The New Talent Acquisition Frontier

Integrating HR and Diversity Strategy in the Private and Public Sectors and Higher Education

Edna Chun, Alvin Evans

• Publisher: Stylus Publishing
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781620360866
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Awarded a Silver Medal in the category Human Resources and Employee Training from the 2014 Axiom Business Book Awards •Create the inclusive, high performance workforce needed to succeed in an increasing multicultural society and global marketplace•Learn how global organizations and leading professional associations develop integrated HR/diversity talent strategies, and the specific challenges they face•Get practical tools to assess integrated HR/diversity strategic planning, and see why organizations are not making more diversity progress•Develop specific performance indicators to track your progress in implementing synergistic HR/diversity approaches•Case studies of SHRM, federal and state government, global corporations, and higher education illustrate systematic, integrated HR/diversity efforts For HR professionals and leaders, chief diversity officers, line managers, and executives in the private and public sectors and higher education, this book presents a systematic approach to integrating HR practices and strategic diversity initiatives to create the inclusive, high performance workforce that every enterprise and institution needs to succeed in an increasingly multicultural society and global marketplace.The authors' point of departure is that talent is the primary strategic asset necessary for organizational survival and success in a demographically diversifying and globally interconnected world. Organizations seeking to attain their full potential in this new talent frontier must optimize their human capital resources by the deliberate development of synergy between human resource (HR) and diversity programs. Failure to integrate and coordinate these two functions will erode organizational competitiveness, whether it is in developing new markets, products, programs, or services.As the first book to provide a concrete roadmap to integrated HR and diversity strategy, the authors identify two critical practices: talent management through the orchestration of HR and diversity programs to enhance organizational capability by unleashing, mobilizing, nurturing, and sustaining the contributions of a diverse and talented workforce; and talent sustainability through the close integration of HR and diversity to continuously develop systems, structures, processes, and a culture that heighten employee commitment, engagement, and inclusion. They further believe that there should be a commonality of practice across all types of organizations, and that each sector can learn from the others to accelerate its adaptation to today's rapidly shifting national and global realities.Based on the most current research and on interviews with HR and diversity leaders in major organizations, this book provides the reader with concrete strategies and practical tools for implementing a successful and sustainable talent management program. It also addresses common barriers to the development of synergistic HR and diversity strategy, and how to overcome them.Given the evolutionary nature of the integration of HR and diversity, the authors present nine extensive case studies from all organizational sectors, as well as from the two leading Human Resource professional associations – the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) – to illustrate the dynamic intersection between HR and diversity practices.

FOREWORD 1

Andy Brantley

Diversity and inclusion is so much more than affirmative action. Human resources professionals play a key role.

From a 2011 New York Times article regarding mixed-race growth across the country,

In North Carolina, the mixed-race population doubled. In Georgia, it expanded by more than 80 percent, and by nearly as much in Kentucky and Tennessee. In Indiana, Iowa and South Dakota, the multiracial population increased by about 70 percent….

Census officials were expecting a national multiracial growth rate of about 35 percent since 2000, when seven million people—2.4 percent of the population—chose more than one race. (Saulny, 2011)

The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) national board members and national office staff are working with higher education HR leaders from across the country to more clearly emphasize the important role these leaders have in creating diverse and inclusive working environments. Regarding the following comment made to me, “Our institution has wonderful diversity programs and our student population has become increasingly diverse,” this institution deserves congratulations and those are great accomplishments, but these types of programs typically have little to no impact on the higher-education workforce, that is, members of the faculty and all staff.

Why is this greater emphasis important for higher education HR professionals?

• A changing higher education environment:

º The workforce is changing.

º Our higher-ed employees are becoming more diverse on a broad range of dimensions (e.g., gender, sex, sexual orientation, language, age, ability status, national origin, religion, as well as race and ethnicity and heritage).

º Those who manage and develop the workforce need to be prepared to address the environmental factors that influence performance and affect employees’ overall well-being.

• The changing role of higher education HR professionals:

º At every institutional level, leaders who manage and develop the higher education workforce need assistance in improving employee performance in such a rapidly shifting environment.

º The workforce and the student bodies of campuses are changing rapidly, yet many who are positioned to influence performance at various levels are stuck in a mid-20th century mind-set that some talent can be dismissed, while other talent should be valued.

º This mind-set serves neither employers nor students well, nor does it help build the interpersonal and performance competencies that all individual employees need and the capacities for agility that higher education institutions need to thrive in an increasingly complex world.

• The evolving position of higher education HR professionals to lead this work:

º This work is familiar to some and unfamiliar to many higher education HR professionals. It is familiar in that we have always provided talent development opportunities to our employees on compliance with Affirmative Action laws. However, a clear and unabashed focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion to advance institutional excellence may be unfamiliar to some. Leaders of CUPA-HR seek to instill a new mind-set in our employee communities. The new mind-set is one of commitment to our values and belief that by providing guidance every employee has the capacity to perform at high levels and not merely comply with nonexclusionary laws.

º We must also acknowledge the historical legacy of racial and ethnic discrimination and place a priority on addressing these legacies with new educational resources and practice tools such as this book.

