How a diversity initiative changed course with the times
Three years ago, dozens of big companies formed a coalition and declared an ambitious goal: to lift 1 million Black workers into good-paying jobs during the next 10 years, by hiring or promoting them.
The resulting nonprofit, OneTen, was created amid a crescendo of calls to address racial injustice after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. It asked its members — including AT&T, Bank of America, Cisco, Delta Air Lines, Dow, General Motors, Nike and Walmart — to pledge to hire and promote Black workers based on skills instead of college degrees.
Fast-forward, and the social climate has since changed drastically. Pushing Black-only hiring programs has grown increasingly controversial, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year against racebased affirmative action policies at universities.
OneTen, which has fallen far behind the pace needed to reach its initial goal, is at the forefront of a movement to adopt diversity, equity and inclusion methods in business. And it has been forced to change with the times.
The organization has modified its messaging in the past year to emphasize that the policies it advocates will help “Black talent and others.”
More concretely, the organization’s leaders realized that asking companies to vow to make changes was not enough. OneTen has helped its members rewrite job descriptions for hundreds of roles to remove unnecessary degree requirements and clearly state the skills sought and needed. The organization has helped to design apprenticeship programs for enterprises like Delta and the Cleveland Clinic, tailored for different fields. And it has set up a network for human resources and hiring managers to share their challenges and suggest solutions, in virtual and in-person sessions.
OneTen also works to establish links among employers, training programs and workers.
“The beginning has been tough — we’ve learned lessons,” said Kenneth Frazier, a founder and chair of OneTen and former CEO of Merck. “But we still have aspirations to make a big difference.”
OneTen promoted skillsbased hiring from the start. More than 60% of all American workers do not have four-year college degrees, according to the Census Bureau. But requiring degrees in job applications hits minorities particularly hard, eliminating 72% of Black adults, for example.
Adopting skills-based practices, workforce experts say, can help companies tap a broader pool of high-performing, dedicated workers, while increasing career opportunities and household incomes for millions of Americans.