Conduct a glass ceiling self-audit now - includes related articles

A self-audit can identify problem areas and provide insights on how to set realistic action plans.

A Glass Ceiling Review may not be in store for your organization today because you are not a federal contractor. However, it may be in your future. The Glass Ceiling Commission's charge is to conduct a study and prepare recommendations aimed at eliminating artificial barriers to the advancement of women and minorities.

The reviews now being conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) focus on federal contractors. For these contractors, doing a self-audit prior to external reviews may help them avoid fines or externally imposed corrective actions. For everyone, the audit can document any ceilings and the reasons they exist.

The qualitative analysis

When you determine by a self-audit where your organization's glass ceiling is, it should be the lowest level at which either protected group (women and minorities) is not represented well. Don't be surprised to find out that you also have a "sticky floor" (qualified members of either group can't go beyond the entry level) or "glass walls" (members of either group are occupationally segregated in jobs that aren't clear paths to the top). Indeed, if all the representation levels seem about the same and low, the best approach is to zero in on the lowest level that leads to management. It is natural to look at the lowest level, because qualified individuals will pass through those levels on their way to the top. If you have never had a minority director, your problem doesn't lie between director and executive, it lies below the director level.

Suppose you find that the lowest "gestation period," the years of service required to enter a level, for an executive is 20 years, and they have all had international experience. Yet the most senior woman or minority has 15 years of service, rave reviews from her or his director, but no international experience. Some companies have been saying, "The hell with our culture, she's good, we'll make her an executive without international experience." However, the DOL isn't telling federal contractors and other organizations to violate their cultures. In fact, the DOL is seeking only to create an atmosphere in which merit and qualifications alone, not race or sex, determine executive selection. The DOL wants artificial barriers removed, but the signal sent by violating your culture is not entirely positive. The stigma of getting a promotion "because she's a woman" can be a problem in the best of situations, and in our scenario, it is potentially explosive.

Choosing to bypass the tried-and-true development path for executives may subsequently lead to more walls erected between the sexes and races and cause discontent among majority men who are bypassed. This can result in efforts by majority men to sabotage their subordinates or peers, or a mass exodus of key employees, or morale problems and discrimination suits by majority men who might use for their benefit the very cultural assessment you have just done.

At the same time, you increase the odds that you will promote a person beyond his or her ability. This serves no useful purpose because it may cripple the brilliant career of an individual who could have been more successful in a few years. It will reinforce biases by saying "this job is more than this group can handle." Subsequent efforts will be more difficult.

In its 1992 "Pipelines of Progress" report, the DOL reviewed a company that valued long-term service in its executives. The DOL recognized and accepted this and found no discrimination, even though minorities and women "were not well represented in the top-level positions." Instead, the DOL found that the organization was doing many things to make a diverse executive staff a future reality while not violating its culture.

In our "20 years of service and international experience" example, the DOL's approach would be to make sure that the female candidate is given access to international experience soon. The DOL might find that you have failed in that you haven't given that opportunity yet. However, it may be a part of your culture that international assignments occur after 15 years of service. If our fictitious company has only given an international assignment to one woman and also has a turnover problem for women, the assignment of women to international experiences might do wonders for retention.

Why AAP hasn't helped

Your affirmative action plan hasn't done the job because you haven't reached critical mass. Our critical-mass theory postulates that

* Not everyone is executive management material.

* If the "cream" truly rises to the top, you can say, based on your current workforce breakdown, that only the top 1 percent of the relevant workforce are destined to be executives (if that executive level is currently 1 percent of the relevant workforce).

* If you have only 80 minority professionals out of 800 professionals, then you may not have critical mass for minorities at the professional level.

The reason that you haven't reached critical mass is that 1 percent of 80 is less than one person. Once you figure in your attrition rates, the number becomes even smaller. Thus the odds that your professional ranks hold tomorrow's minority president become even more remote. If 58 percent of your professionals are white men, it is likely that they will continue to contribute more executives. The assumption here is that ability is evenly distributed across all groups. To assume otherwise is to say that diversity will eventually cripple organizations.

If you don't have enough minority and female professionals to provide high-potential candidates, they won't be chosen for high-level international assignments. But this is a self-perpetuating cycle. Failure to name women and minorities to international assignments may account for the quit problem, and your best female and minority talent may be leaving your organization.

You can take the critical-mass theory further and say that only 20 percent of professionals are destined to reach supervisor level, 10 percent manager level, etc., that 5 percent of managers will reach executive levels.

Set your goals

The barriers you find and the culture within which you operate will determine your action plans. The glass ceiling audit is not a one-time process. Once you identify the roads to the top, you continue to monitor access to these roads and take actions to remove artificial barriers. Goals must be set, with gestation periods and developmental steps identified. For some organizations, the goal may be nearer than others.

If you will have a 100 percent turnover of your executive staff in the next 10 years, and you have several minorities and women who have "punched all the tickets" and have the requisite years of service, then you probably don't have a glass ceiling problem as long as you don't bypass these qualified individuals. Your goal in this case should probably be to have an executive staff that mirrors relevant labor force demographics, again assuming that all the candidates are equally qualified and prepared.

If, on the other hand, you are like most organizations, you will also have a 10-year executive staff turnover, but access to developmental opportunities has been limited for women and minorities. (This may be what you just discovered with your audit.) Then your goal may be much more modest--to take aggressive actions to develop minority and female talent so that you will have qualified "ready" individuals to choose from in five years and have representatives on the executive staff by the 10-year mark.

Now is also the time to consider your succession plan and the philosophy behind it. If high potentials are identified by the school they went to or very early in their careers, is this system working? Are you hiring women and minorities from those schools? Chances are the high potentials look much like the people who select them.

