Beyond Best Practices:

New Strategies for Diversity

Breakthroughs

Andrés Tapia, Chief Diversity Officer/

Emerging Workforce Solutions Leader
Andrés Tapia is a Senior Diversity Executive, which includes workforce and HR transformation
both inside Hewitt and with Hewitt’s clients. As Hewitt Associates’ Chief Diversity Officer/Emerging
Workforce Solutions Leader, he is responsible for leading the company in its internal and external
diversity vision. He develops diversity strategies hard-wired to the business strategies. He is
responsible for embedding diversity implications, concepts, and strategies into Hewitt’s client
solutions and services to drive organizational-wide change.

Using his training and experience in journalism, history, political science, and HR, Mr. Tapia has created
innovative approaches to the firm’s attraction, retention, and development strategies to foster an
inclusive working environment. This includes shifting the diversity paradigm from one based on
tolerance and sensitivity to one based on cross-cultural competence. Working with current national
and global demographic trends, he also focuses on the implications of varying worldviews around
health, wealth, and performance by the growing number of diverse groups in the workplace.

Mr. Tapia holds a B.A. in History with an emphasis in journalism and political science from
Northwestern University.
Beyond Best Practices: New Strategies
for Diversity Breakthroughs

In the past decade, there has been an acutely heightened focus on diversity and inclusion through
diversity organizations and think tanks, boutique consultancies, magazines, and books. In addition,
through ongoing information-packed conferences, diversity’s best and brightest have shared with each
other the work that has generated the greatest impact on promoting the diversity agenda. We’ve heard
inspiring stories recounting strategies and tactics that have yielded significant results in diversity hiring,
diversity learning, and diversity governance through diversity councils, taskforces, affinity groups, and
so on. Yet despite the many advances and continued momentum, most of corporate America remains
stuck in terms of seeing diverse representation at the most senior levels.

The successes of increased diversity are proving that a more diverse workforce is a more complex work-
force. This diversity is not just within the U.S. employee base—it’s becoming increasingly more global.
At the same time, many companies have been caught off guard by the unspoken churning undercurrents.
Consider how many white females manage African American males who in turn manage white males,
Latina women, and immigrant and U.S.-born Asians—all of whom ultimately help deliver P&L for an
enterprise statistically still run by white males.

Further, a more diverse workforce also means more diverse desires, beliefs, and behaviors posing
increasingly more complex and profound challenges to HR. Some of the more obvious ones, such as
diversity hiring and training, have been on HR’s radar screen for a while. But there are other areas
where HR has not embraced the other challenges a more diverse workforce brings to the HR status quo.

The connotation that inclusion in the workplace creates a warm, harmonious work environment is
misleading. Inclusion is hard. Very hard. Harder than awareness. Harder than tolerance and sensitivity.
Harder than diversity itself. Diversity is about getting a mix, which is made all the more difficult when we
take into account diversity sourcing, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding. But inclusion is about how to
make the mix work. Now that we’ve increased diversity, how can we ensure that all individuals—whether
or not they reflect the norms of their particular demographic group—feel included in the corporation’s
overall community?

While there’s still much to glean, implement, and execute regarding current best practices, it’s time to
start thinking about and discussing the next generation of diversity work. Here are a few perspectives
to stimulate our thinking:
• Hard-wire diversity to the business case
• Develop organizational cross-cultural competence
• Embed diversity into HR programs and services
• Address the unspoken taboos of diversity’s undercurrents
Hard-Wire Diversity to the Business Case
For all the talk about diversity in business, few organizations are directly applying the implications of
diversity to their business strategies. This is key, because without this connection, diversity as solely
an HR initiative will wither on the vine.

Ensuring sound business decisions begins with gathering key data. The data must be analyzed for
relevance and direction. Consider the following:
• In 1950, 90% of the U.S. was white. By 2040, less than 100 years later, only half of the U.S. will
be white. We’re already more than half way through this demographic change with 30% of the
population being people of color.1
• Hispanic and Asian populations in the U.S. will triple over the next 50 years.2
• The purchasing power of minorities already is $1.7 trillion. $600 billion of this is Latino
purchasing power, which is greater than the GNP of Mexico.3
• In 2008, 70% of all new hires in the U.S. will be women and minorities.4
• Due to the ballooning number of baby boomers retiring in the next decade and the much smaller
size of Generation X after them, there will be 10 to 28 million jobs that will not be filled.5

What is this data telling us? Quite simply, businesses that don’t know how to sell their products and
services to this emerging marketplace will lose market share. And businesses that don’t know how to
attract and retain a more diverse workforce will be on the losing end in the war for talent.

