Diversity's Dynamic Dozen

i4cp has released a new employee diversity report today that reveals 12 key diversity practices that are shared by high-performance organizations.

Working closely with an exclusive group of member companies including organizations such as Deloitte, ING, Pelco, Amway and the Federal Reserve Board, i4cp conducted a comprehensive survey of organizational diversity practices. Mindful that global economic turmoil has forced some organizations to shift resources away from such programs in order to survive the recession, i4cp focused on the question of what diversity and inclusion success looks like, particularly in terms of what it means to an organization's bottom line. Through this process, i4cp and the working group uncovered 12 key diversity practices that are shared by high-performance organizations and are correlated with financial success.

Though many diversity practices are logically tied to factors such as organization size and global reach, i4cp found that top-performing companies place explicit emphasis on specific aspects of diversity. By combining analysis of those behaviors with other demographic variables, the report identifies 12 key practices that link effective diversity initiatives to higher market performance.

For example, high performance companies:

• Are more likely to build the business case for diversity on the need to reflect their customer base and community demographics. This is practiced by more than a quarter of high-performance companies (26%), versus 10% of low performers.
• Place more importance on framing diversity as a business relevant issue and on creating accountability. Higher performers were almost 26% more likely to do this than lower-performing organizations.
• Are more likely to specifically budget for diversity initiatives. Nearly half (48%) of higher performers specifically budget for diversity initiatives, versus only 27% of lower performers.
• Are more likely to assign responsibility for leading and executing the diversity strategy to the executive team. More than a quarter (29%) of high-performance organizations reported that the executive team is responsible, while another 24% said the head of HR is assigned the task.

The remaining eight key practices are detailed in i4cp's 12 Diversity Practices of High-Performance Organizations report, now available to i4cp members.