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Why Ethnic and Racial Diveristy Matter

December 13, 2007

Ethnic and racial diversity in the workplace is a core value of our partner organizations. Why is diversity really so important?

In all organizations, diversity of experience and backgrounds has proven itself to be a vital success factor. This can be gained through many types of diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity. Diversifying a team’s membership increases the range of opinions, ideas and opportunities available in decision-making processes. This, in turn, will improve the quality of those decisions, the ease of new strategy implementation, and the organization’s effectiveness in meeting its goals.

Social and human service organizations have are particularly sensitive to ensuring ethnic and racial diversity because so many of these organizations serve a highly diverse constituency. In order to most effectively understand and respond to the needs of their clients and partners, social service organizations know that their staff should be reflective of the communities they serve. Some funding organizations have recognized the importance of these facts and have started to require staff diversity reporting among their grantees.

The social sector needs to continue to improve its workplace diversity, particularly at the senior management level. In order to achieve these goals, Commongood Careers makes several broad recommendations:

(1) Build a hiring pool of diverse talent through constant, year-round outreach to targeted communities and groups, instead of focusing on outreach only for open positions;

(2) Structure your searches so that you can allow a longer hiring window, possibly adding 2-3 months to a search, in order to ensure that every effort has been made to include diverse candidates in the final candidate pool, especially with senior level hires;

(3) Build an internal pipeline of diverse talent by hiring for diversity at lower organizational levels and then ensuring effective retention and career laddering to grow that talent into senior management roles.

Organizations that truly value diversity at all levels have proven to be the most successful at building workplace diversity. Making diversity an organizational priority in all areas, as opposed to focusing on diversity only in recruiting, will make your organization stronger on many levels and will enable you to attract and retain diverse candidates more effectively.

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Talent Issues, Workplace Diversity

Reflections on the Massachusetts Conference for Women

December 12, 2007

On Tuesday, December 11th, Commongood Careers attended the Massachusetts Conference for Women. This one day conference is hailed as “…the state’s premier networking and educational experience designed to help women connect and collaborate, and grow personally and professionally”. This year’s attendance topped over 6,000 women from all over the Commonwealth.

This is our second year supporting the conference and once again the conference organizers out did themselves—the event was a huge success. Serving as one of approximately 100 exhibitors, our team met and had wonderful conversations with women interested in fulfilling their personal and professional mission in the nonprofit sector.

Our team felt that the conference provided a fabulous opportunity for women to come together to hear from panelists expert from a wide swath of professions including financial planning, nonprofit management, marketing and communications. Commongood Careers’ very own Jana Reed spoke on the topic of “Leading Innovations to Advance Nonprofits”. Her remarks focused on talent and the need for talent in the nonprofit sector at all levels of the organizational chart. In reflection, we heard from many women that the day was inspirational and helped them to see the impact of their careers through a different lens.

Were you at the conference? If so, please share your thoughts on the day and comment on this blog! If you were there but missed Jana’s presentation, you can find related topics in our Knowledge Center. If you missed the conference this year, we hope to see you next year.

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Events & Career Fairs