hr primer · 2016-10-25 · benko describes how a lattice organization aligns with the current...

HR PRIMERChapter 3

Strengthening theTalent Pipeline ThroughTraining, Development,

and Advancement

diversitybestpractices.com | 29

3Strengthening the Talent Pipeline Through Training, Development, and Advancement

Talent development is a critical factor in advancing a diverse workforce. It is also an area that often frustrates HR professionals and managers, discourages workers, and represents a vulnerable point on the HR continuum. To effectively foster the growth and advancement of its employees, companies must recognize that as their workforce becomes increasingly diverse, their employees bring with them different expectations for their jobs and careers.

In addition, current HR practices are failing to ensure organizations live up to their meritocracy ideal. The fail is clear: a study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reflects a diversity challenge for many minority groups. In firms with 100 or more employees, only five percent of the managers are Black, three percent are Latino, and three percent are Asian. Clearly, the shares of managerial jobs held by America’s three largest minority groups are much lower than their share of the country’s total population.1

Women, too, are pressing up against an anachronistic glass ceiling that refuses to budge. In “Shattering the Glass Ceiling: An Analytical Approach to Advanc-ing Women into Leadership Roles,” another study by BCG, examined why so few women make it to the top.2 Its findings point to a fundamental issue that exists in the training, development, and advancement processes in many com-panies. “Fundamentally, the dearth of female leadership is a pipeline problem: overall, women are well represented in the workplace, but the pipeline breaks down somewhere between middle management and the C-suite.… The great-est obstacle is the need for each organization to identify its own glass ceiling and to develop—and promote—appropriate solutions that apply at every level throughout that organization.”

30 | diversitybestpractices.com

For HR executives who pride themselves on optimizing human capital, these diversity limitations are not just an indictment of diversity strategies that are falling short; they are an indictment of talent development strategies as a whole. Consequently, companies must truly rethink their management approach to tal-ent development.

This chapter focuses on reframing the talent development process by reconfig-uring three important issues within the talent development and advancement function—career flexibility, training, and mentoring.

Supersize Career FlexibilitySince the start of the Industrial Revolution, the corporate ladder has been the accepted configuration for structuring organizations, managing employees, and directing career advancement. But not everyone is suited to climb the corporate ladder nor is it everyone’s aspiration. Nevertheless, most employees aspire to achieve a sense of professional success and satisfaction.

According to Cathy Benko, Vice Chairman and Chief Talent Officer at Deloitte and co-author of the book, The Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work, the ladder is based on an organizational worldview that connects prestige, rewards, information access, and power to the rung each employee occupies.3 Its one-size-fits-all approach assumes employees are more alike than different, and defines career success as a linear climb to the top.

Today’s employees don’t necessarily accept, and may even reject, that view of work. “Many workers are redefining the very meaning of what success looks like to them,” Benko writes. “Why? Because they’re more diverse in every sense of the word. Few households fit the ‘traditional’ family structure…. Women now comprise the majority of post-secondary graduates, half the U.S. work-force, and are the hands-down primary wage earners 40 percent of the time. Four generations share the workplace. More experienced workers are relaxing their conservative what-I’m-willing-to-do-for-work attitudes at the same time younger generations are bringing more, shall we say, contemporary expectations to the workplace.”4

In response to these diverse perspectives, some organizations are incorporating an alternative to the corporate ladder: the corporate lattice. This organizational model recognizes the changing attitudes of today’s employees, where there is little separation between the work and personal spheres. In fact, these two areas are interdependent. As Benko describes, the lattice approach “connects corre-


sponding and necessary advances in talent practices with business operations to deliver both high performance and career-life fit.”5

The lattice model recognizes that the corporate ladder has not been very suc-cessful in pushing or pulling a diversity of talent up the ranks. Too many mem-bers of underrepresented groups are stuck languishing in the middle or lower rungs with fewer opportunities for movement or development. The corporate lattice model changes the way companies operate and fosters a way to customize the workplace for employees in three key areas: how careers are built, how work gets done, and how participation in the organization happens.

