So, You’ve Made a Diversity Hire. Now What? Moving from Optics to Inclusion. 

Over the past several years, clients have been turning up the heat on law firms to make significant progress on hiring diverse candidates. People of color, in particular, are underrepresented in the fields of medicine, law, engineering, accounting and other professional services. Illustrating the urgency of this crisis, the General Counsel of Coca Cola, Bradley Gayton, Esq., issued a memo in January demanding that law firms representing the company must increase their roster of attorneys of color and other underrepresented groups or face financial repercussions. He said, “we will no longer celebrate good intentions or highly unproductive efforts…it’s the results that we are demanding and will measure going forward.”

While hiring diverse candidates is an important first step in fostering a culture of inclusion, there’s far more work that follows. In fact, if the bulk of your diversity and inclusion efforts stop once a candidate is hired, you’re likely causing more harm than good. Diverse candidates are less likely to stay if they don’t see efforts being made to create the type of workplace environment in which they can flourish. These efforts, which should be visible at the organization, team and individual level, should include transparency, meaningful mentoring and coaching, sponsorship, involvement in challenging work and clear pathways for career advancement. But above all, these efforts should be undertaken with honest and authentic intentions, which will likely mean entering unchartered and often uncomfortable territory for many leaders.

We invite you to our moderated safe space on Monday, March 8th from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EST where our Diversity & Inclusion panel will discuss strategies for ensuring your diverse candidates feel welcome, embraced and valued. The panel includes Dr. Fritz Galette, Joy Stephens, David B. Sarnoff, Esq., Rini Fonseca-Sabune, Esq. and David Robert. 

What you can expect to gain from participating:

• Increase your understanding of why onboarding and integrating diverse hires is critical to successful recruitment.
• Increase your understanding of mentoring and sponsorship and how they are different.
• Increase awareness around allyship and intervening when witnessing a biased interaction.
• Gain strategies and practices to develop sponsorship relationships between leadership and diverse employees.