It had to be the Pandemic to give the world a serious wake up call to realize how the current global business model is at stake. Capitalism itself and centralized power is at stake. BLM has to be reckoned with and companies can no longer ignore the human and business value that diverse talent brings to their companies. Hiring and Empowering Diverse Talent is one of the major factors that companies must make it their priority to enrich their brands as not doing so will only lead it to eventual demise (devaluation of both brand and profits, a shameful stain in the industry).
Things have to change. But in order to be effective, change must not only be embraced, it must be embodied. We can all recognize the symptoms of a society where racism, inequality and systemic injustices have been allowed to prevail for too long. But what do we really do to effect change—to get at the core of it in our politics, our social structures, and our corporate cultures? When will BLM, Diversity rights, LGBTQ, #MeToo be truly heard and understood?
If companies don’t do what is necessary to prioritize diversity, merely discussing it to death, then they are only addressing symptoms; it is merely window dressing. To truly embody effective change, CEO's have to participate in and enact change from the roots up and from the top down. It means more than just saying we strive to hire diverse candidates: it means actually doing it. It means making sure that their corporate culture makes successful diversity possible—helping current and future candidates get equal access to education, training, opportunities, etc. It means making sure that places of employment make it possible for diversity to succeed and flourish, making company cultures a “good fit for diversity,” rather than a place where diverse candidates are simply expected to “fit in.”
Once companies realize diversity is a strategic asset that can help their business succeed they begin their journey on the right path.
First, you have to define success so simply and clearly that everyone gets it. The goal is to be a successful company: to hire and retain the best talent, win the loyalty of your customers by being transparent and engage naturally, enrich the communities where you do business, attain excellent business results... and so forth.
Once this might have meant being the most aggressive or best connected or shrewdest or even the most ruthless corporation: BUT those strategies will prove to be more detrimental than valuable as societal expectations are changing. Short term gains are often short sighted while building a lasting business. What we now need is: respecting and embracing other people's talents and needs that are different from ours, and realizing that for centuries diverse talent has never been given the same opportunities as white people caused by systemic oppression. The time is now to change that.
Diversity will be a competitive edge in terms of meeting the needs of different customer groups, of being more agile and nimble than others. If the future will reward those companies that are agile and innovative, it will certainly punish those who continue doing the same thing and expect different results:
In HR terms we can say: If you want the same results, hire the same people.
Every effort must be made toward the newly recruited employees, whether that is providing remedial skills, mentoring or other forms of support such as Continuing education, Workshops, Job Rotations, Career Planning, etc. Let go of focusing on only specific markers: years of experience, schooling, etc. and embrace diverse thinking, and being and looking not like you. Companies need to embrace a more expansive and dynamic view of their talent, one that tosses out the usual preoccupation with titles and traditional roles and resumes, looking instead at the underlying skills and traits that people have. When companies start with skills and traits (the ones they need, the ones they have, and how the mix may change over time), they can free up their thinking and find more creative ways to empower their talent and bring real value to their brand.
But the more important efforts relate to company culture itself, to ensure that support for diversity starts at the top, that candid dialogue replaces political correctness, that the company recognizes and celebrates diversity's advantages in big and small ways. This means that the CEO must allocate a large budget toward the advancement and continuing success of diverse talent. Making those kinds of changes is the surest way of attracting and keeping the best people in the first place.
BLM, #MeToo has thrown corporate America off it's same, safe path of providing hollow promises via lip service and no action which we know will now no longer be tolerated. One way to respond to global protests about racism is to treat it like a wake up call and make the changes that will require commitment from the top and a big budget to support it with lasting benefits.
Author: Janou Pakter | Founder & CEO Janou LLC