The full power of the lattice emerges when its various strengths—in ways of working, building careers, and collaborating—are connected to each other, mutually reinforcing a new formula for high performance and career develop-ment. Thomson Reuters, an information services enterprise with $12.9 billion in revenue, transformed its decentralized finance functions of more than 40 portfolio companies into a more lattice-like, global collaborative structure. The company’s adoption of the lattice approach included telecommuting and other flexibility options, to meet the demands of its 24/7 global operations. Employee surveys showed that 80 percent of employees rated the company’s flexibility efforts far more favorably than at other high-performing firms. 6

That’s the real beauty of the lattice approach. It embeds flexibility into its very structure and encourages tailoring the work experience to employees without sacrificing performance or productivity. In fact, it improves performance, pro-ductivity, and employee engagement and it has the potential to provide employ-ees with a variety of practical experiences that can lead to real-life opportunities for getting ahead.

The flexibility inherent in the lattice model can be used to address a company’s diverse workforce by accommodating the wide variety of employees as they manage their personal and work lives. Consider employees who are also care-givers to a family member. The lattice’s flexibility enables those employees to meet their family obligations without sacrificing career prospects. There’s also the reality of working mothers who may want to redefine career success, take advantage of professional opportunities for advancement, and still manage their family responsibilities. The lattice model provides ways to accommodate time off or abbreviated work schedules in these situations7

What’s more, the lattice model recognizes dimensions of diversity beyond race, ethnicity, or gender, such as personality and styles. Social scientists are starting to recognize how the differences between introverts and extroverts play out in the


workplace. While many extroverts have typically been rewarded with upward career mobility and higher-profile leadership positions, a good number of intro-verts may not equate reaching the C-Suite with achieving success. Instead they may prefer to excel in their practice area, but companies tend not to have an advancement option that doesn’t involve taking on an upper-management role. The lattice model is well suited to helping companies leverage the talents of these employees.

Benko describes how a lattice organization aligns with the current realities of a diverse and multidimensional workforce by taking a tri-dimensional look at careers. Here’s how it’s explained in the Harvard Business Review: 8

Career Progression: From Straight Up To ZigzagRather than placing employees on an established linear career path, lattice organizations view careers as multi-directional, with moves across as well as up and down within the company. There is no universal view of career success but rather multiple ways to get ahead—and more than one way to define what success means. The lattice opens up alternative career paths that enable employees, particularly underrepresented talent, to realize multiple gateways for future opportunities.

Work: From Where You Go To What You DoRather than expecting people to sit at their desks from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., lattice organizations adopt a more virtual, more dynamic, and more project-based approach to work. “Technology is a big part of this,” Benko writes. She fur-ther explains that work tasks are becoming less routine, with project-type work increasing 40-fold over the past two decades. Added to this, organizational structures have flattened by about 25 percent while information and man-agement responsibilities have expanded. “As the number of layers contracts, people’s options for moving straight up are more limited,” Benko adds. So while company lead-ers may want diverse representation in the upper ranks, they face the added challenge that traditional avenues for advancement have lessened for everyone.

Participation: From Top-Down to All-InInstead of traditional one-way, top-down communica-tions, lattice organizations use multi-directional relation-


ships, interactions, and communications that encourage broader participation by employees. In this way, knowl-edge, ideas, and information are spread throughout the company, regardless of organizational level. In fact, with this model leaders expect and require ideas and infor-mation from everyone regardless of their rank within the organization. Working in this manner cultivates an atmosphere of transparency that is essential to develop-ing trust among diverse talent and other underrepre-sented groups.9

HR leaders must use the current realities of four generations in the workforce, globalization, and wide-ranging diversity among employees to customize training and development practices. With the lattice approach, as employees (particularly ones from underrepresented groups) zigzag across an organiza-tion they have the chance to be seen, evaluated, and ultimately known by a greater number of managers and executives, which can open up opportunities for advancement. All employees benefit from such initiatives, not just the ones headed up the corporate ladder.

