Does Your Workforce Match Your Demographics?
Why it matters now, and how you get there
Only 13% of city managers in the US are female, and diversity is just as bad, if not worse, among minority and other groups. Unless you have a city where 87% of the population is male, this is a problem.
Why? Because community members of all ages need to see local government as a place where they belong; a place that delivers the goods and services they need, and a place that creates and enforces regulations for them. If a city or county workforce doesn’t reflect the community at large, then it is not a place where the community can feel at home.
Cities need to be leaders in diversity, now more than ever. We have cities in crisis over racial issues and a country mired in debate over gender and religion. Part of the solution is for our workforce to resemble our communities, but it will take time to repair the lack of diversity in local government leadership. So let’s get started.
How do we make diversity happen?
If we are going to solve the needs of the community, we must understand our communities and their residents, not just intellectually, but inherently. Diversity needs to reflect the community as part of the essential character of the employees who work there. This can only happen when those planning, serving and making policies look like the community they serve.
City leaders can take steps to start addressing this issue now.
Investigate - Understand how your workforce compares with the community. Hire a consultant or do it yourself. Visit www.census.gov. There is a box in the top center of the page called “QUICKFACTS.” Input your state. On the next page input your city or county. Scroll down to see detailed demographics of your municipality.
Communicate - Let your decision makers know the stats. If your workforce reflects your city, congratulations, you have earned the right to brag. And please spread the word about how you achieved success – others want to learn from your example.
If you don’t look so good, it’s time to let your decision makers know. Internally, this doesn’t just mean human resources – but everyone in the organization who contributes to hiring decisions. You also need to let your governing bodies know. They need to understand the importance of diversity and inclusion to the organization. They need to wholly endorse moving toward a workforce that reflects the community, and they need to take action when they have a hiring decision to make. City councils and county commissioners appoint the highest level managers and attorneys, and this is a critical area of disparity nationwide.
Tactics to Encourage Diversity
How can you increase diversity in the workplace? That is something that needs to be customized to your community and include the input and buy-in of existing employees and other stakeholders. But there is an arsenal of tactics that can be used to increase diversity:
Insist on a diverse pool of resumes for every job.
Write job descriptions in plain English and make job descriptions shorter.
Find new ways of promoting open positions. The way people search for jobs is changing – change with it.
Implement blind resume review (no names, no photos).
Work with local high schools, community colleges and universities to recruit employees, and interns. Build a pipeline of diverse employees.
Make sure that your minority employees have development opportunities. And promotional opportunities.
These actions, and others like them, don’t take anything away from anyone else, but they do help encourage underrepresented populations to become, and stay, a part of your organization.
Why is diversity important?
One bonus is that greater diversity will help our cities and counties be better organizations. There has been a great deal of research showing the advantages of diversity in the workplace. Here are a few highlights:
Innovation – The Harvard Business Review article “How Diversity Can Drive Innovation” (Hewlett, Marshall and Sherbin, December 2013) reports that leaders with inherent diversity (traits such as gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation) combined with acquired diversity (traits gained through experience) resulted in greatly improved performance and innovation. This is because diversity unlocks innovation by creating an environment where outside the box ideas are heard.
Recruitment – A Glassdoor.com survey found that two-thirds of people consider diversity important when deciding where to work, (November 17, 2014).
Performance – In “Why Diversity Matters,” (Hunt, Layton and Prince, January 2015) McKinsey & Company found that companies with gender diversity outperformed others by 15%, while those that were ethnically diverse outperformed others by 35%.
But the real reason to promote diversity is because it matters. In local government we are responsible for building and securing the future of our communities. For everyone in our communities.
