Progress toward more diversity and inclusion in the workplace has been slow in Rhode Island, with more of it confined to plans on paper than to actual people welcomed and exerting influence in the office, on the shop floor and in the boardroom.
That was the assessment of panelists at Providence Business News’ virtual Diversity & Inclusion Summit and Awards event on Dec. 10.
Possibly complicating the move forward: in recent years the definition of diversity has expanded from gender and race to encompass ethnicity; sexual identity; age; religion; disability; and differences of generation, personal and thinking styles.
The four panelists at the summit tried to remain upbeat, but they presented few real examples of progress in bringing minorities onto the staffs and into the C-suites of Rhode Island companies.
“Racism is ingrained,” said Neil D. Steinberg, CEO and president of the Rhode Island Foundation. “Companies hire a director of diversity and say, ‘We’re going to have a policy.’ We’ve been doing that for decades and it has not worked. It is who we actually hire that makes a difference. There is still too much of checking off boxes.”
Lisa Ranglin, founder, CEO and president of the Rhode Island Black Business Association and a vice president at Citizens Bank, noted that, according to Business Insider, only three Black men are CEOs at Fortune 500 companies. She also said that 59% of Black women say they have never had an informal conversation of any kind with a senior leader in their companies, according to data from Lean In, an organization that supports women in the workplace.
Adding to the problem is COVID-19, quarantines and the frightening loss of business activity and sales in many Rhode Island industries this year. Steinberg said he has heard 2020 described as a mashup of three of the hardest periods in American history – the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the racial unrest of the 1960s.
One panelist expressed a positive note about efforts to bring different faces and voices to the workplace.
“People are seeking more answers; there is more conversation, more thought about how society affects the workplace,” said Steve Sublett, CBIZ Benefits & Insurance Services Inc. senior vice president. “People want companies to be more mindful. There is evolution in a positive direction.”
One specific bright spot in the diversity picture was a 2014 consent decree between Rhode Island and the U.S. Department of Justice to close sheltered workshops for people with intellectual disabilities. Six workshops and a segregated program in a basement of a Providence high school were closed as a result of the 10-year decree, and many participants are now in or moving toward regular jobs at market pay levels, said Kevin Nerney, executive director of the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council.
But the tone of the conversation and most comments leaned toward a view that Rhode Island employers are doing too little and doing it too slowly.
Diversity is usually defined as facts about a person, such as race and gender. Inclusion pertains to intangibles, such as whether a person in a workplace is appreciated, consulted and welcomed as a voice in decisions.
Asked to define equality in the workplace, Ranglin said it means “ensuring that people can participate on an equal and level playing field and that all people can gain the same level of access.”
Ranglin said she, representing RIBA, has had deep conversations with 40 R.I. companies that “are looking at this in an urgent way.”
She said the important question is not how many companies have diversity programs underway, but how effective and intentional those programs are. “Most of these programs are underfunded and they do not have the full support of leadership,” she said.
“Far too often we design a program that does not work for the people it is designed for,” Ranglin said. Diversity efforts “should not be superficial. Make sure what you are doing actually reflects the environment you are in.”
She advised the summit attendees to “go back to your workplaces and see what you are doing; acknowledge the gap [in minority faces and voices]; develop an action plan; and talk and listen to your people.”
A well-known sticking point in many corporate efforts to bring minorities onto any staff is the hiring process. “Many jobs are not necessarily posted and usually the organization goes to its referral base” – or pipeline – of former colleagues, old classmates, mentors and acquaintances, most of whom are likely to look and think like the people doing the candidate search, said Ranglin.
“People go to people they know,” she said. “We’ve got to be intentional about going to different places [for job candidates]. We’ve got to shake it up.”
Panel moderator Kevin Matta, director of client engagement and inclusion for Advancing Workplace Excellence, concurred. “We always go back to the well we know the best” for job applicants, he said. “Diversity is about changing that process.”
Steinberg was asked to describe the Rhode Island Foundation’s Equity Leadership Initiative, an $8.5 million project announced in the fall. One goal of the initiative is to “identify, cultivate, mentor and seek access and opportunity for individuals who identify as Black, Hispanic or Latino, Indigenous and Asian from across sectors to help build a pipeline of future leaders in established positions of influence throughout the state,” according to the foundation.
Steinberg said the dollar amount of the grants under the initiative, to be spent over three years, is not large, but it is intended to spur other major organizations in the state into similar efforts.
“We are leaving people behind,” Steinberg said.
He rejected the notion that the pandemic laid bare inequities. “COVID didn’t reveal anything that we didn’t already know,” Steinberg said. “We are not going to come out of this recession any better than we went in if we don’t address these root causes.”
