America-based technology conglomerate’s multi-pronged strategy sets example for imaging industry .
Most tech companies talk a big game about diversity, but a look at the numbers usually tells a different story. A company may issue a lot of statements touting their recruitment and mentorship programs, but a look at their board or executive suite reveals about as much diversity as a 1950’s suburban country club.
HP, Inc. is another story. After splitting from Hewlett-Packard in 2015, HP made diversity a top priority, intentionally recruiting what is now the most diverse board of directors of any American tech company. Over half of HP’s board are women or minorities, with 30% being underrepresented minorities from demographics often overlooked in discussions about talent and recruiting in the industry.
HP’s diversity initiative is a multi-pronged strategy with deep roots. The company started its first Business Impact Network (BIN) for LGBTQ employees over 30 years ago, in the days when workers at many other companies had reason to worry that coming out of the closet would ruin their careers, or worse. A BIN is a group where HP employees of a particular demographic, such as veterans, women, or LGBTQ people and their allies can meet to discuss the unique challenges they face in the workplace, share their perspectives, and invite speakers or start special initiatives, all with the blessing of HP top brass. Over 50% of HP employees are involved in at least one BIN, and the goal is to raise that number even higher.
“What I’m really proud about how this has come together is that it’s employee-driven, management-supported,” says Brian Brichford, senior vice president and general manager of U.S. Sales in HP’s facility in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
“We opened this facility about ten years ago, and as you can imagine when it first opened, there was a lot of “˜How can we do this? Can we do this?’ What’s happened over time is that those networks have matured and grown, so now it’s just part of what [the employees] do. What we do as a management structure is just provide the budget and the guardrails.”
Adrienne Massie plays a key part in making sure that HP’s diversity efforts are in sync at every level of the company. As the head of employee engagement in the Americas, Massie has made a career out of not only finding more ways for HP to recruit diverse employees but make sure that they thrive once they’re hired. There’s no benefit to hiring from diverse backgrounds if employees can’t draw upon those backgrounds to generate fresh ideas in the workplace.
When it comes to helping women and minorities get “a seat at the table,” with the opportunity to participate at a high level in the direction of the company, Massie’s advice is simply to “expand the table. Add another chair. Get a folding chair if you have to.” But access alone won’t get the job done. Massie’s mission is to get people to examine their biases and the assumptions they make that, however unintentionally, can keep people from feeling like or being treated like equals.
“I’ve got two young children, two little boys, four and seven. Often when I travel, one of the questions I get is “˜If you’re here, Adrienne, who’s at home with your children?’ On the flip side, when my husband travels, he never gets that question. It’s already assumed that I’m at home with the children. So my response is well, my husband is home with the children, so it doesn’t really hinder my ability to be here.”
The delicate conversations necessary to confront the uncomfortable truth, and what may sound like well-meaning concern, is actually one of the many obstacles women face in the workplace. It is exactly the sort of thing HP’s BINs are designed to facilitate. In a collaborative, inclusive environment, tensions are reduced. No one is a good listener when they feel attacked, and no one can do their best work when they feel stereotyped. In a supportive environment, patiently and consistently challenging assumptions when they’re voiced neutralizes those obstacles and trains colleagues to reconsider their biases before speaking.
Thanks to HP’s long history of diversity, each generation of workers enters a more inclusive environment than the last. Effective recruiting of marginalized demographics must go far beyond just waiting for résumés to come rolling in. HP reaches out to students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) across the nation, and even arranges field trips for K-12 students so they can get excited about technology and start to think about a career in the field. But the cornerstone of it all is HP’s internship program. At Rio Rancho, 30 school-year interns and 8 summer interns come to New Mexico from all across the country. They are earning college credit and gaining work experience, just like any other interns, but thanks to HP’s “reverse mentorship” philosophy they have a unique opportunity to make substantial contributions to the knowledge base of the company.
“We’ve assigned them business challenges and we’ve asked them to build proposals,” said Brichford. “These are business challenges that we were stuck solving ourselves. We, as a leadership team, sat down and said “˜we’re stuck!’ We’re seeing this problem the same way, but this is a new generation. They’re going to look at this thing totally different than us and come up with a new idea. That’s reverse mentorship.”
But how to encourage people who are used to not being listened to, the young and the marginalized, speak up? That’s a corporate culture question that must be addressed from the top and at every level on the way down. Brichford finds it best to speak to the interns directly. “I met with them and said “˜don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, tell me what you see.'”
Massie draws upon her experience as a weightlifter, which is still a male-dominated sport despite the enormous progress female athletes have made in recent years, for lessons in how to feel more comfortable standing out.
“At first it was incredibly intimidating to me, but over time, as I continued on my weightlifting journey and I spent more time in that space, I’ve come to realize that rather than making rash judgments about who [the male weightlifters] are and getting intimidated, it’s better to get to know them one by one. You start with “˜hello,’ “˜good morning,’ and over time you start to see these big bulky guys as just big teddy bears. In terms of the workplace, for people to open up and have conversations on a one-on-one basis can be transformative. You break down barriers, you really get to know the other person instead of lumping them into generalizations, “˜all men are like this, all women are like that,’ which is simply not true.”
From a high-level management perspective, Vice President and GM of Americas Channels Stephanie Dismore sees each bit of progress in diversity as a jumping-off point for the next success. “If you think of where we started from and where we are today, it’s actually a great time to be a woman right now. We have a voice. There’s so much more work to do, but the fact that there’s so many organizations that are willing to put programs together and have people in leadership actually listening to challenges and be open to creating a level playing field, casting a wider net in the recruitment process, there are so many tangible things that are so different than the way things were before.”
There’s no easy path to building a diverse and inclusive business community, especially for companies that didn’t start working on the problem decades ago. Resistance to change is inevitable, and issues of bias are emotionally fraught and liable to make even openminded individuals feel defensive.
“I think what’s critical when you talk about diversity and inclusion is defining what your objective really is,” said Dismore. “Is it simply just to satisfy a quota? Or is it to say, “˜we understand the power of a diverse workforce, how do we change our mentality from the top to the bottom?'”
There are no quotas at HP, just a corporate culture that reinforces its values at every level, leading to organic and authentic progress not only in recruiting, but in advancement and impact after the initial hire.
“Do you feel free to express your opinions? Do you feel free to speak up?” noted Dismore. “Our whole culture is aimed at creating an open environment that is free from harassment in any form. Once you change that objective from a numbers game to how important is diversity in your culture and how do you make that happen, from the CEO and the board all the way down to the individual contributor, it changes the way you think about it.”
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