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Corporate Cultural Research Report

Jamie La Fuente

OGL 350 – Diversity and Organizations, Module 3

January 30, 2023

Dr. Kermit Brown

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Cisco is the number two rated company in Fortune magazine’s list of the top 100 Best
Workplaces for Diversity. Cisco is a technology company providing business solutions for security
and connectivity. Achieving this status means that Cisco makes diversity a priority in their
organization and values differences in their employees.

Cisco practices a “Conscious Culture.” From their website, the culture mission statement
reads “We are self-aware of ourselves and our environment. We feel accountable and empowered
to contribute to a culture where everyone thrives and where we intentionally seek out, learn,
understand, and appreciate who – and what – surrounds us. That’s what a conscious culture is all
about.” (Conscious culture 2022) Cisco embraces culture as a way of life in their company. Cisco
advertises a diverse and inclusive environment focusing on employee’s unique characteristics,
citing this is the reason that many people choose to work and stay at Cisco. The mission at Cisco
includes inspiring leaders, welcoming everyone and problem solving globally. Part of their core
values are to connect everything, innovate everywhere and benefit everyone.

Fortune magazine shares the diversity percentages at Cisco with 48% minority employees,
30% minority executives and 28% women. Many companies have a plan for diversity and
inclusion so for a company to stand out you must delve into their corporate culture and what they
do in the community. An area where Cisco sees a need for improvement in their minority hiring is
the African American population. “Cisco aims to achieve a quarter increase in representation of
Black & African American employees from entry level through the manager and a 75% increase
in representation from director to VP+ level by 2023.” (Plc) Patrick Moorhead with Forbes
magazine writes about Cisco, “I think every large company should take note as it is best in class
because in an increasingly difficult world of attracting, developing and retaining employees,
culture can be everything.” (Moorhead, 2019). Cisco has programs in place to reach a diversified
audience and bring meaning to IT and social communities around the world. Their most impressive
programs are their “Networking Academy” which trains over 1 million people per year in IT skills
and their Corporate Social Responsibility program.

An important part of encouraging cohesiveness at Cisco is in their intent to set clear

expectations for their employees and encourage them to work together for the company mission.
An example of cohesivity at Cisco is the development of their internal systems using IOS XE to
allow engineers and developers to update and fix code independently in modules, before it is
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pushed into a common code space, so the work of others is not halted or slowed. In a company
their size and with coders around the world this is such a remarkable way to shape their IT
development. This implementation has cut down testing from days to hours and allows for
everyone to work together while not interrupting the progress of others. Another example of the
cohesive working at Cisco is even pre-pandemic their infrastructure was built for maximum remote
effectiveness using extensive video technology. This provides an atmosphere of working together
even when employees are thousands of miles apart. This gives Cisco a true advantage over
companies who use local resources and were pushed home during the pandemic. Cisco was able
to keep working as they always had and still maintain the feeling of being one company supporting
their mission. Marc Faggion, a Cisco employee, describes ways to keep the cohesivity when teams
are not physically together. “Letting everybody know what others are doing is one strategy. I send
out a weekly email newsletter to let developers know what teams and individuals are working on.
Similarly, Chuck Robbins and other Cisco leaders started holding weekly 75-minute check-ins to
listen to employees and address questions. Surveys of employees about their workplace experience
went out to make sure everyone was okay.” (Faggion, 2022) Cisco values cohesive teams and
makes it a priority to set them up for success.

