Recently Latina Style released its list of the top 50 companies for Latinas – and at the topping the list was Deloitte. Praised for its scholarship and training programs, and dedication to Latina professionals in particular, the company has also sponsored Women of ALPFA (Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting) program.

But corporate culture is more than the sum of programs and initiatives. According to Latina Style, Deloitte’s work to help develop and advance its employees, as well as vocal leadership support for diversity, are reasons the firm was named number one.

As Deloitte’s CEO Joe Echevarria recently wrote in Latina Style, “Businesses that take the initiative to address the changes reshaping our society now improve their chances of leading – and winning. Businesses that stand by and do nothing run the risk of being left behind.”

Business Case for Hispanic Diversity

The magazine cited Deloitte’s Emerging Leaders Development Program, which supports high performing minority talent get to the next level of their careers, as a significant reason it claimed the top spot on the list. According to Latina Style, “Since its founding in 2005, more than half of the participants have been promoted to senior managers, partners, principals, or directors.”

Echevarria explained that Deloitte’s support for diversity, and specifically Hispanic talent, in Latina Style. He said:

“According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than half of the growth in the total U.S. population between 2000 and 2010 was because of the increase in the Hispanic population. By 2010, Hispanics comprised 16 percent of the total U.S. population, the largest single ethnic group in the U.S. That spells significant economic, social, and political change for our society and for companies that want to survive and prosper.”

It is crucial that corporate leaders start taking the business case for diversity seriously, he continued. “It’s not enough for businesses to think about diversifying their workforces and markets at some point in the future. To stay relevant, it needs to happen now. The rationale goes beyond moral or social motivations. There’s a clear business case.

He added:

“A diverse workforce can also respond more effectively to the needs of Hispanics and other minority groups – populations with rapidly-increasing purchasing power. And a diverse company, with reach into every part of society, can make better-informed and more responsible decisions. In short, diversity helps the bottom line.”

Companies that actively work to attract and retain diverse talent will be positioned for success as the marketplace grows and changes in the new normal.

Promoting Latinas

Latina Style’s Deanna G. Zapanta explained that the top fifty list looks at diversity support from a range of standpoints. She explained:

“For the past 14 years, the LATINA Style 50 Report has acknowledged companies, whose mission of diversity and inclusion has been reflected in the way they recruit, promote, provide benefits, and create programs for the betterment of their employees. Though the majority of the programs offered are available to all employees, the companies selected have shown an exceptional effort in their recruitment and advancement of Latina professionals.”

She also noted that this year, due to the national employment uncertainty, the list paid close attention to companies’ recruitment and retention practices. It also tracked leadership development, mentoring, paid internship, and fast track programs.

Other measures included numbers of Latinas in corporate leadership and various employee compensation, benefits, and work/life programs.

The top five companies were Deloitte, Marriott, Prudential, Aflac, and Kraft.

Additionally, the magazine noted, this year, it will be presenting an award to the top Employee Resource Group for Hispanic individuals. It said, “This recognition is designed to showcase best practices in corporate America where employee resource groups are making impact in career outcomes and overall diversity accomplishments for their respective companies.”

Finally it explained, business impact will be a key measure of success for the winning group.

In a ForbesWoman article earlier this month, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Talent Innovation (formerly Center for Work-Life Policy), wrote that while there are 144 boards with no women in the Fortune 1000 and women make up only 15 percent of all Fortune 1000 directors, there is also some good news when it comes to the effort to achieve board parity.

The good news, Hewlett says, is that over 1,100 directors on Fortune 1000 boards are over 70 years old.

If we only wait just a bit longer, she suggests, soon qualified women can rush into the seats vacated by retiring males. She concludes:

“The time may finally be arriving for women to fulfill B.C. Forbes’ predication. As more women pry open the boardroom door and assume a seat at the table, they can not only serve as a powerful voice for change within each company but can proactively broaden the pipeline of female candidates to ensure that even more women advance.”

