Bernard Hodes Group | Publications | Interviews

The Finer Details of Diversity

Why wooing diverse staff takes more than hanging a shingle at the local job fair.

Visitors to the office of Erby Foster at The Clorox Company are wont to note that his desk calendar is a veritable rainbow of colors and an alphabet of acronyms. It’s a sign that Foster is doing his job well there as director, Diversity & Inclusion.

Foster’s modus operandi at Clorox includes nurturing the diversity talent pipeline. “We used to be tactical and a bit reactionary,” he says. “We would pick a diversity group and go to a banquet or set up a booth at a job fair. Now we're looking at it more strategically. We're building relationships with different diversity groups because we want to be out there where good candidates are.”

We spoke with Foster to find out how he helps Clorox diversify its ranks.

Clorox now has a host of burgeoning diversity initiatives. What led to their genesis?
We want to attract and retain a diverse workforce, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because employees who mirror the marketplace put us at a competitive advantage. While other consumer packaged goods companies are getting recognition, we're not on any top diversity lists. That needs to change. It's important that we're recognized and score highly on external measures. A lot of diversity candidates pay attention to these measurements, and we want to make sure we're on their short list.

So how does Clorox get on the short list?
Clorox is doing this through outreach efforts to the many communities we’d like to mirror in our workforce. In addition to attending receptions and job fairs, we recently made a $100,000, three-year commitment to the National Association of Black Accountants and expanded our involvement with the Association of Latino Professionals in Finance & Accounting. We support the National Asian American Society of Accountants and also partner with the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. On the global front, one of the International division's goals for FY'07 is to build a strong pipeline of talent that will lead to greater female representation in senior management positions.

Many organizations still fail to see the business case for diversity. For Clorox, it seems, the evidence is obvious and quantifiable.
Exactly right. Our focus is to connect consumer insights to innovation, and these markets represent a huge opportunity for consumer packaged goods companies. This is particularly true for employees who can relate to diverse consumers on a personal level.

Consider the Hispanic segment where the predominant language is Spanish. Currently, when we do in-home interviews with these consumers they need to be done in Spanish, which, for many of us, requires a translator. Even with a great translator, some really powerful insights may be hard to pick up on if you're not fluent in the language or the culture. The more people we have with Hispanic backgrounds at Clorox, the better we're likely to be at serving this growing segment.

How does Clorox go about recruiting in diverse communities? And, once you have those workers, how do you keep them in the fold?
One of our key choices in our People Strategy is to create an inspired work force that is rich in diversity. So we have introduced five employee resource groups (ERG): African American, Asian/Pacific, Hispanic, Women, and GLBT—gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender. These groups are intended to help employees connect with one another and collectively with Clorox. ERGs will help with informal mentoring and coaching, provide input to senior leaders and work with Human Resources and Community Relations on diversity-related outreach. ERGs also support our recruiting and retention efforts. ERG members attend college job fairs and professional organization events with company recruiters to connect with diverse candidates.

Back in 2004, Human Resources chartered a Diversity & Inclusion Task Force to explore better ways to foster diversity at Clorox. This task force increased our focus on diversity initiatives the past two years. In addition, diversity is a key component in all of our leadership development and training programs.

So for us, there's clearly a business case for diversity. We believe that we can improve business results through growing minority market share. In addition, we can improve the quality and effectiveness of the organization by developing a more diverse workforce and inclusive environment. Our diversity vision is to move from simply meeting requirements to being a diversity leader benchmarked by other companies.

When senior management crafted our 2008 strategy, they made a very conscious decision to set the company up for success by ensuring diversity was a core part of the people equation. This includes our employees, suppliers and consumers. You look at the changing demographics and it becomes clear that the only way we will succeed as a company is if we embrace diversity at all levels.

Erby L. Foster, Jr. is director, Diversity & Inclusion, for The Clorox Company, where he advises senior management and the board of directors on the Company’s diversity strategy, employment-branding initiatives, and manages employee resource groups. Foster is a CPA with 15 years of experience creating and implementing business strategies that increase customer satisfaction, drive profitable growth, and expand market share. A native of San Francisco, California, Foster has been featured in Black Enterprise magazine and Illinois CPA Society, and worked with CFO magazine on the May 2001 cover story – The Illusion of Inclusion.