Do you need a chief diversity officer?

The mur­der of George Floyd on May 25 in Min­neapo­lis sparked a wave of protests across the globe. As the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment grew, soci­ety was forced to con­front the sys­temic inequal­i­ty embed­ded in our day-to-day lives, from schools to court­rooms, polic­ing to hous­ing and, of course, in our work­places.

Pan­icked busi­ness lead­ers felt pres­sured to act. Many organ­i­sa­tions offered state­ments of sup­port, with some donat­ing to the move­ment. Yet oth­ers chose to look inwards, promis­ing to change how they oper­at­ed. Accord­ing to data from LinkedIn, job post­ings for diver­si­ty and inclu­sion (D&I) roles jumped 100 per cent in the 45 days after the protests began, with lead­er­ship jobs, such as chief diver­si­ty offi­cer, prime among them.

But here’s anoth­er LinkedIn sta­tis­tic: the medi­an tenure for a chief diver­si­ty offi­cer is three years, com­pared with six years for chief exec­u­tives. And anoth­er sta­tis­tic, from CNBC: six years after their first diver­si­ty reports, Alpha­bet, Apple, Face­book, Microsoft and Twit­ter have only seen sin­gle dig­it increas­es in their per­cent­age of Black employ­ees. So are chief diver­si­ty offi­cers actu­al­ly help­ing or are they just there to make it look like com­pa­nies are try­ing to change?

Inclusion is about difficult conversations

“Of course, chief diver­si­ty offi­cers are des­tined to fail because when they’re appoint­ed, they’re left on their own to change cul­ture with every­body pay­ing lip ser­vice to them being on the exec­u­tive. In truth, the whole con­struct of diver­si­ty as an add-on to a busi­ness, rather than a cen­tral tal­ent strat­e­gy, is the prob­lem,” says Simon Fan­shawe, co-founder of Diver­si­ty by Design.

He believes busi­ness lead­ers are con­fused about what they’re try­ing to achieve with D&I. For Fan­shawe, too many busi­ness­es think of diver­si­ty in terms of a deficit – “we need more female employ­ees” – rather than as an asset – “more female employ­ees will make us bet­ter at this objec­tive”. Doing so means diver­si­ty becomes about num­bers, rather than a cen­tral part of what makes a busi­ness suc­ceed.

The sec­ond issue is around inclu­sion. “Peo­ple define inclu­sion in the fol­low­ing way: ‘to be inclu­sive, we have to use this lan­guage, think this way and behave this way, and if you don’t, we’ll exclude you’,” says Fan­shawe.

“Actu­al­ly, inclu­sion is about enabling spaces for dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions about dif­fer­ences with­in your organ­i­sa­tion. These spaces should encour­age dis­agree­ment, as that’s how we get progress. It is a hard thing to do, but it’s the essence of good man­age­ment.”

Diversity as strategy, not data

Human resources expert Josh Bersin recent­ly wrote a blog post enti­tled “Chief diver­si­ty offi­cer: the tough­est job in busi­ness”. In it, he argues diver­si­ty is a man­age­ment strat­e­gy, not an HR pro­gramme and that fair­ness and equal­i­ty have to be part of organ­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture, not a set of ini­tia­tives.

Clau­dia Iton, founder of Replete Con­sult­ing, agrees that chief diver­si­ty offi­cers are des­tined to have lit­tle last­ing impact unless they have buy-in from the top. She spent 15 years in senior HR roles at Unilever, includ­ing six as glob­al HR direc­tor.

“There isn’t always the strongest link between diver­si­ty agen­das and strate­gic busi­ness objec­tives in many organ­i­sa­tions. With­out this, D&I teams are at risk of being buf­fet­ed along by what the com­pe­ti­tion is seen to be doing, los­ing out on resources and lead­er­ship atten­tion,” she says.

How­ev­er, Iton believes soci­etal change is hav­ing a huge impact on busi­ness­es and chang­ing demo­graph­ics means work­places will have to get D&I issues right or face los­ing out on both cus­tomers and tal­ent.

