Want a Diverse Leadership Team? Invest in Frontline Workers

I did not live in a diverse neighborhood. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. The neighborhood I grew up in was white. Really, really white.

And in fact, believe it or not in the town where I grew up, restricted zoning was still in place as recently as 85 years ago, meaning African Americans were literally restricted from owning property there. That's right, as abhorrent and disgusting as that sounds, 30 years before I was born it was illegal for an African American to own a house in the town where I later grew up. And the truth is 30 or 40 years after restricted zoning was ended there my block was still 100% white. So my home life was not at all diverse. In fact, it was quite the opposite of diverse.

But my church life growing up was different. As I wrote about in a column I authored for Gardner Business Media, Inc. about two years ago, twice every single week my family worshiped at a church not far from the central city. If you followed the race riots in the city of Milwaukee during the summer of 2016, just six years ago, that church that we went to wasn't too far from where the gas station was burned to the ground following the police shooting of Sylville Smith. The membership and neighborhood of that church reflected the diversity of its community and at least twice each week for 18 years, I spent time with my friends there.

I also spent six years of my life as a Milwaukee County lifeguard, and for two summers I worked at central city locations. If you followed the Milwaukee race riots in the summer of 2020, so two years ago, in a matter of minutes, you could walk from one of those two locations at which I was a lifeguard years ago to the corner where a group tried to set fire to a Walgreens store during those race riots in 2020.

There were literally days back when I was working at that location that if I wanted to see someone who looked like me, I had to go into the bathroom and look in the mirror. I remember being sick-to-my-stomach uncomfortable my first few days, but in time my coworkers there at that pool as a Milwaukee County lifeguard, those coworkers became my friends. We were different from each other. We looked different. Our backgrounds were different, but we work together just fine.

So by now you're starting to understand that my home neighborhood life was not at all diverse, but my work life and my church life, well those were a little bit different story. And thanks to that, when I got to manufacturing, first as Chief Operating Officer of a technology company and later as Chief Executive Officer of a contract manufacturing company - the latter located in the heart of the city of Milwaukee - I was 100% comfortable working with people from almost every background imaginable.

So my thoughts now go back to a visit to that manufacturing company, the second one, by the Mayor of the City of Milwaukee at that time (this is several mayors ago). And his goal in his visit appeared to be demonstrating his support for the manufacturing sector. And so a photographer followed us around snapping pictures. The meeting was cordial and, to be honest, not particularly memorable, except for one interaction I had with a member of his staff.

I made sure to introduce the mayor to every member of our leadership team as we walked the plant. Following the tour and seated at the conference room table, a staffer looked me in the eye and asked a question that gave me pause for a minute. Her question was this:

"What was your strategy for building such a diverse leadership team?"

I'll be honest, no ready answer came to mind as I reflected on the members of our team. Our head of customer service was Hispanic and two of our supervisors were as well. Our lead inspector, another supervisor and our waste treatment engineer were African American. Two of our supervisors were women and our controller was as well. Our assistant chemist was a Russian immigrant.

So sitting there with the mayor and his staffer, I wanted so badly to come up with a great answer to that question, to pontificate about the five keys to building a diverse leadership team. But all I could muster was that all of these people were great people. And in truth, we hadn't set out to build a diverse team. But as we hired and promoted amazing people, it just worked out that way.

Now, I later figured out the key to how we built that team. But thinking about diversity, our team at that company represented such a wide variety of backgrounds. And the truth was that what we now call diversity - I don't even really know that we used the term that much back then - that diversity made us a much better team.

We could relate to any employee, any potential employee, any customer, any supplier. And when we solved problems or brainstormed solutions, or thought about the consequences of our decision, the diversity of our team led us to better outcomes because we had more and better perspective than most companies on how our tactics and our strategies would affect all of our stakeholders.

So the truth is, not only is building diversity into our work teams doing good, the little secret is that it is also really good for business.

Diversity in our workforce is both doing good, and it's good business.

Let's get on to the second point. Let's say you own a manufacturing company, and 50% of my employees are say Black and Hispanic. At first glance, one might say that's a diverse company. And by at least one definition, it might be.

Let's hold on and think about that for just a minute, and I want to reflect on a fascinating article in the July 31, 2022 edition of my favorite newspaper, The Wall Street Journal . The article was written by a gentleman named Ray Smith ; he's a New York based Wall Street Journal reporter, and oh my goodness did he get me thinking. The article is entitled Black and Hispanic Employees Often Get Stuck at the Lowest Rung of the Workplace. And he makes some fascinating and enlightening observations.

So let's look just at the first paragraph of this article, which says, "For all of the effort companies have poured into hiring and advancing people of color, those moves rarely benefit the biggest - and most diverse - pool of workers they employ: the millions of low-wage workers in America's stores, warehouses, plants, and other front-line workplaces."

The article cites research by 麦肯锡 who wrote this report that's titled Race in the Workplace: The Frontline Experience. Now the full McKinsey Report is fascinating in its own right, but let's stick with the Wall Street Journal article for now. According to that article, the numbers suggest that companies' diversity efforts have largely missed the employees that stand to reap the biggest socio-economic gains from them.

Though nearly half of hourly workers in frontline occupations earn less than $30,000 a year, many have the potential to progress into jobs earning more than double that amount, such as a medical assistant who eventually becomes a radiation therapist, or a call center representative who transitions to a supervisor and then to a sales manager.

