Achieving Inclusive Representation Through Talent and Retention Efforts 

Inclusive representation for underrepresented groups in the overall workforce and management is foundational to strengthening workplace fairness.

Ninety percent of Fair360 Top 10 companies have systemic efforts to achieve gender parity and proportional racial representation in management. To succeed in these efforts, the ability to attract and retain historically underrepresented groups is a must.

A talent pipeline that brings women and minority candidates into an organization is essential. Still, companies must also strive to develop an inclusive culture and opportunities for advancement for those candidates. This helps create an environment that encourages employee longevity. 

Building an Effective Talent Pipeline 

To attract underrepresented talent, organizations can develop systemic efforts to recruit and advance minority candidates through the career pipeline. Recruiting and promotion goals that set numeric targets for hiring and advancing candidates from underrepresented groups can serve as the first steps toward broader systemic inclusion.  

Internal programs that develop underrepresented talent, like sponsorship and mentorship, can be a valuable resource supporting those efforts. In addition, long-term recruiting partnerships with institutions that promote opportunities for women and minorities serve to create an effective talent pipeline. 

Recruiting Partnerships 

A direct way to attract talent from underrepresented groups is to leverage targeted recruiting practices to appeal directly to that talent. All Top 10 companies have dedicated recruiting resources and unique recruiting practices that target women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ individuals and veterans. Such practices can service specific workforce representation targets, which 90% of Top 10 companies have for both women and racial minorities. 

To ensure a consistent talent stream for underrepresented groups that contributes to long-term inclusion and fairness, companies can also establish recruiting partnerships with organizations that serve such groups. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are examples of institutions that can become a resource in discovering and developing underrepresented talent, in this case, Black employees. All Top 10 companies have a recruiting relationship with at least one HBCU. 

Other organizations, such as the Society of Women Engineers, Disability:IN, Out and Equal and Hiring our Heroes, can provide talent pipelines for segmented communities and resources that help businesses learn how best to accommodate the unique needs of those communities. Through such partnerships, organizations can cultivate a more diverse candidate pool and learn how to best develop newly hired talent through their professional journey. 

Mentorship Programs 

All Top 10 companies offer both formal and informal mentorship programs. These programs are designed to pair inexperienced employees with more experienced mentors. Mentors can help mentees settle into the company, understand their new role, grow their professional network and provide access to future development opportunities. They can also assist mentees in outlining their career vision and developing action steps to reach professional goals. In this way, mentorship programs help build the runway to launch a mentee’s future career advancement.  

Communication is another core element of a successful mentorship relationship. Mentors can provide valuable information to their mentees about settling into the company culture and navigating the unspoken rules of engagement in their role. Such valuable information isn’t always communicated effectively to underrepresented talent, according to Dr. Patricia Hewlin, Professor of Social-Organizational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University and member of The PhD Project. 

“Racial and ethnic minorities are not privy to some of that informal information about how to perform well in the job,” she said. “Perhaps there are certain political nuances in terms of how to be successful in the workplace. Do they have access to that?” 

For these benefits to be available to underrepresented talent, inclusive representation within such programs is essential. Part of what makes mentors effective is their ability to empathize with their mentee’s workplace experience. Mentors who are unable to understand the specific challenges that underrepresented groups face will not be well-equipped to help mentees navigate those obstacles. Eighty percent of Top 10 companies monitor representation in mentorship programs to test for bias in participant selection. 

Sponsorship Programs 

Sponsorship programs are designed with advancement in mind. In these programs, protégés are paired with a more senior sponsor who advocates on behalf of their protégé’s promotion into more senior roles. Sponsorship can take on many forms. For example, a sponsor may put forth their protégé’s name as a candidate for potential promotion. They may also highlight their protégé’s accomplishments to fellow leaders or teach them to take over the sponsor’s own managerial role. In each case, the sponsor takes steps to explicitly advocate for the vertical mobility of their protégé. All Top 10 companies offer formal sponsorship programs and 90% provide informal sponsorship programs. 

Sponsorship programs are vital to building an effective talent development pipeline for underrepresented groups. Women and minorities have historically faced systemic barriers to career advancement that make traditional paths to promotion more difficult. To counteract this, sponsorship aims to increase visibility for underrepresented groups to senior leaders. This is meant to provide clearer paths to promotion and advancement that structural biases might otherwise obscure. At Top 10 companies, 58% of sponsored employees are women and 60% are people of color. At those companies, 26% of sponsored employees were promoted in 2023.  

Sponsorship that targets women and minorities produces a more inclusive leadership structure. The explicit commitments to fairness that sponsorship demonstrates signal the value that an organization places on inclusion. That powerful cultural statement can attract underrepresented talent to organizations where individuals know they will have greater access to career advancement. 

READ: Developing Best-in-Class Mentorship and Sponsorship Programs 

Cultivating an Inclusive Culture 

To retain underrepresented talent, workplaces must value the experiences of diverse employees. Failing to embrace different perspectives and values can cause underrepresented employees to deal with emotional exhaustion brought on by what Hewlin calls “facades of conformity.   