Hewlett’s message about being rigorously prepared to assume board service when elected is valuable. But her suggestion that women simply wait their turn to be chosen for board service when the old guys are out of the way is disappointing. Women have been waiting for decades to get to the top, and – as Catalyst data on the percentage of women making it into the boardroom shows – playing the waiting game isn’t getting women anywhere fast.

Need to Pry?

Equally disappointing is the notion that women will still have to “pry” the boardroom door open when all of these seats are presumably up for grabs. If a board is so stubbornly ignoring the value of gender diverse viewpoints that women have to force their way onto it, that seat is not likely to be a pleasant one to occupy.

As Former Xerox CEO and Chairman Anne Mulcahy commented at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit last year, if a board has never had a female member, there are likely other problems within its culture or system of operating. In fact, she advised women not to join boards that don’t have other women. She said, “It’s a bad sign. Boards without women – blacklist those suckers. It’s 2011. They’ve had the time – it’s significant that they don’t have women.”

While encouraging women to empower themselves and prepare for board service in a systematic way is obviously important, it’s only part of the gender parity puzzle.

All of this preparation is going to amount to nothing if boards do not fully appreciate the need to hire women or other minority individuals. And judging by the numbers – and Hewlett’s notion that doors will have to be pried open – many boardrooms do not foster a culture that recognizes the value of diverse viewpoints. The real question we should be asking ourselves is how to emphasize the business case in a way that compels meaningful, thought- and action-provoking change in these arenas.

As Elissa Ellis Sangster, Executive Director of the Forte Foundation recently told the Wall Street Journal:

“[Based on research,] the organizations that have a higher representation of women in their leadership make better decisions, they have better corporate governance, they have better risk management, they have better returns. Having that diversity in an organization, whether it’s gender or ethnicity or background skills, those are all important things.”

The willingness of a board to consider the business value of gender diversity also signifies the willingness to consider and rethink long-held and potentially outmoded ways of leading a company. At a time of global uncertainty and upheaval in the corporate and financial space, a board that is willing to rethink tired ideas is one that is positioned for success.

This month DiversityBusiness.com released its list of the top fifty companies for multicultural business opportunities. The Div50 tracks supply chain diversity – which is an important measure of how inclusive a company really is, says Kenton Clarke, CEO of DiversityBusiness.com.

“In a marketplace that is increasingly as sensitive to diversity as it is to revenues, awarding the top buyers of multicultural products and services is becoming a natural part of the new socioeconomic food chain. Organizations that consistently buy the most products and services from diversity businesses, and that sustain the most mutually beneficial business relationships with their multicultural suppliers, should be recognized not only by the business community but also by the general public. That is what we have accomplished in creating The Div50.”

The top company on the list providing business opportunities to multicultural businesses was AT&T. Wal-Mart, Dell, Office Depot, and Northrop Grumman rounded out the top five.

Winning Programs

AT&T’s supplier diversity program was implemented in 1968, and according to the company, it spent $6.9 billion with minority, women and disabled veteran owned businesses in 2009.

“It is extremely important to us to work with minority, women, and disabled-veteran enterprises, so it is an honor to be recognized on this prestigious list,” said Marianne Strobel, executive director, AT&T Global Supplier Diversity. “Diverse businesses continue to provide AT&T with innovative products that enable us to deliver the best solutions for our customers.”

Northrop Grumman, another top five company, was included due in part to efforts by its socio-economic business programs division. According to the company, SEBP seeks opportunities to work with “small disadvantaged, women-owned, historically underutilized business zones, veteran, service-disabled veteran-owned, historically black colleges, universities, and minority institutions.”

Last year, the company spent $3.4 billion with small businesses, which amounted to 37% of its total subcontract spending.

Gloria Pualani, corporate director, SEBP, said, “It is great to be ranked in the top five. Northrop Grumman has made a long-lasting commitment to diversity and inclusion in the supply chain, particularly with our small business partners.”

Economic Inclusion

Clarke said, “The diversity practices of the Div50 has changed the course of economic inclusion and thereby the world as we know it.”

He continued, “The great diversity and vision of our country and our people have made this possible. DiversityBusiness.com is proud to have been a force in the business world for such positive change and opportunity. The initiative that we have led has been instrumental in equalizing the playing field and for that we are very honored indeed.”

