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A Look at The
Toledo Black Agenda
A wide range of leaders in
Toledo’s Black community have joined forces to put together
a report on the challenges facing that community in six
critical areas.
The report, The Toledo
Black Agenda, a months-long project in the making, examines
historic obstacles and current challenges in the areas of
criminal justice, economic development, education, health,
housing, workforce development.
The community leaders and
experts were assembled by Lisa McDuffie, CEO of YWCA of
Northwest Ohio and Robin Reese, CEO of Lucas County Children
Services.
Now Toledo’s Black Agenda
will be made available to local government agencies, along
with a host of private and public companies and entities in
order to gather community-wide support for the demands and
suggestions proposed in the report.
We are printing excerpts
from the report over the few months weeks. The following is
an excerpt from the sixth, and final, pillar – the Workforce
Pillar.
PART VI: THE WORKFORCE PILLAR
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
More now than ever, it is very evident that to start
addressing workforce issues you must first start by
addressing the
tone at the top of an organization. Boards and executive
level positions lack diversity, especially
when you are looking specifically at African- American board
members, C-suite executives, and VP-level leaders in
Corporate America. Boards and senior leadership set culture,
policy, and corporate norms. This tone impacts recruiting,
hiring decisions, promotions, and inclusion. The board and
the leadership team decide what is going to be measured. If
a diverse and inclusive work environment is going to happen,
there needs to be diverse people and mindsets at the
decision-making tables.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
With the June unemployment rate being 11.1% for the United
States, 10.1% for White Americans, and 15.4% for Black
Americans, the workforce issues that have plagued us for
decades are even more relevant now. During an economic
crisis, African-American are usually the first to shed job.
According to a recent McKinsey Report “39 percent of jobs
held by black workers—seven million jobs—are now vulnerable
to reductions in hours or pay, temporary furloughs, or
permanent layoffs”. During June 2020, Black Ohioans were
13.1% of state residents, but represented 25% (Ohio
Department of Jobs and Family Services) of displaced workers
filing initial unemployment claims. This data holds true for
Lucas County where Black Americans were approximately 20.3%
of the County residents, but represented 30.2% of displaced
workers filing initial unemployment claims.
As of July 21, 2020, there are only 3 Black CEOs serving at
Fortune 500 companies-
Kenneth Frazier of Merck & Co.,
Marvin Ellison of Lowe's, and Roger Ferguson, Jr. of TIAA.
This number is down from seven less than a decade earlier.
There are currently no African American women serving as a
Fortune 500 CEO. In fact, there have only been 2 in the
history of the Fortune 500 (Ursula
Burns, former CEO of Xerox
and Mary Winston, the
former interim CEO of Bed, Bath, & Beyond).
SITUATION ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Corporations have identified this issue and are hiring more
Black board members. In 2019, for the first time in history
the Russell 3,000 had more than 10% of ethnic minorities
populating their board seats, with 4.1% of these seats being
held by African-Americans. The Nonprofit sector tends to do
better than corporate as it relates to diversity, according
to Nonprofit quarterly in 2017 4% of Nonprofit CEOs, 5% of
Board Chairs, and 8% of Board members were Black.
If cultivating a diverse inclusive workforce is going to be
a priority, organizations need to think strategically, look
inward to cultivate a pipeline of African-American leaders,
recruit African-American board members and talent to fill
impactful open positions.
Recruiting and retaining top talent is one of the top
imperatives for most thriving businesses. Talent pool and
development discussions populate most human resources
departments’ agendas. The focus should be on the fact that
top talent wants to be in an inclusive culture. The business
case for an inclusive culture is clear. According to a
McKinsey study companies who have diverse talent improve
their “customer orientation, employee satisfaction, and
decision making”. Organizations must look at their
recruiting strategy and tools to ensure that their practices
are meeting their goals. Top talent can be found via an
in-house recruiting list and at consistently attended career
fairs, but if the list you have used has not changed in
years and it hasn’t resulted in a diverse workforce, then
the list needs to be reviewed.