Rediscover and Relearn TrainingAs companies search for underrepresented talent, employee training remains an integral part of employee development. Yet many companies are slashing their budgets in this area. A 2012 American Management Association (AMA) study revealed that management development initiatives have been postponed or cut for the past four years. And those cuts are touching more than management and leadership development programs, but also communication skills, employee coaching efforts, and individual professional development initiatives.10 These are critical skills and development factors that lead to advancement.

Such moves are so short sighted. At the same time companies are cutting training budgets, they are complaining that their employees don’t have the skills needed to succeed. The ManpowerGroup reports that 52 percent of U.S. employers have trouble filling openings because of skill deficiencies among recruits and employees.11 As a result, nearly 4 million jobs are going unfilled.12

Retrain Your Workforce of Today for the Jobs of Today

Robust training and development initiatives can address the mismatch between unfilled jobs and employer needs. In an interview with AmericanRenaissance.com, Wal-Mart’s Global Chief Diversity Officer Sharon Orlopp explained that


during the past five years, the company has placed more than 12,000 women and 8,500 employees from underrepresented groups in its management-train-ing program. As a result, Wal-Mart’s percentage of female store managers has increased 39 percent, the number of female assistant managers has grown 47 percent, and the percentage of store managers of color has grown 31 percent. A growing number of employees from underrepresented groups are being groomed for advancement.13

As the Wal-Mart example shows, employees, particularly multicultural ones, are very much open to training and development. Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP), a company that trains Asian professionals, found that many first- and second-generation corporate employees lack awareness and understanding of the explicit and implicit rules of success in their companies. Furthermore, a number of common misperceptions about Asian employees may limit their advancement, including the belief that: 14

• Asians are satisfied with focusing on technical work and thus not interested in becoming managers.

• Asians are not leadership or management material, and lack the interest or skills to be good leaders or managers.

• Asians are a “model minority” and therefore are already successful. They don’t need help.

A result of these misconceptions is that Asian employees can be overlooked or miss out on growth and training opportunities, according to LEAP. What is happening with Asian employees is occurring across all minority groups. They are not realizing their true potential because companies have not formalized and committed to developing and training a diverse workforce.

The desire for more training and development is reflected all across corporate America. According to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2011 Job Satisfaction and Engagement Report, 62 percent of employees said they wanted opportunities to grow on the job, which can be interpreted to mean developing their skills and abilities to do so.15 This ranked second behind job security as an engagement driver. In its 2012 report, the Asian Society, a global education organization in New York, reported that Asian employees from all levels in Fortune 500 companies felt that there were not enough opportunities for development and professional growth.16

While many organizations are cutting their training and development initia-tives, conversely, Sodexo, a global leader in providing integrated food and facili-ties management services, dedicates significant resources to training employees.


The enterprise trains associates in areas directly related to their job functions, but also in other areas, such as ones that address cultural competency and inclu-sion. “We train all of our employees in a variety of different competencies,” says Rohini Anand, Sodexo’s senior vice president and Global Chief Diversity Officer. Diversity training topics include microinequities, unconscious bias, recruiting diverse talent, and a host of other subjects that involve diversity and inclusion. For instance, globally, 24,000 Sodexo employees have participated in “Spirit of Inclusion” training, which raises awareness of diversity issues. Accord-ing to the company’s website, “Sodexo University provides learning and devel-opment opportunities through self-study, instructor-led classes, online learning, and partnerships with other organizations.” With the Sodexo University and a Management Institute, training is a core value for Sodexo. From the frontlines all the way up the corporate hierarchy, employees are encouraged and expected to take advantage of the company’s learning opportunities. 17

Different Learning Styles Is a Major Diversity Issue

In addition to curtailing the siphoning of dollars away from training, companies need to reevaluate the training approaches that are most effective. This requires looking at more than just the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of employees, but also their widely varying learning styles and sensibilities.