DiversityBusiness is made up of 250,000 member companies, which provide goods and services to the Fortune 1000, government agencies, and colleges.

Companies that utilize services provided by small and multicultural businesses are likely to benefit big in the long term. Recent work by the UK’s Business in the Community illustrates the business case for supply chain diversity.

Jo Daniels, Marketplace Director, BITC, commented, “Since BITC began working with businesses on responsible supply chain management, we’ve seen companies gradually shift from managing risk to proactively seeking opportunities to enhance their positive impacts. Supply chain diversity provides a tangible way for businesses to forge stronger links with communities, whilst at the same time creating business benefits.”

Romeo Effs, group supply chain manager at MITIE, a facilities and property management company, explained, “Diverse suppliers are often smaller, and more agile, and so provide better flexibility in service levels helping to mitigate supply chain risk and volatility.”

Sandra Kerr OBE, National Director, Race for Opportunity campaign, BITC, added, “Strengthening our diverse communities will ultimately contribute to overall economic growth.”

Not only does supplier diversity build communities and win over consumers, but supporting minority communities can also help companies build rapport and support from internal affinity groups, ultimately improving employee engagement, as Texas Diversity Magazine reported.

According to a new US Labor Department proposal, companies with federal contracts will have to have 7% of their workforces made up of people with disabilities. With roughly 200,000 federal contractors, the Associated Press reported, that means a quarter of the nation’s companies would be affected by the rule – federal contractors take in about $700 billion annually.

Patricia Shiu, Director of the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said, “This is probably the greatest proposal for real substantive change since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act” of 1990.

She continued, “For nearly 40 years, the rules have said that contractors simply need to make a `good faith’ effort to recruit and hire people with disabilities. Clearly, that’s not working.” The unemployment rate for federal workers is 13%, while the rate for all workers is about 8%, according to recent numbers.

And according to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, 79% of working-age people with disabilities are outside the labor force. Only 30.5% of people without disabilities are outside the labor force. This rule would increase the diversity of the workforce significantly.

Barbara Otto, Executive Director of the Chicago-based organization Health & Disability Advocates, said, “This is a huge step toward transparency and accountability. It’s great that, given that one fifth of Americans now has a disability, now we’re going to try to bring in hiring incentives to bring them into the labor force.”

She added, “This will have a positive impact on the economy and on a population that has been traditionally underemployed.”

Increasing Diversity

Otto believes that employers ultimately stand to gain by seeking more workers with disabilities. “Because this is such a heterogeneous population, they’ll be enhancing the diversity of their workforce by other measures as well,” she explained, for instance, gender or ethnicity.

She continued, “The proposed rule also gives employers an opportunity to discuss things some employees may not have been willing to talk about before. It could give employers the chance to make an assessment of where they already are with the percentage of employees who have disabilities. It could improve things for those already employed.”

And, it could improve life for the workforce at large. “Universal design usually benefits everyone in the workplace – for example if you make it easier for a person with a disability to get into the building, you’re making it easier for everyone to get into the building.”

When it comes to paying for special accommodations, Otto said, often employers only need to pay $500 or less, and this is frequently offset by state and federal incentives.

Countering Opposition

But opposition to the rule is there – mainly it would increase paperwork and administrative costs to federal contractors.

Michael Eastman, executive director for labor law policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was cautious. He commented to the AP, “The agency issued a number of regulations that have dramatically expanded paperwork and record-keeping requirements with real costs to contractors.”

BusinessInsurnace’s Judy Greenwald said employers are also worried about the prospects of locating enough workers with disabilities for their needs.

Otto had a solution for that, as well. Her organization’s campaign, Think Beyond the Label, has launched a new website for employers to locate skilled workers with disabilities. “We just launched a job portal for job seekers with disabilities. We’re really looking at growing the pipeline of qualified, skilled individuals who can meet employers’ needs.”

