How to Make Diversity and Inclusion a Reality

In too many firms, management lacks role models for women, people of color and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. But some companies are different. At Campbell’s – where I recently retired as president and CEO – diversity is about more than breaking glass ceilings. It’s about mirroring our consumers, 80 per cent of whom are women from all ethnicities and backgrounds.

Here are some things Campbell’s has done to improve workforce diversity and inclusion. Perhaps these steps can be helpful to your company, too:

1. Confront the brutal facts. In 2002 and 2003, we took a hard look at ourselves. The brutal facts were that our products were on the shelves of virtually every American home, but our workforce was insufficiently representative of our diverse customer base. Similarly, if we continued to maintain a narrow recruiting framework, we were going to miss out on some terrific talent.

2. Create a disciplined plan. We built a comprehensive plan for advancing diversity and inclusion. We challenged leaders to strengthen their understanding through our recruiting and training programs. Hiring managers had to make sure that every position had a diverse slate of candidates, and they were held accountable for advancing our performance in this regard.

3. Declare yourself. I am a big believer in “being the change you want to see” in your organisation. I began every staff and global leadership meeting by focusing on the topics of diversity and inclusion, and I actively supported our human resources network groups.

4. Educate the organisation. We developed a suite of courses, such as “Micro-Inequities,” where people learned about common behaviors that could undermine our values. We wanted to make sure that people learned to listen, speak and act more inclusively.

5. Deploy mentors and support networks. We put in place consistent and sustainable support mechanisms in the form of six human resource networks for women, and people of various generations, ethnicities and sexual orientations.

So how have we done since we began this journey? Over the last decade, our diversity profile has improved across the board, and our culture has undoubtedly become more open and candid. As I retire, I’m proud to say that my successor, Denise Morrison, is the first female CEO in the more than 140-year history of our company.

(Douglas R. Conant is the recently retired president and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company, headquartered in Camden, N.J. He is the co-author, with Mette Norgaard, of “Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments.”).

© 2011 Harvard Business Publishing