“Mil­len­ni­als and Gen Z are the con­sumers and future tal­ent of all seri­ous organ­i­sa­tions and they are solid­ly behind move­ments like Black Lives Mat­ter. They will demand inclu­sive work­places. As more busi­ness­es cul­ti­vate such work­places, this will dri­ve com­pe­ti­tion,” she says. “So, today’s push to be inclu­sive will become a pull as the real­i­ties of the tal­ent mag­net effect along­side enhanced cre­ative and finan­cial per­for­mance dri­ve more busi­ness­es to get on board.”

The future demands equality

The social impact of not get­ting diver­si­ty right is increas­ing­ly occu­py­ing busi­ness lead­ers’ thoughts. Gen Zers, born between 1996 and 2010, will make up a quar­ter of the world’s pop­u­la­tion by 2021, with more than two-thirds (68 per cent) expect­ing brands to con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to soci­ety, accord­ing to a sur­vey by Face­book.

Engag­ing this new audi­ence in the work­place is about more than free lunch­es and onsite gyms. COVID-19 has put paid to that perk any­way. But rather it’s about build­ing long-term val­ue through social, envi­ron­men­tal and sus­tain­able ini­tia­tives. In the future of work, busi­ness val­ue will be about more than just finan­cial suc­cess. It will also be about what an organ­i­sa­tion stands for, how it engages con­sumers and the skills of its tal­ent pool. D&I is at the heart of these issues.

“Today’s lead­ers have to be bet­ter at inclu­sion, bet­ter at empa­thy and bet­ter at look­ing after peo­ple. The domain of respon­si­bil­i­ty for lead­ers has shift­ed from just mak­ing mon­ey to ensur­ing you take your peo­ple with you,” says Jim Car­rick-Birtwell, founder and chief exec­u­tive of Future Tal­ent Group, a pub­lish­ing and events com­pa­ny for senior busi­ness lead­ers.

Its recent Future Tal­ent Con­fer­ence focused on D&I, with Car­rick-Birtwell argu­ing tal­ent pro­fes­sion­als have a major oppor­tu­ni­ty to shape future work­forces that are more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of soci­ety. More con­ver­sa­tions about inclu­sion are need­ed, but they must lead to action.

“Too often, the whole D&I debate is dri­ven by peo­ple who hold the pow­er want­i­ng to look like they care. They con­trol the nar­ra­tive and out­comes, and we don’t hear from those who have been mar­gin­alised. That’s not good enough,” he says.

How to make a change

So how can diver­si­ty offi­cers tru­ly make a dif­fer­ence in an organ­i­sa­tion? Sarah Jenk­ins, man­ag­ing direc­tor at Saatchi & Saatchi Lon­don and co-founder of the Adver­tis­ing Diver­si­ty Task Force, believes there is no short­cut to improv­ing D&I in busi­ness; there are ways of bring­ing teams togeth­er.

“To cre­ate solu­tions, you have to under­stand the prob­lem, not just at lead­er­ship lev­els, but across the entire busi­ness,” says Jenk­ins.

The Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment is a case in point, she says. Saatchi & Saatchi’s employ­ees had a real will­ing­ness to learn more about the protests, but the com­plex­i­ty of the issues were a bar­ri­er.

To change this, the adver­tis­ing agency ran a three-hour diver­si­ty aware­ness pro­gramme for employ­ees, deep div­ing into the move­ment to give the organ­i­sa­tion some core knowl­edge and exam­ples from which to con­tin­ue learn­ing. They invit­ed some clients and key part­ners to the event to widen the debate, with indi­vid­ual depart­ments tasked with cre­at­ing roadmaps towards greater inclu­sion.

“D&I is about con­tin­u­ous learn­ing and hav­ing lots of con­ver­sa­tions. It’s a com­plex issue that requires invest­ment and lead­er­ship ener­gy to suc­ceed,” says Jenk­ins.

The role of chief diver­si­ty offi­cer is a thank­less one. Often brought in to clear up after high-pro­file scan­dals, they pro­vide a con­ve­nient scape­goat should D&I issues sub­se­quent­ly fail. And while hav­ing a chief diver­si­ty offi­cer is bet­ter than not hav­ing one at all, the real­i­ty is that achiev­ing inclu­sion in the work­place goes beyond one indi­vid­ual or one depart­ment. Instead, it’s the role of the organ­i­sa­tion as a whole, from lead­er­ship teams to junior employ­ees. The future of your busi­ness depends on it.