More work to do to attain corporate diversity
Chicago companies preaching inclusion, but ‘lip service is not going to hold water’
“Companies need to be intentional about hiring, development and promotion of talent.”
— Lanaya Irvin, president of the Center for Talent Innovation
In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police and the civil unrest that followed, corporate America has seemingly adopted a new mantra: diversity and inclusion.
A suddenly woke C-suite may have its work cut out to end decades of racial inequality. There are just five Fortune 500 companies with Black CEOs: Lowe’s, Merck, TIAA, M&T Bank and Tapestry. More than 37% of S&P 500 companies had no Black board members last year, according to an annual report by Black Enterprise.
Words alone will not get the job done, said Lanaya Irvin, president of the Center for Talent Innovation, a 15-year-old, New Yorkbased nonprofit dedicated to diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
“Lip service is not going to hold water in this case,” Irvin said. “Companies need to be intentional about hiring, development and promotion of talent.”
A study on employee experiences published by the nonprofit in December found Black employees encounter racial prejudice, insensitive remarks and perceived impediments to upward mobility at a much higher rate than white employees.
The study also found that only 40% of all employees believe their company has effective diversity and inclusion programs.
“The easy part is just throwing something out there online,” said Jim Coleman, senior managing director of Accenture’s Chicago office, which started an apprentice program in 2016 to diversify its workforce. “We have been very purposeful for many years, not just recently, doing our part to try to become a more diverse and inclusive organization.”
McDonald’s, Walgreens and
Kraft Heinz are among the growing list of Chicago-area companies voicing support for enhanced diversity and inclusion programs such as recruiting at historically Black colleges and universities, manager training to overcome unconscious bias and working to increase supplier diversity.
While racial discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have declined annually in Illinois since 2016, companies continue to grapple with allegations of systemic racism in the workplace, including those now pledging to combat it.
McDonald’s posted social media messages against racism and announced it would make a $1 million donation to the NAACP and the National Urban League in the aftermath of Floyd’s death. But the Chicago-based fast food giant is facing accusations of racism within its own organization.
In January, two Black executives at McDonald’s filed a lawsuit against the fast-food giant, alleging they were passed over for promotions, subjected to a hostile work environment and ultimately demoted due to “pervasive” racial discrimination.
The ongoing lawsuit in Chicago federal court alleges a “hostile and abusive work environment” that included threats, derogatory racial comments and impediments to advancement for Blacks within the company.
McDonald’s issued a statement in January disagreeing with “characterizations in the complaint,” noting that 45% of its corporate officers were people of color. The company declined further comment about the lawsuit.
State Farm, the Bloomington-based insurance giant, issued a news release in the wake of Floyd’s death touting a “long history of partnering with organizations committed to social justice,” and announcing a $1 million donation to the NAACP to research the impact of social injustice.
In February, three former State Farm agents filed a lawsuit in Chicago federal court seeking class-action status against the company for allegedly engaging in systemic discrimination against African Americans.
“State Farm’s discriminatory policies and practices steer African Americans to less lucrative agencies and territories; deny them valuable business opportunities and resources… and result in lower pay,” the lawsuit alleges.
State Farm, which launched its formal diversity and inclusion program in 2002, refuted the lawsuit’s allegations. The company told the Tribune it was in the process of updating its employee demographic numbers and could not supply current information.
“These allegations are without merit and do not align with our values as a diverse and inclusive company,” State Farm spokeswoman Gina Morss-Fischer said in an email. “State Farm’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is reflected in how we value relationships, how we conduct business, and how we lead our organization.”
There is diversity in high places at Bank of America, with two African Americans and one Hispanic on the 10-member board. Three of its eight business line leaders are African American, and people of color represent 18% of upper management positions overall, spokeswoman Diane Wagner said.
But the bank has faced allegations of workplace discrimination.
In September, the Department of Labor announced the bank agreed to pay $4.2 million in back wages and interest to settle allegations of hiring discrimination against African Americans, Hispanics and women at bank locations in New Jersey, Florida, Georgia and Texas.
“We are confident that our hiring practices were appropriate and reflected Bank of America’s demonstrated record of recruiting a diverse workforce,” Wagner said. “These reviews occurred between six and 10 years ago in a small number of offices. We decided it was best to put this matter behind us by reaching this resolution.”
As part of the settlement, Bank of America agreed to monitor its hiring practices for five years, Wagner said.
Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, has 6,000 employees in Chicago. Paul Lambert, its Chicago market president, penned an open letter that ran as a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune and Crain’s Chicago Business this month promoting the bank’s previously announced $1 billion commitment to “help drive economic opportunity and equality” in communities of color.
“There’s more to come on the organizations that will benefit in Chicago, but I expect to have a significant amount of firepower to help not just fund a project, but to use it as a movement to drive meaningful change,” Lambert told the Tribune.
Some of the funding will be used to to recruit and retain employees from disadvantaged communities, as the bank did in 2018 when it repurposed a branch in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side.
Bank of America converted the vacant second floor into a call center for digital banking, hiring about 100 people from the mostly Latino neighborhood to staff it.
Some Chicago companies are trying to diversify their ranks by working directly with local colleges. Global consulting firm Accenture has more than 6,200 employees in Chicago, including 80 from diverse backgrounds who were recruited through an apprenticeship program with City Colleges of Chicago.
The idea for the program grew out of a 2016 business event featuring then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who asked the titans of Chicago industry if any of them had ever hired a student from City Colleges.
“Shockingly, no one in the room raised their hand,” said Coleman, 54, a longtime Accenture executive who has headed the Chicago office since 2016.
Taking the challenge, Accenture partnered with Wilbur Wright College to refine the curriculum and create an apprentice program.
“At the time, our recruitment guidelines were such that it would have been very difficult for someone without a four-year college degree to join Accenture,” Coleman said. “So we had to change that.”
The program expanded in 2017, with Accenture and Aon teaming up to start the Chicago Apprentice Network, which has since grown to 40 companies that have created 700 apprenticeships in the Chicago area. Other participating companies include McDonald’s, Walgreens and JPMorgan Chase.
Loyda Mitacek, 40, of River Grove, used the Accenture apprentice program as a pathway to pivot from an architectural career into information technology.
Mitacek has a degree in architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
But she struggled to find consistent work and enrolled in an information technology certificate program at Wright in 2015. Taking night classes while still working as a contract architect by day, Mitacek applied to the apprentice program at the urging of a professor, landing a spot in June 2017.
She was hired full-time by Accenture in 2018 and has since been promoted to senior technology analyst.
“Cultural diversity and inclusion is good for everybody,” said Mitacek, who is Hispanic. “Accenture gets diverse people, the apprentices get to walk into a corporate culture that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to.”
In the U.S., 9.3% of Accenture’s 57,000 employees are African American and 9.2% are Hispanic, according to data supplied by the company.
African Americans represent 13.4% and Hispanics 18.3% of the U.S. population, according to the Census Bureau.
Accenture is planning to release goals by Sept. 1 to increase the percentage of Black and Hispanic employees in the U.S. over the next five years.
Coleman declined to provide demographic breakdowns for the Chicago office, but said Accenture is on track to meet diversity goals. At the same time, he said, the company can “always do better.”
Irvin, who became president of the Center for Talent Innovation in February after more than a decade on Wall Street, said entrenched bias and racism still exist in the workplace — despite efforts to improve diversity.
But she said the groundswell of public support for ending systemic racism, from the streets to the C-suites, brings an added sense of urgency and momentum.
“This is an inflection point,” Irvin said. “This time is different. This time the stakes are higher.”