Hiring employees with an eye toward
diversity, whether it’s ethnic, gender or age-related, can help fuel
excitement and creativity. For the long-term growth of a business, it’s beneficial
to have employees who share the same
core values, such as a passion for their
chosen field, but who offer a variety of
perspectives and can communicate with
all types of customers.
After all, points out Melissa Pollard,
senior vice president and group manager
in Comerica’s Orange County Middle
Market Banking Group, your customers
will be from a diverse population. And
you should be able to reflect the kind of
customer that you have.
“Creating a culture that is welcoming of
all, regardless of their race, sex or age,
opens up a company’s opportunities,”
she says. “Having a diverse work force
allows you to better serve your clients’
needs.”
Smart Business spoke with Pollard
about the virtues of diversity, what types
of initiatives are most effective and how
a company’s creativity can be enhanced
by hiring a heterogeneous group of
employees.
In what ways can companies benefit from
having a diverse work force?
From my experience — having been in
banking for 21 years — it seems as
though, initially, diversity was the politically correct thing to do. We’ve come to
find out, however, that not only is having
a diverse work force the politically correct thing to do, it is also the smart thing
to do financially. When you look at companies that rank high in terms of diversity metrics, they tend to outperform other
companies financially.
What types of diversity initiatives are most
effective?
Through all of our diversity initiatives
we’re trying to empower our colleagues
by strengthening their internal and external connectivity. Our focus internally is
to attract, retain, mentor and promote
our diverse colleagues within the bank.
Externally, we want to champion the
benefits of having a diverse work force
and work with as diverse a client base as
possible.
Periodically, we have internal events
that provide educational programming
and are designed to be a mentoring/
learning/connecting type of event for
internal colleagues. Our external events,
such as investment seminars, are
designed for business development
opportunities.
How should a company go about providing
equal opportunity for leadership positions?
The key is to hire and develop talent
with an eye towards diversity, provide
mentors with similar backgrounds and
then provide adequate training so new
hires can be groomed to reach their
goals. Almost half of the officers at our
bank are women. Over the years, women
have been well represented here, which
gives us a unique advantage. When you
have a well-balanced work force, there is
less of a disparity between the sexes in
leadership positions. When you combine
all of our initiatives — women’s, African-American, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific —
they represent the majority of our work
force.
How can a company’s perspective and out-reach be broadened by having a diverse
work force?
If you have a homogeneous work force,
then everyone will be like-minded; when
faced with decisions and questions, you
will only get one answer. The benefit of
having diversity is there are many different perspectives that can be shared and
all of the different backgrounds will
make your organization stronger.
Let’s say you have a dozen people in the
room that share the same background
and you pose a problem to them. You’re
probably going to get the same type of
feedback from each of them. But if you
have a dozen people in the room and they
are all representing different cultural
backgrounds and various upbringings,
you will likely get a dozen different
responses. Creativity is enhanced and
solutions can be customized and tailored
to fit each client’s needs.
Speaking from a banking perspective,
the clients and marketplace that we
serve are diverse. We are trying to create
a friendly business environment because
we believe there is strength through
diversity. Having individuals that represent a variety of different backgrounds
makes us stronger.
MELISSA POLLARD is senior vice president and group manager in Orange County’s Middle Market Banking Group, and chair of the
Western Market Women’s Initiative of Comerica Bank. Reach her at (714) 435-4406 or [email protected].
