I would agree with the grumpy manager that there have been some efforts on diversity. The difficulty has been that those efforts have been focused only on an individual level. The diversity work that has been done has been training work-we've trained people to recognize and celebrate differences, which is wonderful. But we have not looked at diversity strategically. We didn't link it to organizational change. We didn't link it to organizational performance. Managers were given these new thoughts and behaviors, but we didn't put the administration in place to support them.
DC: If I want to improve diversity, what do I need to do first?
CM: The first thing has to be looking at your recruiting policies. If I'm continually recruiting from the same sources, I'm going to keep getting the same kinds of people. To the extent I use headhunters I'm going to ask them to present diverse candidates for all positions. I won't accept unqualified candidates; I expect diverse candidates who are all well qualified.
Another thing is that the leadership has to speak up and say, "We have decided that diversity is a major effort for this organization and I'm going to hold you all accountable for recruiting, developing and retaining as diverse a workforce as possible."
Those are the charges that you'd begin with immediately. But if you expect a long-term effort, you also need someone to lead that effort. It's at that point I would appoint a "Chief Diversity Officer."
DC: Professional recruiters are pretty good at sourcing diverse candidates; the tough part is that the hiring manager just feels better about the person who looks like him or her.
CM: I would make sure managers know a couple of things: we don't go forward without a diverse slate of candidates and if you are always hiring the same type of person you are going to have to justify it. If there's a sound business reason for it, then fine. If the manager says they just feel this person is going to be a better 'fit,' that is not going to be an acceptable response. There is a managerial accountability here.
DC: Who enforces accountability? Who is having the conversation with the managers who are only hiring people like themselves?
CM: The HR person is responsible for that conversation, but it's actually the CEO who needs to make clear where we are with diversity. What ends up happening is that ultimately the head of the business unit is responsible. Once you start making the heads of the business units responsible for explaining why they haven't done what they are supposed to do, behaviors change. This is not an unusual model. We hold heads of business units responsible for a number of things, and diversity should not be any different.
DC: Have you seen accountability work well in some organizations?
CM: Yes. I've seen it work in a number of organizations where there are actually consequences attached. Where, for example, if there is not a diverse slate of candidates they will stop the hiring process.
I've also seen it work well where managers who have failed to select and promote a diverse slate of candidates are not considered for promotion because they are not able to manage diversity, which is a key organizational value. If they were not meeting financial performance goals they would not be eligible for promotion either. It's the same model.
Where it has not worked is in situations where, when they don't have diverse slates of candidates, they come back with various excuses and nothing happens there are no consequences.
DC: We've talked about recruitment, what about retention?
CM: We recommend looking at the developmental systems, the mentoring systems, and promotion systems-these are inextricably linked to the retention strategy. In most cases the reason diverse people don't stay in organizations is because there aren't the support mechanisms in place to ensure their success.
DC: Let's focus on gender diversity for a moment. In a lot of companies, they have excellent gender diversity for entry-level professional jobs, but as you go up the organization the number of women consistently falls off. What's going wrong?
CM: One of the things it could be is that organizations hire women and then expect them to act like men. In order to succeed in many organizations you need traits that are primarily male traits such as being highly aggressive. We bring women into the organization and expect them to be 'the best man' for the job. That's simply not going to work.
When you take a strategic approach to diversity you first look at how you are going to make diversity work in your particular organization and that means asking about the organizational culture. What are those things in the organizational culture that are unwelcoming to diversity? In most organizations, rather than starting there, we start with the notion of wanting to train everyone. But if an organization starts by unpacking the full organizational culture--finding out what things work, what doesn't work, and for whom, then it has a much better chance of ensuring that people of all stripes will be more successful.
Most organizations don't like to talk about organizational culture because they are so comfortable doing things the same way. It's inconsistent to tell people that you value their diversity, but only if they are also like you. Until organizations are ready to deal with that we will be stuck doing the same things over and over again.
DC: You've talked about gender diversity, what about ethnic diversity? Are there some particular things that, for example, African Americans find as barriers to inclusiveness?
CM: We often talk about the glass ceiling; that term in my opinion is something relevant to white women. The reason I say that, is that at least white women can see through the glass ceiling and may, some day, ascend through it.
For African Americans, the term should be 'concrete ceiling.' We can't even see through that barrier to the top level of the organization. African Americans going in to organizations face a presumed level of incompetence. They have to join organizations where it is presumed their presence is somehow related to affirmative action. African Americans walk in the door facing that.
Secondly, we have the issue of who people are comfortable with. Particularly in America the issue of race has not, in my view, been comprehensively addressed. There are a lot of unsaid assumptions and biases that African Americans have to deal with in the workplace.
What you windup with is a myriad of stuff: presumed incompetence, stereotypes, biases and prejudices. And African Americans often have an internal conflict around the question of how much of myself do I have to change while not appearing as a 'sell out' to other African Americans. This is an additional problem that organizations need to deal with. It's been a bit of a burden in a number of cases.
DC: That's a tough one. How do we get past this? I recognize it isn't going to be simple.
CM: The first thing to do to get past it is to ask yourself as a traditional line manager, "What are my own issues relative to race discrimination?" And not necessarily in the legal sense. Or ask "What are my own issues around cultural sensitivity? Do I know what those issues even are? Would I rather not deal with them at all and simply avoid this situation?" I have to ask myself, "What is my role in addressing these issues?" That's the first thing a manager is going to have to do.
As a traditional line manager, I also have to look at it as a productivity issue. I have to think of it this way: unless I'm able to help all of my employees, including myself, deal with differences in the workplace, I'm going to spend a lot of time dealing with people not getting along. Rather than spending that time on the back end managing the fall out, I'd like to spend time on the front end preventing problems.
It's useful to look at diversity as a key management competency, not as an 'in addition to what I do.' You have to philosophically accept the position that managing, especially in the global context, is in fact about managing all these differences.
DC: Have you seen organizations that do this really well?
CM: No, not from the approach that I'm talking about. Most organizations are doing a decent job on training and development, but haven't gotten to the point where there is accountability, where they have made a clear distinction between diversity and inclusion and where people see managing diversity as a core management competency.
Most organizations are still too tactical in their approach to diversity. But part of the beauty of the Chief Diversity Officer's Round Table we are creating at Cornell is that we will come out with position papers that indicate strategically where organizations need to go. Part of the reason why organizations haven't gotten there is that there hasn't been a sufficient blend of research to back this up.
DC: If people want to get hold of these papers once they are published, how do they do that?
CM: They will be on the Cornell website: