With great fanfare, Intel announced recently that it is making progress in meeting its diversity goals. I’m not going to pick on their numbers as their current demographics are what they are. There are some good lessons we can learn from how they approached the issue.
- You have to be holistic. They understand that culture, recruitment, and retention all play a part in attracting, hiring, and keeping diverse talent.
- Drill down in the data. Intel looks at hiring and retention in different job categories. Saying that you are diverse overall, but not in high paying jobs, is not much of a victory.
- It takes significant resources to make changes. Developing a pipeline of diverse talent requires money in scholarships, helping schools, etc and finding untapped recruitment pools take time and money.
- Just like any other business outcome, the goals are reached only if they are measured AND if there are rewards for doing so. Sorry, but you cannot assume that people will strive for noble goals out of the goodness of their hearts.
- It’s more than hiring numbers. You need to get the compensation and culture right to retain people. Oh, and selecting and developing good managers, as that has a huge influence on turnover.
This article goes into a bit more depth about the challenges Intel are facing. Not surprisingly, there are concerns about balancing multiculturalism (celebrating differences) and integration (making one big happy family). It also points out that if people are spending time on diversity programs, it takes them away from their “real” job (unless they are in the diversity department) and makes it tougher to get promoted and make the higher ranks more diverse.
Just as importantly, this is a case study about what doesn’t work. There is a lot of good science about unconscious bias. However, Intel found that training people about it doesn’t really affect their decisions, or at least as much as tying their compensation to it does.
You can see how Intel treated this as a supply chain as a human resources issue. It’s an interesting approach that probably led to some creative ideas. You’ll note that there is no discussion about lowering standards, which is divisive and bad for the businesses. It is also something that probably is not discussed when they are sourcing equipment. Just something to keep in mind when making important business decisions.