Here’s a look at how two companies acted on their commitment to diversity and applied marketing
savvy to cross-culturally enhance their workforce while increasing their bottom line.
• Nearly 10 years ago, Allstate decided to go after the growing and untapped Latino market, which
tended to be un- or under-insured. They recruited a diverse workforce whose “good hands” looked
like those they wanted to sell to. They revamped their marketing materials to reflect not only their
language, but also their culture. Today, due to these efforts in various markets, of all Latinos
who have insurance, 70% have it with Allstate. This market keeps growing and continues to be
unpenetrated. When a senior professional at a rival insurance company heard this story at a
conference, she sighed and whispered, “We live with that statistic every day.”

• Raising the issue of diversity as a business imperative saved one large hospital from a very costly
error in the design of the waiting rooms in their new hospitals in the five fastest growing cities in the
U.S., four of which are growing due to diversity. They were designing around assumptions based on a
typical white family—where usually one or two individuals show up to wait as a loved one is wheeled
into surgery. But when it’s African Americans, it could be six or seven. And when it’s Latinos, it could
be more than a dozen! By taking this and myriad other related issues into account, they are now
poised to offer a diversity-based differentiator in the marketplace: cross-culturally competent
health care.
Before moving forward with their diversity initiatives, corporations must answer a vital question: “Why
is diversity important to us, specifically, given the industry we’re in and the kind of company we are?”
It’s not enough to quote the demographic stats or suggest that it’s simply the right thing to do. They
must make the connection between the stats and what it means to their business strategies for growth
and better margins.

Only those who can form hard-wired links to their core business will be able to make those investments
necessary to set the foundation for achieving sustainable diversity and inclusion. When companies
do this, it deescalates many of the contentious issues around diversity because employees—whether
they’re part of the majority or minority—see the relevance to their day-to-day responsibilities. This
mind-set is key to creating an inclusive environment. Diversity becomes less about various constituen-
cies and more about the enterprise. There cannot be true inclusion until employees know and believe
that diversity is key to their business success.

Develop Organizational Cross-cultural Competence

Given today’s more complex workforce, we need to develop organizational cross-cultural competence.
Mention diversity, and the need for training emerges almost immediately. Millions of American work-
ers have experienced diversity training over the past 25 years. This training has proved effective in
changing how diversity is viewed throughout the corporate world and has yielded some outstanding
stories of progress. Yet there’s still a general lack of diversity competence throughout the workplace.
The question is, why?

While much of the progress in past years was right for the times, it’s critical to rethink how these dated
approaches are being implemented in today’s work environment, particularly in the areas of training
and organizational development.

When there were few minorities and women in the workforce and blatant bias through slurs and inap-
propriate humor was common, such issues were addressed through sensitivity training. This approach
made an impact on workplace behavior as employees became more sensitized to their employers’
expectations. Mandates such as “zero tolerance” policies surfaced during this era.

As a result, most explicit prejudice in the workplace has subsided. Regardless of their opinions, em-
ployees generally know what’s appropriate to say and what is not appropriate to say. This is progress
compared to a decade ago. However, it’s time to take diversity learning to another, more powerful level.

The Faulty Paradigm of Tolerance and Sensitivity

The focus on tolerance and sensitivity has been right for this past generation of diversity work. Coming
out of the fight for Civil Rights and the transformative feminist movement, the influx of minorities and
women into the workplace was full of dislocations, antagonisms, fear, and explicit prejudice.
It has taken a generation to work out the old ways of exclusion, and women and minorities (with white
women making the greatest gains) have begun to take their rightful places among white males in dif-
ferent fields and corporate positions.

While tolerance and sensitivity are extremely important, they’re limited in their ability to foster a
sustainable inclusive environment. Tolerance and sensitivity serve to defuse defensiveness on the part
of majorities toward those who are different, but they foster truce rather than truth. It’s manifested in
statements such as “I won’t resist you anymore,” “I’ll tolerate that you’re here,” “I’m OK, you’re OK,”
“We’ll agree to disagree,” “Live and let live.” It’s the answer to “Why can’t we all just get along?”
It’s the voice of political correctness.