Think Beyond the Label’s Hire Gauge also provides information on state and federal resources and tax incentives available to employers that hire people with disabilities. It also provides information on where employers can get help with administrative tasks to manage the new rule.

She explained, “We are encouraging people to think beyond the disability label, and think about who is the best candidate for the job.”

She added, “I have a colleague who is an individual with a disability. He asked, ‘if you want to hire someone who thinks outside the box, why not hire somebody who lives outside the box?’”

The Office of Federal Contact Compliance Programs is accepting comments on the proposed rule until February 7.

The Financial Times recently reported that the number of female executive directors on FTSE 350 boards has slipped in the past year – all this after significant work to raise awareness of the benefits of board diversity in the UK following the release of the Lord Davies Report.

In fact, wrote Elizabeth Rigsby, the FT’s Chief Political Correspondent, “89 per cent of FTSE 350 companies have no female executives on their boards.”

Prospective female directors in the US are faring better – but not by much. According to Catalyst research released late last year, women occupy only 16.1 percent of Fortune 500 board directorships. That means over four out of five board seats belong to men. And, the report said, about one in ten Fortune 500 companies had no women on their boards.

Why is it that, despite all the research pointing to the business value of boardroom diversity, companies still stubbornly refuse to open the boardroom door to diverse candidates? Here are three convenient non-excuses that boards make for their lack of business-building diversity – and to counter them.

1. “There just aren’t enough women with C-suite skills.”

In a recent FT article, Rebecca Knight writes that the lack of women on boards is frequently related to the lack of women in the C-suite, as many companies view C-suite experience as a critical qualification for board directorship.

“But that is just an excuse,” she says. She quotes Lucy P. Marcus, professor of leadership and governance at IE Business School in Madrid on why only pursuing candidates who’ve been in the C-suite can create a shallow, homogeneous board. Marcus says:

“There are countless talented women who can and do serve very ably on boards, and they can even bring a bonus of adding much-needed diversity of other kinds as well, be it entrepreneurial, international, functional, or cross-sector experience. The important thing is not to be wed to a cookie-cutter image of what makes a strong board candidate.”

By looking beyond C-suite experience as a prerequisite for board service, companies can gain diverse and qualified director candidates who have skills and experience that better serve the reality that today’s complex, global corporations face on the ground.

2. “Women don’t stay in the game long enough to get to the boardroom.”

At a time when women surpass men in almost every field of education at almost every level, it’s worth pointing out that if companies are really having that much trouble finding qualified women to serve in their boardrooms, and if they really are dedicated to the long term success of their companies, then they should allocate more time and resources toward retaining women at the mid-level, since that’s when the pool of female talent often begins to thin out.

By keeping women in the management pipeline to the top, companies would benefit from the kind of diversity that makes companies stronger and more profitable. As Busniessweek’s Kevin Crowly reported last fall, according to the Association of British Insurers, “promoting women to the higher echelons of management will improve firms’ risk management, encourage debate around strategy and help them focus on longer term objectives.”

This will take some rethinking of the corporate ladder. Women leave the workforce more often than men and face challenges getting back in at the same level – which often keeps them from returning – but companies with a keen understanding of the value of diversity are working to fix this structural imbalance. For example, Goldman Sachs’ Returnship program works to inject women back into the workforce who have taken time out, and Deloitte’s lattice initiative acknowledges the many offshoots and sidesteps people take modern career.

Any company that uses this excuse for its lack of women in the boardroom should be working hard to retain talented women – or else they’re just grasping at straws.

3. “We hire from our directors’ personal networks and they didn’t know any women.”

Unfortunately this boneheaded response to the lack of women on boards still persists – and this excuse should be frightening. If a board director has no skilled women in his pool of contacts, that should be a red flag. Knight quotes Marcus again:

“It is easy to go with who you know, who’s in your club and who you went to school with. Intuitively, we all feel comfortable with people who are like us. But we need to look at new ways to find different people… When I see an organisation with a board that has a preponderance of people with similar – if not identical – profiles, it makes me wonder about the business as a whole.”

The marketplace is changing – for example, note the recent HSN report that reveals women do more technology purchasing than men – and so are workforces. Purchasing power and top performers are becoming more diverse than ever before. How can companies with boards composed almost entirely of white men expect to compete with companies led by the individuals who reflect today’s diverse reality?

A recent Angus Reid Public Opinion survey of almost 1000 employed lesbian, gay, and bisexual Canadians revealed that “one third of gays (34%) and two-in-five lesbians (40%) have experienced some form of discrimination throughout the course of their professional lives.” But the survey showed that those polled felt the situation was improving, and that workplaces were becoming more tolerant.

Seventy-two percent of respondents said that attitudes toward LGBT people have improved in the past five years. In fact, the survey continued, “only two per cent of respondents who are ‘out’ at work say that their colleagues had a negative attitude towards that aspect of their lives.”

Angus Reid Public Opinion Vice President Jaideep Mukerji told the Toronto Sun, “The survey shows that the average Canadian workplace has become kinder for LGBT people, with most employers and co-workers being regarded as tolerant towards the LGBT community.”

Nevertheless, the study revealed, a sizeable portion of survey respondents still reported a level of fear around coming out and being out in the workplace.

Discrimination and Bullying

The study showed that 34% of gays and 40% of lesbians said they had faced discrimination professionally. The study said, “Social exclusion (43%) and ridicule (42%) are the most likely forms of discrimination.”

Individuals experiencing this kind of discrimination mainly do not respond to these issues – 69% of people who had experienced social exclusion said they did nothing in response, and 43% of those who had faced ridicule said the same.

This could be a reason that so many individuals said they were not out to their peers. Only 59% said they were out to peer employees and half (50%) were out to their immediate supervisor.  About the same percentage (48%) were out to management. Even fewer were out to human resources (44%) and their subordinates (43%)

Of those who were not out to their department, 44% of gays, 54% of lesbians, and 11% of bisexuals felt their coworkers assumed they were LGBT.

Additionally, of those who were not out to their department or group at work, the most common reason given (61%) was “my private life is private.” Similarly 50% said they simply did not feel the need to come out.

Twenty-eight percent said they were concerned about negative consequences of coming out.

Social Exclusion

They asked respondents who were not out to describe what the consequences of coming out might be. The most common response (47%) was “probably nothing.” But the next most common response (29%) was “social exclusion.” In fact, gay men were significantly more concerned about social exclusion than lesbians (31% and 23% respectively.

Social exclusion can damage one’s career because of the importance of informal networks in career advancement. Lowell L. Bryan, Eric Matson, and Leigh M. Weiss wrote in the McKinsey Quarterly:

“Most large corporations have dozens if not hundreds of informal networks, which go by the name of peer groups, communities of practice, or functional councils—or have no title at all. These networks organize and reorganize themselves and extend their reach via cell phones, Blackberries, community Web sites, and other accessories of the digital age. As networks widen and deepen, they can mobilize talent and knowledge across the enterprise.”

These networks are the channels through which individuals build trust and rapport with colleagues and get noticed for sponsorship and advancement by senior management. Being excluded from them can harm ones career prospects without being officially discriminated against within the corporate structure.

The exclusion of employees from these informal networks also shows a level of cultural discomfort with LGBT individuals that is deep and difficult to quantify or track. Bryan, Matson, and Weiss point out, “Valuable as they are, these ad hoc communities clearly have shortcomings: they can increase complexity and confusion, and since they typically fly under management’s radar, they elude control.”

It’s difficult for corporate policy on LGBT inclusiveness to seep into informal networks because they are informal and outside corporate policy. This is why LGBT inclusiveness is so important for companies to work to weave into the fabric of their corporate cultures.

The Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility has released its 2011 Corporate Inclusion Index. The CII measures Hispanic inclusion on behalf of companies by measuring the attraction, retention, and promotion of Hispanic employees, procurement practices, community outreach, and governance.

The 16 board directors of the HACR praised the steps corporations have taken over the past few years toward the inclusion of Hispanic individuals. They wrote, “The last three years have seen an increase in participation, better reporting, and overall a clearer, more transparent sense of what corporations are doing in terms of diversity best practices.”

But, they continued, companies have significant work to do. “Hispanics are the largest minority group in the U.S. and we have the largest buying power of any minority group. Yet, Hispanics are the most underrepresented group in Corporate America.”

Corporations that are ignoring a group whose buying power is projected to reach 1$.5 trillion by 2015 are doing their stakeholders a disservice, they suggested. Carlos F. Ota, President and CEO of the HACR pointed out that the Hispanic market is 50 million consumers strong. He added, “market reciprocity dictates that we should be represented across all levels of a corporation, from internships all the way to the corporate boardrooms. But we are not, and that needs to change.”

Hispanic representation on corporate boards by participating companies increased from 6.46% in 2010 to 8.33% in 2011. But the percentage of C-Suite Hispanics decreased from 8% in 2010 to 7% in 2011. Ota noted that participating companies generally improved their ratings, as well as improved the quality of reporting. But, he said, “the results still pointed out the gap between our goals for diversity and inclusion and what is really taking place inside Corporate America.”

CII Survey Findings

According to the survey, 72 percent of CII participants had an internship program to recruit Hispanic employees. On average, 11 percent of new hires by survey participants were Hispanic individuals. Finally, every survey participant reported that their Hispanic employee resource group had an executive champion.

And executive participation is important, the HACR said.

“Having an executive champion is key for every corporation that is serious about taking positive steps to change their own employment practices. Having this type of supporter within executive management allows the company to create effective retention strategies, employee engagement and a positive environment.”

The HACR was critical of the procurement efforts of participating companies. Hispanics in represent 44 percent of small business growth in the US, the study said. Yet only have of the respondents had goals above 2.6 percent of the total procurement dollars to allocate to Hispanic-run businesses.

The survey said, “There is a missed opportunity to leveraging a positive return on investment (ROI) with Hispanic-owned businesses. There should be a concerted effort to engage and do business with Hispanic suppliers thus, diversifying the overall pool of suppliers. The potential ROI is not something that corporations who seek to grow can afford to ignore.”

According to the study 70% of participants had philanthropic outreach initiatives focused on the Hispanic community. Regarding governance, 98% of participants had a full-time executive responsible for diversity. Half of the participants had at least one Hispanic board member. The report said, “Although more and more companies are making a concerted effort to create change, the data shows that bolder initiatives and more action need to happen to have real impact in the boardroom and the C-Suite.”

Top Companies for Hispanics

The two top companies on the Index were AT&T and Citigroup. Both companies scored 95 out of 100 possible points.

AT&T was praised for its commitment to diversity policy – as a result, 12 percent of its total workforce is made up of Hispanic employees. The company was also praised for its supplier diversity program, which, according to the company, has set a goal to spend 21.5 percent of procurement dollars with diverse suppliers.

“We are honored by HACR’s recognition of our holistic approach to diversity and inclusion,” said Debbie Storey, AT&T senior vice president of Talent Development and chief diversity officer. “At AT&T, diversity and inclusion are woven into all our business strategies and are key in achieving our business goals.”

Citi also dedicates significant resources toward Hispanic inclusion, for example by supporting its Hispanic Heritage employee resource group.

There’s only so much that individuals can do on their own to try to catapult their careers. One finding of Catalyst’s Myth of the Ideal Worker report is that even when women tried all the strategies they had been told will help them get ahead—using the same tactics as men—they still advanced less than their male counterparts and had slower pay growth. Therefore, as with latticing, it’s up to the companies themselves to meet women halfway.

DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2011 found that some organizations are doing a better job than others of getting women into leadership positions—and those organizations have more formal processes in place for talent management.

But how can change agents encourage their organizations to make these changes?

Working within the Formal Structure

Jazmine Boatman, PhD, manager of DDI’s Center for Applied Behavioral Research and an author of the study, says the more objective the process is, the more likely women are to succeed on this level playing field. “The fact is, organizations that have formal processes for selection, development, and succession tend to have more women in leadership positions. Coincidence? Probably not,” says Boatman.

There are many institutional problems that prevent women from advancing in the workplace, such as company culture, pay inequities, lack of career customization, and gender stereotyping. The first and most important step is for organizations and institutions to recognize that these problems exist and that they can be solved—but only with the buy-in of the board and administration, says Dr. Linda Brodsky, founder and president of Expediting the Inevitable, an organization that works with women physicians and healthcare organizations to create a more flexible workplace.

“The structure of the workplace needs to be overhauled thoughtfully and methodically,” says Brodsky. “It is a top down/bottom up effort. They need to recognize that this situation hits their bottom line.”

A Quantitative Approach

Lawyer, consultant, and researcher Cynthia Calvert says that firms don’t intend to make it difficult for women lawyers and most don’t believe that they do, which makes it difficult to implement solutions that will create real change. To generate institutional support for women interested in cracking through the ceiling, she recommends the following:

• Gather objective data that demonstrate the effects of the unexamined gender bias, such as the number of women lawyers on the firm’s largest and most important cases, the average tenure of men and women at the firm, and the number of women on the firm’s executive committee
• Have a briefing on a management-related topic, such as conducting more effective evaluations, and educate about the effects of unexamined biases
• Give partners a list of simple, concrete actions they can take to advance women lawyers at the firm, and then hold them accountable in their evaluations or compensation for completing a set number of them. Examples of such actions include taking a woman lawyer to lunch or a bar association event, co-authoring an article with a woman lawyer or helping her get a speaking engagement, introducing a woman lawyer to a potential client or referral source, and attending a CLE seminar about gender bias

Regardless of industry, Brodsky recommends a quantitative approach, using outcome measures that include economic, satisfaction, and other measures of productivity based on the particular industry.

Last week the SEC announced that Pamela A. Gibbs would become head of its new Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. The New York Times reported that the OMWI will oversee the creation of offices of diversity across several regulatory agencies, such as the Treasury Department, the FDIC, the CFPB, and each Fed bank. These offices will, in tern, monitor diversity at any private companies that have contracts with them (like law firms and investment banks).

Gibbs’ appointment comes under a provision of Dodd Frank which mandates that federal agencies and private companies contracting with them make a “good faith effort” toward the “fair inclusion and utilization” of women and minorities. The OMWI and related offices will work to clarify what that means.

The appointment coincides with a rising awareness of what diversity brings to the corporate workforce – better, more thorough decision-making, more creativity and innovation, and an increased ability to reach as-yet untapped market demographics. These factors contribute to the “business case” for diversity, which is beginning to gain acceptance at corporations around the globe.

Chief Diversity Officers

Even companies outside the financial sector are paying attention to diversity. For example, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Leslie Kwoh described how many companies have recently implemented Chief Diversity Officers within their ranks. The job combines several corporate functions, she said, including “recruitment, HR, marketing, ethics and legal compliance.”

But those are the easy parts – implementing policies to improve diversity is only the first step.

What Chief Diversity Officers are really tasked with is changing the cultures of their workplaces. They must convince internal staff and management that there is something to the “business case,” and then generate consensus around implementing changes. If diversity initiatives are handled begrudgingly in the workplace, they won’t amount to much.

Kwoh quotes Ingersoll Rand’s CDO Neddy Perez. She said, “there’s always going to be a nonbeliever in the audience.”

That’s why CDOs must add another responsibility to their task lists – internal PR. But it’s more than engaging hearts and minds that diversity is a “good thing.” It’s also about convincing middle managers to dedicate already limited time and resources to initiatives toward which they may feel ambivalent or even antagonistic. That’s where the business case comes in.

New Study on Business Case for Diversity

Recently researchers at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management produced a new study showing that diversity improves a company’s bottom line. The study, “The Diverse Organization: Finding Gold at the End of the Rainbow,” revealed though, that the commitment to diversity has to be sincere.

Lead author Kristin Scott told Physorg’s Suelan Toye, “There are organizations that are doing what research and popular practice tells them to do. They are showing pictures of diverse workers on their website and say they have a commitment to diversity, but they’re not really going beyond what people may see as simply window dressing.”