Cisco has done extensive research to help their teams in the norming stage. They believe
communication is the key to building trust and being successful in norming. Their research
indicates that trust is more readily generated in high quality media technology such as video and
voice versus email. “When using non-verbal media, especially email and instant messaging there
is a risk of difficulties in relationship building which can influence productivity and performance.”
(Cisco Psychology Report) Some tips that Cisco follows to ensure trust building at the norming
stage is 1. Building in trust building time to projects, 2. Using media that allows for more social
information such as telephones or video media, and 3. Using applications to show when team
members are available online. Communication plans assist teams during their norming stage by
allowing them to quickly and easily contact each other and allowing for more frequent
communication. Cisco relies heavily upon media communication in their norming stages but also
recognizes the need for face time when building teams. They provide opportunities for teams to
have off site meetings to build relationships. Cisco employee Rachel Cuesta shares here thoughts
on an upcoming off-site meeting in the company blog. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how
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beneficial it was going to be to have two days together not just sharing ideas, best practices, and
opinions on our industry and how we could improve, but also having the time for some fun, which
would no doubt bring us even closer.” (Cuesta, 2018) By all accounts it seems like employees are
happy with the team building and norming at Cisco and there is great attention given to creating
effective teams which leads to happy and fulfilled employees.

Diversity training comes in many forms at Cisco. Employees are invited to seminars
and conventions led by diverse groups. My research indicates diversity is embedded into the
culture and I did not see a reference to formal training, but I did see several invitations for mentor
programs and proximity challenges. Each leader at Cisco has a plan for holding their teams
accountable for specific diversity and inclusion goals and there are many opportunities to get
involved in diverse cultures via their Conscious culture site. Cisco is leveraging the Multiplier
Effect Challenge at their company. This program encourages employees to sponsor at least one
person who is different from them and help them in advancing their career. This is a way diversity
is further built into the culture at Cisco.

In my pursuit to learn about diversity at Cisco, I must say that I am impressed. Cisco has
truly made diversity and inclusion an integral part of their culture. The adoption of a conscious
culture truly makes diversity a priority and brings satisfaction to the employees. The conscious
culture truly makes Cisco stand out as a company who is practicing what they preach. The increase
in the number of diverse workers and their commitments to continue to increase these numbers
shows their strategy is working. Companies who wish to be successful in diversification, like
Cisco, must make diversity a priority. This leads to employees who are more satisfied overall and
helps companies retain said employees. I hope other companies look to Cisco as an example.
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Works Cited

Person. (2017, November 30). Cisco. Fortune. Retrieved January 29, 2023, from
https://fortune.com/ranking/best-workplaces-for-diversity/2019/cisco/

Cisco. (2022, June 28). Conscious culture. Cisco. Retrieved January 29, 2023, from
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/careers/we-are-cisco/conscious-culture.html

Johnston, C. (2018, November 14). Acting on our core values. Cisco Blogs. Retrieved January
29, 2023, from https://blogs.cisco.com/diversity/acting-on-our-core-
values?dtid=osscdc000283

Moorhead, P. (2019, March 19). How cisco fosters a 'conscious culture' within the company.
Forbes. Retrieved January 29, 2023, from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2019/03/19/how-cisco-fosters-a-conscious-
culture-within-the-company/?sh=a3a7b5950b74

Plc, G. D. (n.d.). Cisco: Workforce Diversity and inclusion in 2021. GlobalData. Retrieved
January 29, 2023, from https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/technology--media-and-
telecom/cisco-workforce-diversity-and-inclusion-2091145/

Faggion, M. (2022, December 12). How IOS xe developers at cisco work remotely and
cohesively on a 190-million-line code base. Cisco Blogs. Retrieved January 29, 2023, from
https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/how-ios-xe-developers-at-cisco-work-remotely-and-
cohesively-on-a-190-million-line-code-base?dtid=osscdc000283

Cisco Psychology Report. (n.d.). Retrieved January 29, 2023, from

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/global/en_uk/assets/pdfs/Cisco_Psychology_report.pdf
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Cuesta, R. (2018, November 5). EMEAR talent acquisition comes together in Berlin! Cisco
Blogs. Retrieved January 29, 2023, from https://blogs.cisco.com/wearecisco/emear-talent-
acquisition-comes-together-in-berlin

Diversity Woman. (2020, April 14). Diversity woman spring 2020. Diversity Woman Spring
2020 Pages 32-37. Retrieved January 29, 2023, from https://lsc-
pagepro.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=60731&i=656521&p=36&ver=html5

Why sponsorship? The Multiplier Effect - Sponsorship. (n.d.). Retrieved January 29, 2023, from
https://www.multiplydiversity.com/
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