The tolerance and sensitivity approach also undermines inclusion because of its implied audience.
Who is it who needs to be more tolerant and sensitive? The implication is the white heterosexual male,
putting this important part of the community on the defensive. So in inclusion training we have
exclusion taking place.

While the current paradigm of tolerance and sensitivity has enhanced diversity awareness among
individuals and organizations, it’s reached a point of diminishing returns, offering little movement
toward greater inclusion. Today companies must make a paradigm shift toward a focus on individual
and organizational cross-cultural competence.

The More Robust Paradigm of Cross-cultural Competence

Cross-cultural competence is defined this way: the ability to discern and take into account one’s own
and others’ worldviews, to be able to solve problems, make decisions, and resolve conflicts in ways that
optimize cultural differences for better, longer lasting, and more creative solutions.

This is a more sustainable approach to inclusion for various reasons. First, it’s a competency rather
than an attitude or stance. Competencies can be broken down into discrete, observable, and trainable
behaviors and skills.

Second, it’s pragmatic and applicable to resolving daily diversity issues. Tolerance and sensitivity
aren’t enough when interacting with colleagues whose cultural upbringing is very different from your
own. They may approach a client dilemma in a way that your upbringing tells you is wrong—and their
upbringing tells them is right. Through cross-cultural competence, there’s a language and concepts for
addressing the differences skillfully with an awareness of cultural preferences and how they may differ.
It provides the tools with which to navigate the difference.
Third, the cross-cultural paradigm allows for a global diversity approach. Tolerance and sensitivity are
uniquely American, and non-U.S. audiences spot it in minutes. But cross-cultural competence tran-
scends the Americanization of diversity. It can be used to address diversity issues not only within
demographic groups within a country, but across countries. Americans and Brits. Brits and Continental
Europeans. Canadians and Indians. It’s the same skill set required for successfully combining corpo-
rate cultures in mergers and acquisitions.

Finally, cross-cultural competence creates a level playing field. Who needs more cross-cultural com-
petence? We all do. No group has a particular advantage in automatically being more cross-culturally
competent than another.

Using cross-cultural competence, recruiters are better able to avoid falling into the trap of misreading
a minority’s lack of eye contact or modest description of his or her achievements. Managers are better
able to discern between a performance issue and a cross-cultural misunderstanding. Sales professionals
are better equipped to sell to and negotiate with those who are culturally different. Executive leaders
won’t overlook women and minorities for top-level positions because they don’t fit into a white male
influenced view of strong leadership. All this contributes to an authentic environment of inclusion.

Cross-cultural competence also means that HR professionals can see more clearly the implications
diversity has on programs that traditionally have not been thought of as being culturally influenced—
programs such as health care and retirement benefits and the communications about them.

Address the Unspoken Taboos of Diversity’s Undercurrents

Much-needed attention in research and practice has been targeting the classic diversity issues of race/
ethnicity and gender. And much remains to be done in addressing glass-ceiling dynamics in corporations.
Creating an inclusive environment demands that this work not stop.

However, in this section, we’ll focus on two diversity undercurrents that tend to get less play. First is
the issue of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered (LGBT) in the workplace. How can corpora-
tions best create an inclusive environment for them in a way that will navigate the polarizing shoals
of today’s culture wars? The other issue involves the group most resistant to the inclusion ideal—the
white male.

Creating Inclusion for LGBT

My name is Diana.
I am 39 years old.
I love the work I do at Hewitt and I consistently perform above expectations.
I am a lesbian.
I am the same person I was before you read the previous sentence.

Diana in Atlanta
A couple of years ago, across our U.S. offices, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered
associates, as well LGBT allies, joined Diana in telling their stories publicly. The vehicle was
a 130-square-foot display with forty 24_ x 32_ black-and-white posters with photographs and
essays called “Affirmations.” These stories were exhibited in Hewitt’s largest U.S.-based
offices and posted on the corporate intranet.

The impact far exceeded expectations. Coworkers reflectively read the 300-word narratives
after putting away their lunch trays. E-mails of support were sent. “They really brought to light
what those in my family who are gay go through every day.” “It’s time for me to get involved
as an ally in PrideAlliance [Hewitt’s LGBT affinity group]. No one should ever have to live his
or her life in hiding.” Former Hewitt CEO Dale Gifford, a white male, helped set the tone. In the
introduction to the Affirmations exhibit he stated, “These stories are about courage, often in
the face of rejection, fear, and distrust. I believe that we can contribute our best to our teams,
our projects, and our clients when we don’t need to worry about hiding behind walls.”