The McKinsey study and Smith's article cite some data:

• 61% of our workforce in the United States of America hold frontline jobs. (In manufacturing, these jobs would include positions like machine tenders, machine operators, shipping and receiving staff, warehouse workers, material handlers, forklift drivers, you get the picture)

The frontline sector of the workforce is super diverse:

• 70% of Black people in the workforce work in frontline jobs
• 73% of Hispanic members of the workforce work in frontline jobs
• For reference, 58% of white workers work in these jobs as well

So the point is frontline workforces are extremely diverse. Many of you probably know this anecdotally by walking around manufacturing shop floors across the United States of America.

But a diverse front line cannot be our gauge of diversity in a company, because it's not just how many members of a given ethnic group are employed in a business that defines diversity, but employed doing what?

If we are serious about diversity, it stands to reason that we should not just strive for a more diverse workforce, but on diversity across every strata of that workforce. So in manufacturing, that means the frontline tenders, operators, material movers and so on. But it also means in the ranks of supervision, and administration, and management, and executive leadership.

So how are we doing with regard to our efforts on workforce diversity? It turns out it depends a little bit on who you ask. The Wall Street Journal article quotes Lareina Yee - she is a senior partner and McKinsey as saying, "Only a fraction of diversity programs reach the front line. For the few that do reach the front line, workers aren’t buying them."

In fact, says the article, just 42% of frontline workers say their company's diversity efforts are effective. But when you ask the average corporate worker, about two thirds of corporate workers say their company's diversity efforts are working.

Think about that for a minute: ask the corporate types, and two out of every three say their company's diversity efforts are effective. Ask the front line, and barely four in ten say they are. I wonder who's in a better position to know?

So back to the Wall Street Journal article and why the disparity and perception between these two groups. The article argues that diversity programs fail "in part because they often fail to focus on the things that matter to hourly workers who want to advance, Ms. Yee says, such as giving them skills-building opportunities and showing the path to better-paying roles."

Now we are on to something. If you want a more diverse workforce, you need to invest in skills training - both hard skills and professional skills.

Back to the article, which makes it clear that hourly workers of color are not less ambitious than others. In fact, more than 80% of workers of all minority backgrounds, whether Black, Hispanic or Asian descent say they want promotions. 80%. That compares with 69% of white frontline employees, according to the data from McKinsey. And according to that data, these workers report getting fewer opportunities to advance than their white colleagues, opportunities like stretch assignments or entry into a skills training program.

(Image credit Wall Street Journal)

There's that skills training word again. In manufacturing, how do we advance a machine tender to a machine operator? Well, we train them. How does a machine operator become a team lead or a maintenance technician? We train them. How does a team lead become a supervisor, a maintenance technician a maintenance supervisor, a supervisor become a manager or how does a manager become an executive? We train them.

Training leads to advanced skills and advanced skills lead to promotion of frontline workers and promotion of frontline workers (because minority populations are over represented there) leads to a more diverse workforce, all from training. That's why training is so very important.

But the truth is that many manufacturers limit their training programs to as little as five hours a year. And for them, it's basically the OSHA-mandated training: lock-out tag-out, hazardous materials communications, confined space entry - all of the things that OSHA tells us that we have to train.

Now this wasn't always the case. Some data shows that in the 1970s, the average manufacturing employee received as much as 100 hours a year of skills-based training in their workplace. How do we get from 100 hours a year to today's five hours? Well, there's a lot of reasons for that. But the truth is most manufacturers do not have formal skills training programs, and they need to have them. It's one of the key solutions to the shortage of skilled talent. And based on what we're learning today, it is also the key to a more diverse workforce.

Recall my conversation with the mayor staffer, the one in which I had no eloquent answer to their question of how we created such a diverse workforce. While there wasn't a singular reason of how we did it, as I reflected on that workforce and on each member of our team, who represented a minority community, here's what I found:

• Our head of customer service was Hispanic. He started with us as a cell supervisor on the manufacturing floor. And as he showed skill and promise, we trained and promoted him.
• Two of our supervisors were Hispanic and one was African American. All three started as machine tenders - people loading and unloading equipment - as entry-level as a manufacturing job can get. And we trained them to do more.
• Our lead inspector started as an entry-level member of our quality team, and we trained her to do more. Our waste treatment engineer was African American. He started as a machine tender, and we paid his way through school to become a waste treatment engineer.
• Our assistant chemist - the Russian immigrant - she started out in a fairly entry-level role performing titration and making chemical additions to production lines.

So while I had no ready answer for the mayor staffer when she asked me her diversity question, the truth is that the way we created such a diverse leadership team was that we invested in our promising entry-level team members and progressively upskilled them into positions of greater responsibility. And that is how we create a more diverse workforce.

Now here on The TechEd Podcast, you have heard from leaders who are making huge investments in workforce training. People like Ron Wanek, the Chairman of Ashley Furniture Industries, Blake Moret, Chairman of Rockwell Automation, Aaron Jagdfeld, CEO of Generac, Austin Ramirez, the Chief Executive Officer of Husco, Laura Kohler of Kohler company, and the list goes on and on and on. These companies are investing in workforce training using highly advanced, highly efficient and highly flexible, affordable technology-driven training platforms and related third-party certifications. And this model is within the reach of every American manufacturing company.

So this is a call to action for our manufacturing sector leaders - to corporate America, where two thirds of our people say our diversity efforts are working while 60% of our frontline workers say they are not. If you really believe in creating a diverse workforce, and aren't just saying so because you think it's what people want to hear; if you really believe that diversity isn't just doing good, but it's also good for business; if you genuinely want diversity across every strata of your business model, from the frontline to the front office and everything in between; if this is you: invest in training. Upskill your incumbent workforce, and together will secure the American Dream for the next generation of STEM and workforce talent - all stem and workforce talent - without regard to ethnic background, or race.

This article is a transcript of a TechEd Podcast episode by Host Matt Kirchner .