Carmen Deñó
Summary.
In an effort to improve diversity in the workplace, many companies are now setting diversity goals and posting progress reports. This is a promising move, but for it to be effective, companies have to do it right. Their goals and reports need be detailed to create transparency; they need to be shared with insiders and the public to induce accountability; and they need to be accompanied by action plans to promote change. The authors discuss research showing that when companies have followed these principles, they’ve seen notable increases in women and people of color in management — and the authors suggest that the same can be done for members of other marginalized groups if companies expand their goal-setting and reporting.Can setting workforce diversity goals and posting progress reports help companies move the needle on diversity? This approach has spread like wildfire in the last two years. It’s too soon to tell whether the new fad is working, so we turned to past experience of firms that set goals and posted progress as early as the 1970s. That experience suggests that when done right, goals and regular progress reports can boost diversity even among management jobs.