When reviewing the list, companies should ensure it includes
Historically Black Colleges & Universities, Community
Colleges, Trade Schools, and career fairs hosted by minority
professional organizations. They should also be open to
hiring employees that are re-entering the workforce from
institutions. There are local workforce re-entry programs
that they can partner with to help their employees be
successful and they should review their assessment tools and
process to ensure tools are being properly used and biases
have been ruled out. Large corporations have had to pay
millions because biases have been found in their
pre-employment personality assessments.
Once they have identified and recruited talent, human
resource officers should make sure their application process
is inclusive and also ensure there are not questions on
their applications that perpetuate pay inequity and other
biases. Salary history questions have long been used to
screen out candidates or offer them an inequitable
compensation package. This practice was banned in Toledo in
2019 through the enactment of Ordinance 173-19, titled "Pay
Equity Act to Prohibit the Inquiry and Use of Salary History
in Hiring Practices in the City of Toledo”.
Biases around not hiring employees with police records
disproportionally impact African-Americans due to their
disproportionate interactions with the police, which has
been at the center of the recent social unrest. Companies
should review applications to ensure that they “Ban the
Box”, where they do
not ask about arrest history and remove the questions about
criminal history from the initial job application forms,
while only asking about criminal history only in instances
where it relates to the job in question.
In 2016 Ohio passed House Bill
56 where they partially “banned the box”, by limiting
criminal records used in public employee hiring.
In order to retain diverse
talent, after hiring such individuals, companies should make
sure to have an inclusive environment and processes in place
to keep and develop talent. Diversity & Inclusion is not a
human resource program but is about people being allowed to
bring and to be comfortable with bringing their
authentic-self to work. This commitment to Diversity &
Inclusion must not only be the CEOs and the Board of
Director’s commitment but must cascade through executive
leadership, managers, and front-line staff.
An organization’s
strategic plan must be reflective of this by being created
in a manner that does a broad environmental scan which
includes what is going on in all communities that impact the
organization. Metrics and priorities that measure diversity
and the impact of diversity should be considered and
monitored. Inclusion is a talent & business strategy.
According to the Harvard Business Review, companies
who retain a diverse leadership team have a competitive
advantage as they are 45% more likely to report a growth in
market share over the previous year. Companies with a
diverse leadership team are also 70% more likely to capture
a new market.
Access to work and the ability to thrive in careers that pay
a living wage is key to helping the African-American
community close the wealth gap (see Economic Justice
Pillar). It is challenging knowing that you are not getting
paid what you are worth, especially when operating in
non-inclusive environments.
With the proper focus on
workforce equity issues, successful, profitable, diverse and
inclusive workplaces are attainable.
SUMMARY
·
Establish accountability for equity, diversity & inclusion
at the senior management, CEO & Board Level. (Example:
Organizations can take a stand against racism by being
active with the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion
network)
·
Meeting employees where they are. Focus on recruiting,
developing and retaining employees reentering society from
prison and other institutions (re-entry). As well as,
recruiting employees from all levels of the social- economic
continuum.
·
Review recruiting processes and determine if they are
inclusive.
·
Review application processes and determine if they are
inclusive.
·
Ensure your organization is paying equitable wages across
demographic groups, is supporting policies that ensure
adequate childcare for working parents and is providing
compensation & benefit packages that have suitable
healthcare.
Additional Sources
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly data (https://www.bls.gov/eag/ead.us.htm
and
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm)
McKinsey & Company, Delivering Through Diversity, January
18, 2018 (https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organizations/our-insights/delivering-through-diversity)
Part V: The Housing Pillar
HEALTH CARE EQUITY & JUSTICE PILLAR
THE EDUCATION PILLAR
THE ECONOMIC JUSTICE PILLAR
The Toledo Black Agenda Report
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