How Pursuing Diversity Makes Us a Better Company

Research is the lifeblood of Eli Lilly and Company.

It’s the key to discovering new medicines. It’s the key to understanding patients’ health journeys. We found it’s also a key to becoming a more inclusive place to work.

A few years ago, we turned our research on ourselves—to understand the journeys of Lilly’s women and minority employees. We then used what we learned to begin removing previously hidden barriers for women and minorities and to change our company to offer more opportunity for everyone.

Today, those efforts were recognized by Catalyst, a global non-profit organization that uses research and proven solutions to accelerate and advance women into corporate leadership. Lilly was one of four companies this year to receive the Catalyst Award.  

Self-examination

Our efforts began in 2015 and initially focused on women. While nearly 50 percent of all Lilly employees were women, only 20 percent of vice presidents and above were women. That was normal for Fortune 500 health care companies, but we knew we could and should do better.

Women are a critically important segment of our customers. Studies show they make more than 90 percent of health care decisions for their families. And we’ve all seen the data showing that companies with gender-diverse leadership teams deliver better financial performance. Addressing our gap was the right thing to do, and the smart thing to do for our business.

So we went beyond the normal analysis, using an outside firm to ask more personal questions than our traditional employee-engagement surveys ever had. The research brought to light several issues that exist at Lilly—and many other companies:

• Women said they often feel like “impostors” in an environment where most leaders are men and where “relationship capital” has traditionally played a key but unspoken factor in promotions.
• Asian employees feel they’re always “backstage”—technically terrific but less often moved into management.
• African-American employees often feel they’re always “on stage”—required to prove themselves and also to represent all other black employees at every moment.
• African-American women and Latino employees both feel “invisible” compared to their counterparts.

Taking action

Once we saw these startling findings, we took action. We shared the results—first with leaders, and then with the entire company. That made all Lilly leaders accountable for improvement—and built empathy and trust amongst employees.

Here are some of the actions we took:

1. We initiated training to help managers lead more inclusively by valuing differences, recognizing and overcoming bias, and fostering a speak-up culture. And we held them accountable for results. About 3,000 managers, senior directors and vice presidents globally have participated so far. We’ve also begun a new cultural literacy program for all employees.
2. We committed to revamp our talent-management processes to minimize unconscious and conscious biases in our hiring, management and promotion practices.
3. We set a goal to increase the number of women in management by four percentage points within two years. That meant a growth rate of more than 10 percent. At the end of 2018, we hit that goal. The number of women leaders at Lilly globally rose from 38 percent to 42 percent. And the number of women on our Executive Committee—leaders who report directly to me—climbed from 29 percent to 43 percent.
4. We also set goals for increasing the percentage of minority employees in management. We hit those goals in 2018 and are setting even higher ones this year.

These are not quotas. Every hiring manager is instructed to hire only the best-qualified candidate for each job. But we do expect hiring managers to make sure candidate pools include diverse talent. By casting a wider net beyond people they already know and trust, managers bring in more talent and ensure that the very best candidate gets the job.

More work to do

We’re not declaring victory. The Catalyst Award is a welcome recognition of our progress—and a chance to share what we’ve learned with other companies. But we’re not stopping.

We continue to believe that becoming more diverse and more inclusive makes us a more attractive employer—for all people, from all backgrounds. Being a better employer means we can recruit and retain the best talent—people we need to discover new medicines and get them to patients who are waiting.

Lilly’s performance recently has been strong—with more new medicines launched than ever. Research—here, here, here, here, here and many other places—makes it quite clear this performance is deeply connected to a culture that includes everyone—so everyone can bring their best to work.