While research is ongoing and more is discovered every day about the workings of the brain and how people learn, it is readily accepted that employees typi-cally have four learning styles—kinesthetic (hands-on and movement oriented), tactual (emotion and tactile-based), auditory (lecture based with a discussion component), and visual (reading, writing, and observation). Understanding these factors has a significant impact on how HR leaders reinvest training and development dollars and how training is offered to employees.

As companies look to technology-based training efforts in order to cut costs, they may miss out on the opportunities offered by embedding multiple approaches to learning. As the Sodexo University illustrates, a variety of training vehicles is necessary to meet the needs of all employees. Workshops and seminars for those who learn best in communal, tactual, or kinesthetic manners; web-based or e-learning for employees who prefer visual, auditory or tactual experiences. And be sure to reinforce the content by offering everyone multiple ways to access the information. Few people are simply just one type of learner; most learn best through multiple means.

While training budgets remain a tempting target for many organizations, such shortsighted moves can have a lasting impact on employees and the entire com-


pany. Firms that make the decision to cut their training budgets may also dem-onstrate a lack of commitment to employee development and growth, which can affect underrepresented talent particularly hard, as well impact overall staff engagement, further wounding the talent pipeline.

Turn Mentoring On Its HeadMentoring is a proven method for training and development. Not surprisingly, mentoring is listed in the 50 Best Practices in Leadership Development.18 But where it often falls short is providing an equal mentoring experience for employees of different backgrounds. For instance, people of color and women have difficulty finding mentors of the same race or gender because of underrepresentation in the upper levels of management.19 Sometimes cultural differences may present barriers.

Nevertheless, we know it works—especially for people of color. Ralph Bangs, associate director of the Center on Race and Social Problems, noted in an article in The Post-Gazette that mentoring programs are particularly useful for minori-ties.20 “Mentoring programs that paired minority managers up with seasoned managers were far and away the most successful strategy to improve the numbers of Hispanics, Asians, and African-American corporate managers. Each of our experts and their research data supported the employment of a mentoring strat-egy.” Bangs explained that mentees are more likely to be promoted, earn more money, have a career plan, and remain with the corporation.

The experience of Rodney C. Adkins, senior vice president for systems and tech-nology at IBM, supports Bangs’ assertions. Adkins credits his mentors for provid-ing him with direction and insight, which helped him climb the corporate ladder. In an interview with FINS Technology, Adkins says, “There was one point in my career when I was…very interested in becoming a leader of one of the sales groups in IBM. But from a discussion I had with a mentor [retired IBM executive vice president, Nick Donofrio], it was determined based on where I was in my career I would have a better impact and more than likely produce better results if I pursued a different path. …Frankly, that was probably the best advice I ever received, and it came at a very critical point in my career.”

One study of mentoring programs for gay and lesbian employees supports the need to assess each underrepresented group individually.21 Based on the results of a questionnaire that was administered at a convention of gay-friendly busi-nesses in the United States, researchers concluded that gay and lesbian mentors are able to provide more specific advice and guidance in relation to issues of sexual orientation in the workplace than their heterosexual counterparts and that matching individuals to the right mentors is advantageous. But, gay and


lesbian employees who had heterosexual mentors were reported to have expe-rienced significantly higher rates of promotion and increased rates of other tangible mentoring benefits such as career-related guidance. However, there are undeniable benefits to having gay and lesbian mentors who can address specific issues about being gay in the workplace that those who are straight wouldn’t be able to. And it may be just the type of mentoring and support an up-and-coming gay leader may need at that very career juncture. The key is not to assume what the best match would be. Rather ask what the mentee would prefer given their career goals and the very real coming out issues that have or haven’t been resolved.

