DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION AS A BUSINESS STRATEGY Fostering Inclusivity Helps Company Culture By Julie Silard Kantor Reprinted with permission of the New Jersey Society of CPAs. njcpa.org
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any organizations have come to recognize the impact of mentorship on advancing diversity and fostering inclusivity. But companies that want more diversity will need to mentor and sponsor more diversely. Mentoring, after all, helps employees develop a sense of belonging which is important to building a diverse and inclusive culture. For companies, the key is to create a company culture in which team members feel individually recognized, valued and committed while working toward common goals. That can be accomplished through mentoring initiatives focused on enriching relationships between cultural groups. On an individual basis, sponsorship is also equally important, wherein a sponsor takes an active role in championing a high-potential employee for growth opportunities within the organization.
The Value of Sponsorship and Mentoring While a mentor speaks with their mentee and shares from their invaluable learning, a sponsor speaks about their sponsee behind closed doors and champions him or her to others. Sponsors have a dramatic influence on an individual’s career advancement, company succession plans and elevating diverse leaders. Unfortunately, not all high-potential employees have equitable access to sponsors, and most leaders tend to mentor and sponsor in their own likeness. Research from McKinsey, the Center for Talent Innovation and the Boston Consulting Group have all shown that
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the journal entry | january 2021
people of color, women, LGBTQ+ individuals and other under-represented groups often lack sponsors. Formal sponsorship programs engineer and ensure access to internal champions for high-potential employees. Simultaneously, these initiatives also help executives build their leadership skills and living legacies. In a 2016 Harvard Business Review article, “Why Diversity Programs Fail,� authors Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev reported on the impact of mentoring, training, self-managed teams, diversity task forces and diversity managers on the representation of African American, Hispanic and Asian men and women at the manager level. The researchers found that mentoring had the largest impact of all strategies, resulting in an increase of representation of minorities at the manager level by 9% to 24%.
Diversity Issues A 2018 McKinsey study, Delivering Through Diversity, found gender diversity on executive teams is highly correlated with profitability and value creation. Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 21% more likely to outperform on profitability and 27% more likely to have superior value creation. Women and minorities usually connect better with their mentors through formal mentoring programs. Formal programs offer an established, credible and supported way to mentor women and minorities. The most effective mentoring programs provide training on how