Why now?

• We must do this work because it is needed now and because we can.

º Every employee has some connection and interaction with HR, which truly is the crossroads for all employees.

º The expertise and assistance that higher education HR professionals are best suited to provide differs at different levels in our institutions, so we must equip ourselves now to provide the best guidance possible to all employees to make certain our institutions achieve their excellence goals and remain vital well into the future.

I am very pleased to endorse The New Talent Acquisition Frontier: Integrating HR and Diversity Strategy in the Private and Public Sectors and Higher Education as an important resource for organization leaders to use in their effort to create an inclusive, high-performing organization.

Andy Brantley
President and Chief Executive Officer
CUPA-HR

Reference

Saulny, S. (2011, March 19). Black and White and married in the deep South: A shifting image. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/us/20race.html

FOREWORD 2

Benjamin D. Reese Jr.

It was the Summer of 1971, and my employment application somehow stood out from the masses. I was asked to come in for an interview. This New York City hospital was one of the largest employers in the Bronx, so being called in for an interview was an accomplishment, or perhaps the luck of the draw. To this day, I’m not sure how the personnel department made its decisions. But after completing several official forms, I was introduced to the department as the new director of training. Colleagues were friendly enough, and patient, but it took me quite a while to figure out everything I was supposed to do. The general job expectation was to train people in improved race relations. I surmised that much of any tension in the workplace indeed related to insensitive racial comments, inequitable treatment of certain employees, and professional development opportunities that relied more on friendships and personal connections than highly honed skills and competencies. But so much was unclear and depended on whom you talked to. I was on my own. Individuals and departments did their own assigned tasks, with little collaboration or shared sense of mission. There was a dearth of organizational strategy with only a vague idea of values that were of significance to the hospital. Much has changed over the last 40 years, while some things seem to have simply been reworked or relabeled.

Edna Chun and Alvin Evans have avoided simply tweaking or rewording the usual organizational jargon. They have charted a new level of organizational collaboration and provided a thoughtful approach to melding the responsibilities of HR professionals and chief diversity officers (CDOs). They portray a synergistic relationship, based on research that in their words capitalizes on the organizational intelligence of HR professionals and diversity emotional intelligence. The resultant change is on a self and organizational performance level. The authors appropriately recognize that successful integration and collaboration of the two practices (HR and diversity) are clearly not the norm in most organizations. In fact, they go on to describe the obstacles or barriers that often, in an unintended way, work against productive integration of the functions. They are forthright and clear in this description. As a CDO and president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, I feel this is a particularly important section. Two of the prerequisites for CDO success are a direct reporting line to the president or chancellor and full integration of the diversity work with the HR practice of the institution. The latter is often lacking.

Much of this text is devoted to that synergy or integration. For example, HR and diversity professionals in higher education, corporate, or nonprofit environments will want to measure their programs and strategies against the authors’ “Ten Predominant Themes in HR/Diversity Transformation Across All Sectors” (see Chapter 1, p. 14). This diagnostic tool can serve to point out strengths and opportunities for any organization. Although some judge higher education as generally slightly behind its corporate partners in the implementation of strategic HR/diversity practices, the authors provide examples of outstanding models for integration in particular higher education institutions. These examples and detailed case studies appear throughout the book. It seems that whenever the reader wonders how some particular practice might look on the ground, Chun and Evans provide an engaging case study.

Unlike my experiences in the 1970s, most organization administrators are not content with passive systems of staffing but are focused on strategically attracting and retaining outstanding talent. National and international competitive pressures make it imperative that organizations develop cultures that promote respect, encourage using the full potential of every contributor, and appropriately respond to workplace concerns and conflicts. Certainly the CDO role not only provides leadership in organizational transformation but is usually deeply engaged in this process of recruitment and retention of talent. This role cannot effectively occur in isolation but must exist, as the authors point out, as a long-term process of talent sustainability, a partnership with the institution’s HR practice. Their discussion of the global nature of talent acquisition is not only relevant to multinational corporations but is increasingly applicable to colleges and universities building highly diverse workforces of international employees as well as institutions establishing programs and campuses abroad. Collaboration between CDOs, whose experience is often focused on domestic issues, and HR professionals, who have had a similar domestic focus, is vital to building a fully integrated global talent strategy.

Collaboration and integration is more than a mantra in this text; the authors provide a research basis, clear and user-friendly strategies, and a road map for the deep integration of HR and diversity practices that is critical to the present and future success of our colleges and universities. I trust my CDO colleagues will agree.

Benjamin D. Reese Jr.
President, National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education
Vice President for Institutional Equity, Duke University/
Duke University Health System

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We dedicate this book to our children—Alexander David Chun, Shomari Evans, Jabari Evans, Kalil Evans, and Rashida VanLeer—who we are confident will realize the promise of the new talent acquisition frontier. We would like to express our gratitude to John von Knorring, president of Stylus, for his commitment to this project and his dedication to the attainment of diversity and inclusion in American institutions. We especially thank the diversity and human resource leaders who shared their valuable time, insights, and perspectives with us in the preparation of the case studies.