The challenges that exist in mentoring underrepresented groups should not be seen as barriers to using this important tool. David Thomas, a professor of organizational behavior and human resource management at Harvard Business School, says, “Whites and minorities follow distinct patterns of advancement. Specifically, promising White professionals tend to enter a fast track early in their careers, whereas high-potential minorities take off much later, typically after they have reached middle management… People of color who advance the furthest all share one characteristic—a strong network of mentors and corpo-rate sponsors who nurture their professional development.” 22

Clearly traditional ways of mentoring are beneficial to an organization’s mul-ticultural employees. Yet, according to Andrés Tapia in The Inclusion Paradox, traditional mentoring is not without its flaws. Established programs typically remain as a “one-up, one-down” relationship, where the secrets of success within an organization are revealed to employees from underrepresented groups. Undoubtedly, this is beneficial to selected employees, but does little to trans-form the talent development process or the organization as a whole.

The traditional mentoring concept needs an upgrade. Consider broadening the practice of mentoring to include a reciprocal approach, where everyone under-stands that company executives may have as much to learn as the multicultural employees do in the usual mentoring method. Hewitt Associates ran a Cross-cultural Learning Partners Program (CLPP) that paired a group of company leaders with associates from different cultural backgrounds. At the start of the relationship, both partners fill out an evaluation tool called the Intercultural Development Inventory to determine their cultural competency. After a year’s worth of reading assignments, reflection exercises and other curricula, the part-ners filled out the evaluation again. Cultural competency, which provides an indicator of an organization’s inclusiveness, significantly increased.


But more than mere numbers on a scale, the diversity lenses of those involved were broadened and sharpened as the relationships with others enlightened all involved. “I will never look at an HR issue the same ever again,” a White veteran HR professional said after her partnership with a Black woman who opened her eyes to the many ways HR generalists can misread a situation involving under-represented groups. Conversely, her Black colleague was stunned to learn about the vast diversity that exists among people grouped under the category of White.

These Hewitt leaders who participated in the program gained a deeper and unexpected understanding of the company by looking through the eyes of diverse employees and teaching each other.

Incorporate Cultural Immersion

Hewitt’s experience with reciprocal mentoring leads straight to the concept of cultural immersion, which was a significant component of the CLPP. Here it goes beyond telling each other’s stories to one another to actually walking in each other’s shoes. Particularly important for the workplace, cultural immer-sion fosters an inclusive corporate culture and enables employees from different backgrounds to work effectively together.

In an effort to gain a better understanding and appreciation of many cultures and types of people, Wal-Mart’s Orlopp said Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club leaders go on diversity immersion trips.23 The first was a visit to Montgomery, Ala. and key locations in the civil rights movement. Leaders have also taken Hispanic immersion trips, a trip focused on women, and one centered on those with dis-abilities. “If you touch the heart, you change behaviors,” Orlopp said about the cultural immersion efforts.

Cultural immersion is beneficial for all employees, but especially an organi-zation’s leadership, particularly if that leadership is predominately White and male. The cultural competency that results from cultural immersion not only strengthens an organization’s inclusive environment, but also moves it further along the inclusion continuum. Tapia noted that, “When leadership teams are not diverse, they often don’t realize that their assessment of what makes a good leader can be culturally biased. Strong leadership can look very different in U.S. subcultures and in national cultures.” The familiar European-American leader-ship model of assertiveness, speaking one’s mind, and challenging others openly does not take into account other strong leadership models (such as in some Asian cultures) that more heavily emphasize consensus building and face saving with less public confrontation. 24 Cultural immersion efforts can help corporate


leaders realize their underlying unconscious biases and open the way for under-represented employees to assume positions of leadership.