She continued, “That’s contrasted with an organization that has woven diversity into every fibre of its corporate culture and business practices.”

The research is a review of about 100 studies spanning almost 20 years, and was published in Human Resource Management, and confirms the importance of a corporate culture that truly values and works toward diversity. It also helps with the attraction and retention of top talent.

Scott commented, “When you have an inclusive corporate culture, recruiting top talent becomes easier, group processes will be enhanced, which means employees are more likely to stay, which, in turn, increases the company’s bottom line.”

“By weaving diversity into the very fabric of the company, not only does this embrace its employees, it makes for a happier and more productive workforce,” she added.

In her new book, Half A Wife: The Working Family’s Guide To Getting A Life Back, Gaby Hinsliff explains that the challenges that mothers and fathers face in the workplace, as they pertain to work/life balance, aren’t the same. Much of the work/life discussion revolves around time – having the time to build a career one is proud of, as well as manage family responsibilities in a way one is also proud of.

But there’s more to it than that. When it comes to compromise in this area, men and women are judged differently in the workplace, and likely perceive their own sacrifices differently. She writes:

“A successful woman who compromises her career for the children will often be praised for doing so, because she is conforming to a sentimental idea of what ‘good’ women do. A man doing the same, however, is challenging the idea of what it means to be a man: competitive, ambitious and a successful provider. The idea that mothers are ‘necessary’ to children but fathers more dispensable is ingrained in most men from childhood, not least by their own fathers.”

But a recent study shows that this attitude is changing amongst fathers – and there is a desire for corporations to change as well. The Boston College Center for Work and Family’s survey of almost 1,000 “white collar” fathers at large corporations revealed that while men considered themselves career driven, the majority wished they could spend more time at home.

Brad Harrington, Executive Director of BC’s Center for Work & Family, said “We see that fathers, too, need a family-supportive work environment when it comes to aligning work and family, and this has tangible benefits for their jobs and careers, and in turn for their organizations.”

Making Sacrifices

The study, “The New Dad: Caring, Committed, and Conflicted,” pointed out that today young men and women “do not differ in terms of their desire for jobs with greater responsibility.” This means that today’s young women are not as likely as they were previously to make career sacrifices as they were in previous generations.

Young men similarly have a changing view of what it means to be a “good father.” The “provider” definition of a father which previous generations may have been satisfied with no longer holds. The survey revealed that fathers strongly want to be more significantly included in caretaking duties.

The report says, “Nonetheless, it appears to us to be more a period of transition than one of demise or maintaining the status quo. As men transition from a narrow definition of fatherhood to one that embraces career and family, we feel that the term ‘beginning’ may be a more fitting characterization than ‘end.’”

The report also pointed out that “On average, fathers over the age of 40 were slightly more likely to see their responsibilities as fathers in a traditional breadwinning sense than those under the age of 40.”

In fact, the study revealed a large gap in the amount of care fathers say they want to provide, and the amount they actually do provide.

“As can be seen, 65% of the fathers believe that both partners SHOULD provide equal amounts of care while 30% feel that their spouse should provide more care. However, when asked to report on how caregiving IS divided, only 30% of fathers reported that caregiving is divided equally, while 64% reported that their spouse provides more care. This highlights a large and noteworthy gap between aspirations and reality for the majority of the fathers in this study.”

Corporate Response

Additionally, a full 75% of fathers said they had only been able to take off one week or less for paternity leave (and 16% said they weren’t able to take off at all). Similarly, a full 75% of fathers said they wished they could have taken off longer.

The study also revealed that while fathers were happy with their flex work options, many took advantage of it on an informal basis. For example, while 40% of fathers working a compressed workweek did so informally, a full 80% of took advantage of informal flex work opportunities.

This could point to growing dissatisfaction with corporate paternity culture.

While leave and flexible working arrangements are on the books, it’s not considered appropriate to take advantage of them to their fullest extent, if at all. But with the increasing desire that men have shown to participate more in caretaking, that cultural attitude will have to change – particularly for the firms that want to attract and retain the best talent.