We know this inclusion strategy worked because we track LGBT engagement and experiences
in our firmwide engagement survey.6 We believe the reason it worked is because the personal
stories cut through the polemic. In each person’s story—no matter how different it may be from
our own—there was something that others could recognize. That’s the quest for meaning and self.
This kind of storytelling and personal connection is one of the keys to sustainable inclusion.

Creating Inclusion for the White Male

As a group, white males frequently feel excluded from the diversity discussion. And as long as
they are, inclusion will not be achieved. White males represent a large part of corporate America,
especially in the leadership ranks. They need to be taken off the defensive, and motivated to
invest in the work of diversity.

White Men as Full Diversity Partners, a culture change consulting firm founded by Bill Proudman,
believes that diversity initiatives that ignore the potential contributions of white males in the or-
ganization may only help foster the misconception by many of them that these efforts are nothing
but a distraction.

Engagement survey data tells us that while white males are significantly more likely than
others to claim their companies are actively working to support diversity. They’re also signifi-
cantly less likely to agree that they’re personally included in their company’s diversity efforts.
Also, their engagement is lower than other groups.
Results show that the paradigm shift from tolerance and sensitivity to cross-cultural competence in
learning has a positive effect for white males. Many report the relief they feel upon hearing that they’re
no longer the sole demographic needing to recognize the need for and importance of inclusion. As one
white male put it, “It was liberating, and for the first time I could see the potential addressing diversity
can have for our business without the baggage of being the bad guy.”

This shift allows minorities to see white males in a new light. Upon learning what happens under this
paradigm shift, it’s minorities who begin experiencing epiphanies about their own biases toward white
males. One African American woman, in referring to a white male colleague who had chosen to share
more about his own personal experiences said, “I had no idea white men could feel vulnerable and not
have all the answers. But he was so honest with me about his own challenges. It was eye-opening.”

For diversity and inclusion to succeed and be sustainable, white males need to not only feel part of the
story, but also emerge as diversity leaders. In places where they’ve done so already, their impact is
profound and widespread.

In Closing
A Hewitt study exploring how clients are preparing for tomorrow’s workforce reveals a telling gap.
While most have made diversity a priority and have funded strategies and programs to attract and hire
more diversity (getting the mix), they’re not paying nearly the same degree of attention to diversity
retention (making the mix work).7 Not surprisingly, in many U.S. corporations there’s a revolving door
effect where the attrition rate for minorities is higher than it is for whites. Until we see parity here,
corporations will not have achieved inclusion.

Inclusion in its simplest form means don’t leave anyone out. Share. Be friendly. Embrace those basic
values we learned on our parents’ knees. For us as adults—competent, successful professionals in the
corporate world—these values are the most elusive to implement. True, deep-rooted inclusion is very
hard to achieve—but not impossible. For those who succeed, the competitive-edge payoff will be
insurmountable.
References

1 U.S. Census Bureau

2 U.S. Census Bureau
3 Zelig Council of Economic Development
4 U.S. Department of Labor
5 U.S. Department of Labor
6 Hewitt engagement study. Survey recipients are given an option to self-identify their sexual
orientation. We are then able to do a data cut of all the data by sexual orientation. Also, those who
identify as LGBT are offered approximately a dozen additional questions specifically about their
LGBT experience in the corporation.
www.hewitt.com

About Hewitt Associates

For more than 65 years, Hewitt Associates (NYSE: HEW) has provided clients with best-in-class
human resources consulting and outsourcing services. Hewitt consults with more than 3,000 large
and mid-size companies around the globe to develop and implement HR business strategies covering
retirement, financial, and health management; compensation and total rewards; and performance,
talent, and change management. As a market leader in benefits administration, Hewitt delivers health
care and retirement programs to millions of participants and retirees, on behalf of more than 300
organizations worldwide. In addition, more than 30 clients rely on Hewitt to provide a broader range
of human resources business process outsourcing services to nearly a million client employees.
Located in 33 countries, Hewitt employs approximately 23,000 associates. For more information,
please visit www.hewitt.com.

© 2008 Hewitt Associates LLC

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