Diversity Professionals Seek Alignment with HR - By: Steve Bates

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Diversity and inclusion (D&I) professionals and their colleagues in HR share many of the same approaches to solving problems and improving their workplaces. Experts say, however, that they could do a better job aligning their efforts.

For example, at the tactical level, there are many functions that D&I leaders and staffs should coordinate through HR, sources consulted for this article noted, while there are some projects that D&I can do with little or no involvement of HR staff.

At the strategic level, lack of alignment of goals and misperceptions of the different roles of HR and D&I staffs can prevent organizations from reaching business goals—which should offer professionals in both functions plenty of motivation to keep the lines of communication open.

"There often is tension between diversity and inclusion people and the HR people," said Leslie Traub, chief consulting officer of Cook Ross Inc., a diversity consulting firm in the Washington, D.C., area.

Even though they have different tasks, D&I professionals "need to work through HR," said Janine Truitt, senior HR representative with the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. "They don’t need to be a part of HR, but they need to work very closely.

"We’re not all cut from the same cloth," she continued. In some organizations where these differences are not managed well, "HR has become a bit of a barrier" to D&I initiatives, Truitt told SHRM Online.

A July 2011 Forbes Insight Study, Fostering Innovation Through a Diverse Workforce, noted several potential barriers to developing and implementing a strategy for workplace diversity and inclusion, including middle management failure to execute such programs, budgetary issues, and failure to recognize the connection between diversity and business drivers.

How HR and D&I Should Work Together—and Separately

Some business activities require input from both HR and D&I. For example, HR is charged with filling positions, while D&I is focused on ensuring a diverse pool of applicants.

Other functions can be executed as "a pure diversity function," said Paulette Brown, a partner and chief diversity officer of the law firm Edwards, Wildman & Palmer, based in the New York City area. Among them are activities to note historical anniversaries, such as the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the "I have a dream" speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Even so, said Brown, whose firm has a diversity chair in each of its 14 offices, "you still should let HR know" about these events. Problems arise when there is improper communication between HR and D&I staffs.

"You need to get diversity and HR in a room and determine who is best positioned for each [activity]," Orlando Ashford, president of Mercer's talent business, told SHRM Online.

HR staffers tend to take on "niche or specialized roles," while D&I professionals in some organizations focus more on relationships across the workplace, said Danielle Stephenson, a Seattle area entrepreneur and consultant who is active in the local chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Community relations is another function that can be managed by D&I without a lot of input from HR, some experts noted.

"It’s going to vary from organization to organization," said Laura Hertzog, director of D&I programs at Cornell University’s Human Capital Development Group in New York City. She said that HR and D&I teams should "step back often" and ask some basic questions, such as "Why do you have a diversity and inclusion program?" and "Where are the gaps?" that the teams need to address.

"For a while, diversity didn’t want to be a part of HR," said Elizabeth D. MacGillivray, a principal and Diversity Networks Leader at Mercer. "They had to go out of their way to create working relationships" without the involvement of HR.

Others see natural synergies between the two functions.

Steve Miranda, managing director of the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said D&I professionals need to help HR improve recruitment by identifying nontraditional sources of job candidates, for example. Moreover, the HR leader needs help from the chief diversity officer to develop the organization’s brand image.

While the goals of HR and D&I staffs can be complimentary, it can take concerted effort to keep them in alignment. For example, HR might focus on time to fill vacancies, while D&I might be emphasizing a highly diverse workforce, which takes time to accomplish, said Ashford.

"The talent management people are the vehicle through which the D&I people get their work done," said Traub, who added that "there has to be shared accountability for metrics."

Having solid relationships between HR and D&I leaders is more important than how the two teams are positioned in the organizational chart, say some experts.

"Many executives think about D&I as an HR initiative," even if they operate somewhat independently, said Peter Bye, a consultant, coach and president of MDB Group in the New York City area. "There has to be a very tight, trusting, two-way relationship between the D&I leader and the HR leader," regardless of who reports to whom.

One big challenge that Bye sees for D&I teams is "getting HR executives to think of diversity and inclusion as an element of core business strategy. Some do; some don’t," he told SHRM Online.

"If management doesn’t see the reason for diversity, that’s a stifling factor," said Margaret A. Evans, PhD, SPHR, president of MAE Consulting in the Kansas City, Mo., area. Bye and Evans are former members of the SHRM Workplace Diversity Special Expertise Panel.

Diversity’s Expanding Responsibilities

Some experts said they see the roles of HR and D&I staffs diverging; professionals in both functions
should be mindful of that change.

"Yesterday’s D&I professional focused appropriately on race, gender, age, and compliance and legislation," said Miranda. "Today’s D&I professionals also focus on religion in the workplace, multiracial diversity, globalized cultural issues and diversity of thought."

HR and D&I teams must work to get on the same page not only with each other but also with the organization, Miranda continued. "If you don’t align with what the broader organization is doing, you will fail."

Shirley Engelmeier, CEO and inclusion and diversity strategist at InclusionINC, a consultancy in the Minneapolis area, said that D&I professionals have to "re-educate their entire organization about how gigantic inclusion is." She said that inclusion "is how we let everybody’s voice come forward [and] the way we make sense of a global economy."

Steve Bates is a freelance writer and a former editor for SHRM Online.