Why diversity employees leave

Though many companies have been progressively refining and improving their diversity recruiting efforts, employers are still challenged by the process of retaining and nurturing workplace diversity, according to Carmen Van Kerckhove, president of New Demographic, a firm that specializes in workplace diversity.

Van Kerckhove says that even though many companies have become better at hiring people of color, many are still doing a terrible job of retaining their diversity employees. While most organizations devote ample time to attracting and recruiting diversity employees, oftentimes they fail to adequately think through and develop long term diversity strategies for retaining their valuable diversity employees.

Why diversity employees leave the companies that worked so hard to recruit them becomes evident when one examines some statistics displayed in Crain's New York Business on June 30, 2008, in an article entitled "After decades, little progress." Crain’s says that even though New York City is among the most diverse cities in the United States, many companies are failing when it comes to workplace diversity and retaining diversity employees. According to the article:

• New York is 25 percent African American, yet only 2.5 percent of employees that make more than $100,000 (at the sixteen advertising agencies examined by Crain’s) are Black.

• Although minorities make up 22 percent of the workforce in the securities industry, most are clustered in the lower ranks.

• More than 33 percent of New York law firms have no Hispanic or African American partners.

Bear in mind that both New York City and New York State are home to the headquarters of most Fortune 500 companies. If these statistics remotely resemble those in other US cities, states and companies, corporate America is clearly failing its diversity employees. Any employee, after being passed up for promotion after promotion and seeing promises made to him during recruitment broken, will eventually leave a company and find one with more promising upward mobility or will form his own corporation.

Diversity employees are not unlike any other employee in that respect. Where they are different is in the fact that most companies will promise them that their company is diversity friendly and will provide diversity employees with mentorship and networking opportunities that can lead to advancement- as a means of attracting and recruiting them. When those “guarantees” fail to materialize, it should come as no surprise that diversity employees leave.

One way that companies can reduce diversity employee turnover is by only making promises that they are sure they can deliver, and by putting forth a sincere effort to make diversity employees feel like they belong, particularly in organizations where there are few diversity employees. Doing so will help employers make good on their recruitment promises and reduce diversity employee turnover.

The key to retaining diversity employees can be summed up with the well known phrase “Practice what you preach.” If organizations plan out their corporate diversity strategy with more than just recruiting in mind, they can develop mentorship and training programs designed specifically for minority employees that will actually help them deliver their recruitment promises and keep their valuable diversity employees.