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| Read/Purchase Full Report About Us Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology Division on Earth and Life Studies |
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Success Story
Valuing diversity is an essential component of building a world-class, global organization at Proctor & Gamble (P&G), says D. Ronald Webb, Manager of Doctoral Recruiting. "P&G has a set of core values, with people lying at the heart of this core. Valuing people first is a natural springboard to valuing diversity," Webb says.
With this philosophy in mind, the decision to encourage diversity has been fundamental to P&G’s success, helping it reach a broad, diverse customer base and giving it an increased competitive edge in the global marketplace. Today P&G enjoys $50 billion in sales annually from over 300 products and employs 90,000 individuals worldwide.
The decision to promote diversity at P&G began more than 30 years ago, Webb recalls, when the company was virtually a monoculture. Once diversity was embraced, the CEO communicated the new policy throughout the company when he developed groups to track progress. The diversity team continues to monitor how the company is doing and how fast it is changing. If a particular unit is not meeting the diversity targets, the team tries to identify barriers and fins solutions to overcome them.
P&G’s commitment to diversity was further reinforced through the company’s support of supplier diversity. P&G increased the number of its minority diversity suppliers from only 5 percent in the early 1970s to more than 1,000 today. The company also has a goal of spending $1.5 billion annually to support supplier diversity by 2005. In addition, building a diverse workforce is part of a manager’s responsibility at P&G. As part of their evaluation, managers must demonstrate the ability to build a diverse workforce. Finally, P&G launched a reward and recognition program to provide a comfortable and inclusive environment so employees feel welcome and respected.
"I’m very blessed to have the job of a Ph.D. recruiter," says Webb. "Not only is the responsibility of bringing in new research and development talent critical to the company’s future success...but to do that and also be part of the success in bringing our culture from one that was not diverse to one that is quite diverse is something I’m quite proud of."
Today, of the 30,000 P&G employees in the United States, 19 percent are non-Caucasian. Within the nine levels of management within the company, 18 percent of staff are non-Caucasian. And, among the company officers in the upper four levels of management, 24 percent are non-Caucasians.
"I think our success as a company stems from our long standing heritage that all of us embraced at day one. The pace of change has been wonderfully surprising, too," says Webb, "but I know that we are not yet done. There’s still some work to do."
Having made the commitment to embrace diversity, P&G initiated an effort to recruit minorities from underrepresented groups. P&G is involved in K-12 education to increase students’ interest in science. At the undergraduate level, P&G concentrates on summer internship opportunities. The company also supports the American Chemical Society’s Scholars Program, which so far has enabled more than 600 minority students to go to college. At the graduate level, P&G offers summer internship opportunities where students can conduct original, independent research in an industrial setting.
The company also host its annual Research and Technical Careers in Industry (RTCI) Conference. This 3-day conference provides information about industrial research career opportunities and helps students choose between career paths in industry, academia, and government. RTCI also provides participants with the opportunity to network with minority scientists and managers, evaluate their interview and resume writing skills, and understand the value of diversity in a corporate culture. P&G routinely hires about two dozen African-American students from the pool of RTCI attendees each year.
P&G also recruits through traditional print and online advertisements, visits national meetings of professional societies and campus job fairs, and conducts about 600 campus interviews with doctoral chemistry students every year.
Finally, the company offers industrial post-doctoral positions to new Ph.D.’s providing a 2-year research experience to candidates. A large fraction of these postdocs go on to work at P&G after their postdoctoral contract ends.
One proven strategy for ensuring retention of minorities is to provide mentoring and support groups, which provide a safe, family-like environment for them to discuss and understand business issues, including company politics and business strategies. Formal support groups at P&G include the Black Technical Ph.D. Group and the Latino Ph.D. Group. Further, P&G celebrates achievement with a strong reward and recognition program.
Both formal and informal mechanisms are in place at P&G to support employees in their professional development. In addition to encouraging active membership in professional organizations, P&G encourages research and development employees to use the training center. Here, courses are offered in a wide range of topics, such as technical writing and management skills.
Diversity team throughout the company monitor diversity issues, identifying possible barriers to company goals. Having an inclusive culture is very important at P&G; therefore, managers are held accountable for achieving diversity in their departments.
P&G looks at retention results as a measure of how the company is doing. Over the past few years, the annual turnover rate for minorities was about 7 percent which is almost the same as the average turnover rate for the entire company—6 percent, which is fairly low for the industry.