i4CP Survey Impacts Innovation Capacity

i4cp Survey Finds Over Half of Employers Lack Leadership and Education on Workplace-Diversity Matters


Based on Helix research, a core leadership behavior to collaboration capacity and innovation agility is based on diversity capabilities in creating innovation competency depth. For rich ideation processes to support diverse perspectives, opinions and hold without judgement requires appreciate inquiry skills and diversity appreciation know-how.

As CEO's globally espouse innovation --- the realities are there are bare bones in depth of collaboration core comptencies, of which diversity is a core diffusion skill to develop innovation resilence.

The recent study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) found that 53% of companies do not sponsor diversity training in their organizations, 66% do not have specific diversity councils to serve as a watchdog on issues including race, gender, and sexual orientation and 77% do not have affinity groups in place to support minorities.

The study also found that 68% lack a high-level executive who oversees diversity initiatives. And 65% of respondents admit their organizations do not have a global diversity strategy.

“Many employers seem to think of diversity and inclusion as simply an EEOC compliance issue,” said Eric Davis, i4cp’s Associate Editor.

“Employers need to view diversity and inclusion as an important strategy for developing talent. Organizations embracing that concept are more likely to have top-down diversity policies, which include accountability.”

According to the survey, when diversity programs are in place, accountability for diversity strategies tends to start at the top. When asked how leaders are held accountable for driving diversity in their organizations, 31% of respondents said CEOs are subject to annual diversity reviews. Twenty-three percent of those surveyed said their CEO’s compensation is tied to how well the chief executive carried out the organization’s diversity strategy. However, nearly 20% of respondents say their top leadership is not held accountable for ensuring diversity.

Of those companies that have “diversity teams” in place, 39% say the teams devise diversity strategies for the company, and 33% percent of teams offer companywide diversity training and education.

The Taking the Pulse: Diversity and Inclusion survey – which polled 206 organizations – was conducted by i4cp, in conjunction with HR.com, in March 2008. The full results of the survey are now available exclusively for i4cp corporate members.