We would like to express our deep appreciation to Joe Feagin, Ella C. McFadden Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University, for his encouragement and invaluable suggestions in the evolution of the manuscript. We especially thank Kimberly Thompson for her skilled and responsive research assistance throughout the course of the project.

Alvin Evans wishes to thank Lester Lefton, president of Kent State University, for his visionary leadership of diversity. President Lefton’s actions have been an inspiration to Alvin while doing the research for this book. He would like to thank Charlene Reed, secretary to the board of trustees and chief of staff in the Office of the President at Kent State University, for her generous support. Alvin would also like to acknowledge Rev. Ronald Fowler, special assistant to the president at Kent State, for his great source of inspiration and his continued support.

Edna Chun thanks chancellor Linda Brady and vice-chancellor Reade Taylor of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for their inspirational leadership in the development of strategic talent management practices and diversity. She also thanks Levi Williams and Georgette Sosa Douglass for their courageous and forward-looking leadership in support of diversity as trustees of Broward College for the last decade.

We would like to express special appreciation to our family and friends for their continuous support. Alvin Evans would like to thank Ethel and Horace Bush, Patricia and Leon Scott, Karen and Hassan Rogers, Patricia and Donald Marsh, Brian and Lisa Marshall, Victoria Thomas, and Lesley Green. Edna Chun would like to thank Jay Kyung Chun, Alexander D. Chun, David and Laura Tosi Chu, George and Eleanor Chu, Ronnie Rothschild, and Karen Williams.

Edna Chun and Alvin Evans

1
THE BUSINESS CASE FOR INTEGRATING HR AND DIVERSITY STRATEGY

Organizations can be considered as modes of attention: what is attended to routinely can be thought of as what is valued…. Diversity work involves the effort of putting diversity into the places that are already valued so that diversity can come into view. (Ahmed, 2012, p. 30)

Talent is the primary strategic asset necessary for organizational survival and success in a globally interconnected world. The new talent frontier demands the optimization of human capital resources derived through unprecedented synergy between HR and diversity programs. Without such synergy, organizations will fail to attain their full talent potential.

The practices of talent management involve the orchestration of HR and diversity programs that enhance organizational capability by unleashing, mobilizing, nurturing, and sustaining the contributions of a diverse and talented workforce. Similarly, talent sustainability requires a high degree of integration between HR and diversity in the continuous development of systems, structures, processes, and a culture that heighten employee commitment, engagement, and inclusion.

This book presents a systematic approach to the integration of HR and diversity practices that lead to an inclusive, high-performance workplace. We chart pathways to the attainment of this goal using the latest research as well as first-person interviews with diversity and HR thought leaders in global organizations. As HR professionals, our focus is on concrete strategies and practical tools that will help organizations in this journey. Since the integration of HR and diversity is an evolutionary process, the case study is an ideal medium for studying process (Kezar & Lester, 2011). We share case studies from the private, public, and higher education sectors and from the two leading HR professional associations, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR), to illustrate the dynamic intersection between HR and diversity practices.

We set the stage in this chapter by describing the competitive global environment that demands a strengthened alliance between HR and diversity practices across all sectors and types of organizations. Then we address prevalent misconceptions about HR’s diversity role, and we identify barriers to diversity transformation in the public, private, nonprofit, and higher education sectors based on the research conducted for this book. Our essential thesis is that broad commonalities exist across all types of organizations in their efforts to attain strategic talent management practices. Yet organizations differ markedly in their level of attainment of synergistic HR/diversity programs and their speed of adaptation to rapidly shifting global realities. At the close of the chapter we examine some of the reasons for these differences.

As complex adaptive systems, organizations must relinquish control as the ultimate goal, and embrace the creation of adaptive capability as a primary organizational competence (Edmondson, 2012). To be effective, the development of synergistic HR/diversity practices needs to be systematic rather than piecemeal, integrated rather than isolated, responsive to external realities rather than merely internally focused, and strategically planned rather than sporadically implemented. To conclude the chapter, we introduce 10 common themes that will facilitate the alignment of HR and diversity programs and accelerate the process of diversity transformation.

The Global Imperative

The proverbial handwriting on the wall is clear. Three surveys identify the critical role of HR in diversity transformation. In a Forbes Insights survey (Egan, 2011) of 321 executives in large global enterprises with annual revenues of more than $500 million, the majority of respondents recognized the crucial role of diversity as a driver of innovation and as a critical component of being successful on a global scale. And 65% of the respondents identified HR as responsible for implementing programs and policies related to diversity and inclusion (Egan, 2011). Similarly, a survey of 546 executives in 47 c...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• FOREWORD 1
• FOREWORD 2
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• 1. THE BUSINESS CASE FOR INTEGRATING HR AND DIVERSITY STRATEGY
• 2. RECIPROCAL EMPOWERMENT
• 3. DIVERSITY COMPETENCIES OF THE HR LEADER
• 4. HR LEADERS AS ARCHITECTS OF DIVERSITY CHANGE
• 5. CREATING THE HR TALENT INFRASTRUCTURE FOR DIVERSITY
• 6. BUILDING THE HR/DIVERSITY STRATEGIC PLAN
• 7. SYNTHESIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
• AUTHORS
• INDEX