These facades speak “to the pressure to conform, to suppress one’s personal values and to pretend to embrace the values of the organization in order to survive and succeed in their careers and in their work relationships,” Hewlin said. 

The effort it takes to uphold such facades contributes to higher employee turnover, largely among women and minority employees. 

“People who are creating facades are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion,” Hewlin said. “And they’re more likely to experience high levels of intentions to leave the organization.” 

Employee Resource Groups 

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are foundational to creating a safe and welcoming work environment for all employees. These groups allow employees with shared identities to come together for mutual support and internal advocacy. All Top 10 companies have formally structured ERGs. The most common ERGs at Top 10 companies coalesce around race, gender, sexuality, disability and veteran status. Still, ERGs can form to support a host of diverse identities or shared interests. For example, mental health, religious affiliation or age can also be the basis for starting a new ERG. 

ERGs create space for employees to be themselves at work and encourage the appreciation of diverse identities and lived experiences. Acknowledging and celebrating those identities helps cultivate an inclusive culture. This can serve as a value proposition to improve recruiting and retention for talent from underrepresented groups who have historically had their authenticity devalued. An organization that leverages ERGs to break down stereotypes and support minority employees can promote better long-term engagement from those team members. Employee retention is a key performance indicator (KPI) for ERGs at 70% of Top 10 companies.   

ERGs also give a platform to underrepresented groups to voice their unique needs and concerns to leadership. This allows organizations to better understand and address the systemic barriers to hiring and advancement these groups face. According to Hewlin, this feedback mechanism is an essential function in developing an inclusive culture that fosters psychological safety and a sense of belonging for underrepresented talent. 

“A primary influential role [ERGs] can play is when they can give feedback to leadership regarding their experiences,” she said. “Then, leadership takes that feedback seriously and begins to promote practices that facilitate a better experience based upon the feedback from the Employee Resource Groups.” 

READ: Unlocking the Power of ERGs 

Equitable Compensation Structure 

Gaps in pay equity still affect women and ethnic minorities across corporate America, according to a Forbes analysis. Closing those gaps and supporting equal pay for equal work is important for cultivating an inclusive culture that supports minority employees. Organizations that develop pay structures according to fairness principles can improve their retention of underrepresented talent. All Top 10 companies committed to systemic efforts to detect and correct pay inequity in 2023. 

Pay transparency is an essential tool in such efforts. Making the starting salary range for open positions and promoted roles accessible improves employee negotiating power and prevents runaway pay gaps from forming higher up the career ladder. These gaps form as inequitable raises and promotion rates exacerbate earlier gaps that developed due to inequitable entry-level compensation rates. The kind of open communication that pay transparency represents demonstrates the value that a company places on its employees. The compensation structure and the way that structure is communicated both attract talent to an organization.  

Indirectly, executive bonus packages can also play a role in attracting and retaining underrepresented talent. Bonus packages that incorporate fairness goals drive leaders to pursue workplace fairness goals that improve opportunities for underrepresented groups. Ninety percent of Top 10 companies had a specific percentage of Level 1 management bonuses (CEOs and their direct reports) linked to diversity results in 2023. All Top 10 companies committed to improving opportunities for women, ethnic minorities and segmented populations (people with disabilities, veterans, LGBTQ+ employees, etc.) as a fairness goal that same year. 

READ: Tying Executive Compensation to DEI Goals: Putting Money Where Your Mouth Is 

Receptive Leadership 

Leaders who demonstrate an openness to diverse perspectives and, more importantly, a willingness to change as a result of internalizing those perspectives play a significant role in defining an inclusive culture that improves retention of underrepresented talent, according to Dr. Hewlin. 

“We want leaders who are courageous enough to receive critical feedback,” she said. “It’s not just listening to it, but changing. Whether it’s a process, a practice or a style that is not suitable for the context or a given situation, to be willing to make those adjustments, to be willing to make those changes and to be willing to listen.” 

The flexibility leaders show in catering to the needs of all team members signals a culture that embraces authenticity. It shows employees that their unique perspectives and identities are valued at work. Conversely, leaders who resist feedback and change can drive higher employee turnover, especially for underrepresented groups. 

“Employees can see the courage. They can see the commitment,” Hewlin said. “When it’s not there, then you’re going to have an environment where employees feel vulnerable and not feeling as if they have the support that they need to be successful in any environment. When you feel that way, you’re not going to stay.” 

The responsibility for developing recruitment strategies and internal processes that attract and retain underrepresented talent falls largely on company leadership. Leaders have the potential to define an inclusive culture that values employees not despite their differences, but because of them. 

“I think a lot about the courage component and about leaders really being more courageous and having the fortitude that’s needed to press forward when it comes to recruiting and retaining talent across different identity categories,” Hewlin said. 

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