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Our plan is to revisit more of the foundational issues related to social technologies. The primary reason for this is that we are finding that diversity and inclusion (D&I) professionals are using social media, but not much for professional-related matters.

As many of you know, social media (in its current form) has been around for several years but has only recently become more mainstream. What I’ve been finding, and have confirmed with some other D&I practitioners, is that while many D&I professionals have begun to use social media in their personal lives—to connect with family, friends, and the like—they have been slower to leverage social tools in ways that directly to D&I efforts. Some of this may stem from their organizational cultures (which may not encourage the use of social media), concerns about confidentiality of information, or uncertainty or unfamiliarity with social tools.

Our goal over the next several months is to spend more time discussing and educating diversity-related professionals about how they can leverage social media effectively in their D&I roles. We’ll focus on describing the tools and their capabilities, and hopefully we’ll be able to use some case studies to highlight how D&I professionals are currently using these tools.

To this we’ll add discussions of potential hurdles or barriers to adoption that practitioners may encounter, along with strategies for managing objections to the use of social tools in a human capital context. Hopefully, this will provide practitioners with at least some of the help they need in integrating social technologies into their current portfolio of responsibilities in a way that is beneficial to their departments and their companies overall.

We’re also going to highlight more news and events from the D&I/social media world because it can be challenging to find out what is actually happening in this space and we hope to be a resource in this area, as well.

If you have questions or would like to get more involved, email us at info [at] open-diversity [dot] com.

Happy 2011!

Another interesting part of the Conference Board event came during the “Lightning Talks,” which were actually  Pecha Kucha—several six-minute presentations designed to generate broad exposure to a range of issues. The first talk was “Helping your D&I Survive Mergers & Acquisitions,” which advised everyone to be prepared to adjust their vision for D&I after a merger or acquisition. Also, where possible, D&I needs to be positioned “at the table” prior to M&A activity—mostly because it’s difficult to get D&I involved after the M&A begins.

The second of the presentations was “Inclusive Workforce Readiness Trends & Truths,” an interesting look at the shrinking talent pool in the U.S. There were some shocking statistics provided; for example: out of 100 kids entering 9th grade, only 18 graduate from a 4 year college. At several different grade levels, the students drop out, until only 18% of the original students are left and graduate from college. This has significant implications for the viability of the U.S. labor force. The presenter suggested that businesses could help replenish this talent pool through research, community engagement, public policy and business practices.

The final of the Pecha Kucha talks was entiteld “Inclusion & Collaboration: Perfect Together.” Marsha Gerwirtzman, in the Customer Advocacy, Global Diversity & Inclusion area discussed how Cisco uses technological tools in its diversity and inclusion-related efforts. Of particular note was that Cisco uses video in its internal D&I efforts, including reverse mentoring. I’d be interested to see how that works live.

The theme of Diversity, Old & New also resonated throughout the conference. Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., a well-respected diversity practitioner who is also somewhat of a historian shared many valuable ideas about diversity. Among the most important: that diversity is not only an issue of race or gender, but includes many other types of diversity, as well.

This is an idea which really resonates with me. I think that for too long, diversity has been equated with ethnicity or gender and there hasn’t been enough discussion about the other dimensions of difference that exist among people. In keeping with this notion, Dr. Thomas noted that diversity must be understood with respect to a particular attribute; people can be similar and diverse at the same time, depending on which characteristic is being considered.

Below, I’ve briefly noted some of the other important ideas expressed at the conference, during various sessions:

• Stay in motion; anticipate change, keep learning, redefine goals in context of new knowledge
• Embrace diversity as a core business strength
• The term “diversity” doesn’t resonate across all cultures. The lexicon is shifting
• Communicate the vision of diversity and inclusion across the company and monitor how it is being implemented and understood
• Cooperation between HR & diversity and inclusion is critical to the success of D&I, esp when D&I reports thru HR
• Panelists agree that C-Suite commitment to diversity & inclusion is crucial for the success of diversity-related initiatives

Overall, I felt the conference was very well done and enjoyed the speakers and content. I’m looking forward to attending future events.

As promised, I’m going to share my thoughts and opinions about The Conference Board’s 2010 Annual Corporate Diversity & Inclusion Conference in the next two blog posts.

I thought the conference went extremely well. I have attended several Conference Board events and all of them (including this one) have been top quality events in terms of the participating companies, the speakers, the content, and networking opportunities. Carole Weinstein put together this event (along with other diversity-related sessions for The Conference Board) and it was excellent.

Below are some of the learnings from the first day (it was actually a 1/2 day) of the conference (more will follow in tomorrow’s post):

One major theme that emerged is that diversity and inclusion needs to be global and local. This theme came up several times on the panel Business Not As Usual: New Possibilities & New Visions. The panelists included Rob Leary, Chief Executive Officer, ING Insurance U.S., Julie Hodges, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Diversity and Inclusion, Walt Disney Parks & Resorts, and Paul Richardson, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, ESPN.

Each of the panelists emphasized the necessity of integrating diversity and inclusion initiatives with various cultures in the U.S. and internationally. Julie Hodges of Disney mentioned an interesting challenge that Disney faces as they develop parks globally—how to give guests a consistent experience, while simultaneously adapting to local cultures.

For example, in Disney’s U.S. parks, wine isn’t generally served and when Disney opened a theme park in France, they initially didn’t even consider serving wine (in France, mind you). As the audience chucked, Hodges noted that they changed this policy due to local culture, which makes alot of sense. Likewise, when opening theme park in Shanghai, Disney Parks consulted with a local feng shui expert. So Disney integrates local culture with the global theme park. Hodges summed up her idea this way: it’s important for our customers to see themselves in our theme parks.

Paul Richardson of ESPN suggested something similar, noting that fans and viewers need to be reflected in and to participate in the offerings of the network. He also discussed the communication that ESPN facilitates between their global offices through rotational programs, and language learning systems. Robert Leary, CEO ING USA, noted the importance of understanding cultural differences when developing and selling products across cultures.

Each of these companies has found ways to integrate local cultures into a global strategy layered with elements of diversity and inclusion, and it seems that this type of dual strategy is the future of D&I at major companies.

Part 2 of this post will discuss some of the other ideas from the conference.

I’ll be discussing my work on women of color in the workplace, including my book, Double Outsiders, and some of my other articles. What I’ve found is that while considerable strides have been made in terms of corporate diversity, women of color continue to lag behind their white female and ethnic male counterparts in terms of professional advancement. My session will discuss the reasons for this lag and how companies and multicultural women can help to change their professional futures.

I”ll also be blogging about the conference (in addition to speaking); I’m using Twitter to make announcements about the event, and to share my thoughts during the event. Afterwards, I will follow-up with another blog post as a sort of debrief, including my presentation slides.

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