ConclusionFor most of the 20th Century, and even the very early days of the 21st Century, the corporate ladder represented the most apt metaphor for the workplace. Yet a lot about the work world has changed. Once upon a time, hard assets repre-sented 60 percent of corporate value creation. Today, more than 85 percent of that corporate value relies on intangible assets, such as talent and intellectual property.25 Once, few were concerned about the diversity of the talent pipe-line or the inclusiveness of the corporate culture. For a host of business-related reasons including globalization, wide-ranging diversity of the workforce, and the changing nature of work itself, HR leaders are now charged with training, developing, and preparing for the advancement of those employees who were, in earlier days, left out of promotion discussions.

Given that the workforce reflects such a wide range of attitudes, expectations, and experiences, HR executives must find novel and effective ways to train, develop, and advance these employees. Rethinking, rebuilding, and revising the development tools of flexibility, training, and mentoring will enable organiza-tions to tap into the creativity and innovation of this globalized, diverse work-force and move the corporate environment along the competency continuum that fosters a culture of inclusion.

Endnotes1. http://www.amren.com/news/2012/08/how-walmarts-chief-diversity-officer-gets-talent-

development-results/2. “Shattering the Glass Ceiling: An Analytical Approach to Advancing Women into

Leadership Roles, Boston Consulting Group, 2012. https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/leadership_change_management_shattering_the_glass_ceiling/

3. Cathy Benko and Molly Anderson, The Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work, Deloitte Development LLC, 2010. http://www.thecorporatelattice.com/excerpt.html

4. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/11/how_the_corporate_ladder_becam.html5. Cathy Benko and Molly Anderson, The Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the

Changing World of Work, Deloitte Development LLC, 2010. http://www.thecorporatelattice.com/excerpt.html

6. http://www.forbes.com/2011/03/16/corporate-lattice-ladder-leadership-managing-hierarchy.html

7. Stephen Miller, “Using Workplace Flexibility as a Talent Strategy,” Society for Human Resource Management Online, May 4, 2012, http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/benefits/Articles/Pages/FlexTalentStrategy.aspx


8. http://www.forbes.com/2011/03/16/corporate-lattice-ladder-leadership-managing-hierarchy.html

9. Corporate Lattice website http://www.corporatelattice.com/lattice_at_a_glance.html?about_lattice

10. http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/orgempdev/articles/Pages/Development-Initiatives-Delayed-by-Many-Companies.aspx

11. Peter Cappelli, “Why Companies Aren’t Getting the Employees They Need,” Wall Street Journal Online, October 24, 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576596630897409182.html

12. Peter Coy, “Why 3.5 million job openings isn’t great news,” BusinessWeek, March 19, 2012. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-19/why-3-dot-5-million-job-openings-isnt-great-news?track=sticky

13. http://www.macpa.org/blog/2032/the-walmart-way14. http://www.leap.org/faq_main.html15. http://www.shrm.org/Research/SurveyFindings/Articles/Documents/11-0618%20Job_Satisfaction_

FNL.pdf16. http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/Diversity/Articles/Pages/

AsianEmployeesSeekDevelopment.aspx17. http://www.sodexousa.com/usen/careers/university/sodexouniversity.asp18. http://www.leaderexcel.com/best_practice.html19. Jenny Headlam-Wells, “E-mentoring for aspiring women managers,” Women in Management

Review, 19, 4, 2004, 212-218.20. http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/business/employment/commentary-mentoring-

programs-can-build-diversity-in-management-362661/#ixzz0UZgaRBX821. Hebl, M.R., Tonidandel S. & Ruggs E.N. (2012): “The Impact of Like-Mentors for Gay/

Lesbian Employees” Human Performance, Vol 25 No.1 (2012) pp.52-71.22. http://hbr.org/2001/04/race-matters/ar/123. http://www.newonline.org/blogpost/784786/139880/Closing-Keynote-Sharon-Orlopp-

Walmart-Inc24. http://inclusionparadox.com/25. Patrick Brigger, “Benko and Anderson’s Corporate Lattice,” Washington Post, November 24,

2011 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/leadership-books/post/benko-and-andersons-the-corporate-lattice/2011/03/07/gIQA8ZLcsN_blog.html