Perhaps a more fail-safe plan is to make it a part of every manager's job to develop the talent of every individual subordinate to its fullest potential. And then to reward those managers who develop the individuals who distinguish themselves. An organization that follows this latter TABULAR DATA OMITTED approach may get recognition on two fronts. One, as a company that has capitalized fully on its human resources, and two, with the Glass Ceiling Commission's National Award for Diversity and Excellence in American Executive Management.

Conclusion

If you hire executives through search firms or through personal contacts, equal access for all groups must be your clearly stated objective here as well. Selling the value of diversity to senior management is the most important precondition to making headway on a glass ceiling problem. The self-audit may help in this process. Many executives probably don't realize there is a glass ceiling problem at all in your organization.

A survey reported in Fortune magazine lists the top 10 reasons executives gave for why women are less likely to be CEOs. The top three are "It's a matter of numbers," (there are more men)--our critical-mass theory; "They lack sufficient experience," (which points to our roads-to-the-top methodology); and "It's a matter of time" (our gestation-period theory).

The Bush Department of Labor's culture-cognizant approach recognized that diversity done well is self-perpetuating and, conversely, that diversity efforts don't work if they trade discrimination against one group for discrimination against another. It is unknown at this time whether the Clinton DOL will follow the culture-cognizant approach. All the more reason to do a self-audit now!

References

State University of New York at Albany's Center for Women in Government study.

Lopez, Julie Amparano, "Study Says Women Face Glass Walls as Well as Ceilings," Wall Street Journal, March 3, 1992.

Fisher, Anne B., "When Will Women Get to the Top?" Fortune, September 21, 1992.

Why Should I Be Concerned?

The glass ceiling was officially recognized and defined in 1991 in the U.S. Department of Labor's "A Report on the Glass Ceiling Initiative." The report defines the glass ceiling "as those artificial barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward in their organizations into management level positions." Glass Ceiling Reviews, otherwise known as Corporate Management Reviews, are now being conducted by the DOL and will soon be "coming to a town near you." Federal contractors are the focus right now, but the DOL feels all employers have the duty to remove barriers.|1~

The glass ceiling was further recognized in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 with the establishment of a Glass Ceiling Commission. The Commission's charge is to conduct a study and prepare recommendations aimed at eliminating artificial barriers to the advancement of women and minorities.

Q. What does a review entail?

A. Top DOL officials are involved in the Corporate Management Reviews. Instead of the typical statistical data prepared for an AAP review, the DOL will look more at corporate culture and practices that appear to impede the advancement of qualified minorities and women. A top DOL priority is to ensure that an organization is providing equal access to the "Pipelines of Progress" (the title of a 1992 Glass Ceiling Commission report). That means equal access to such things as executive development programs at universities, international assignments, operations assignments and high-profile project teams.

Q. What groups of employees are reviewed for equal access?

A. "As increasing numbers of minorities, women, individuals with handicaps and covered veterans with qualifications comparable to their peers move into management and other key positions, Corporate Management Reviews are designed to ensure that they do not encounter artificial barriers to further advancement. ...|2~ You may find several glass ceilings--different barriers for women or for the various minority groups.

Q. But wait! I thought I only had to look at minorities and women?

A. Strangely enough, both DOL reports focus entirely on women and minorities. Although this article is designed for auditing the ceilings for these two groups, the methodology can easily be applied to other groups. However, the OFCCP Compliance Manual, Chapter 5, specifies that reviewers are to look at the other groups as well.

Q. Don't my affirmative action plans count for anything?

A. In a word, as far as the glass ceiling, no. The AAP is a bottom-focused, minimalist system. Goals are modest, based on how you define your relevant labor market. You simply have to make a good faith effort to hire. There is a world of difference between having as your goal "I'm going to hire X minorities and X women this year" (AAP) and having as your goal "I'm going to have a diverse executive staff that mirrors labor force participation rates of all groups" (glass ceiling).

Q. Why do a glass ceiling self-audit?

A. "OFCCP has long required covered contractors to engage in self-audit to identify and remove impediments to equal employment opportunity," according to the OFCCP Compliance Manual. In addition, companies are increasingly finding that a diverse workforce is a competitive advantage. It will be increasingly untenable to have a diverse workforce and customer base, and a majority male senior management team. Self-audits are the first step of this management challenge.

The actions necessary to eliminate artificial barriers, and achieve a diverse executive staff require a long-term view of the entire HR system (training and development, succession planning, compensation, mentoring, recruitment).

1. Albert R. Karr, "Progress Seen in Breaking 'Glass Ceilings,'" Wall Street Journal (August 12, 1992).

2. U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs Compliance Manual, Chapter 5 (December 1991).

How To Conduct a Glass Ceiling Audit

The self-audit process is not as statistically oriented as the affirmative action plan (AAP), but in order to complete the audit, you need to collect information. The process has four steps:

1. Statistical information collection. 2. Senior management and corporate cultural analysis. 3. Barrier identification. 4. Qualitative analysis.

Statistical information collection

Create and fill in a table or matrix to show the diversity analysis of your relevant workforce. You may choose to do this by either division or function or line compared to staff. Titles should reflect your title structure, grouping like titles together. Minority women can be counted twice, or put in a separate column, or you can look at each minority group separately. Once you have the numbers and percentages, you can slice the data any way that fits your organization's culture.

Some organizations draw their executives exclusively from the professional-and-above levels. If your organization is one in which the road to the top starts at the bottom; a driver, customer service representative, or meter reader, for example, then you must look at those levels in your self-audit.

If you have data on the diversity of your workforce going back three, five or seven years, then you can do historical tables. They may show that you are already headed in the right direction.

Another useful piece of information is to do a graph of female and minority representation percentages in the workforce each year for each job grouping. A great source for this information is your EEO-1 report, if you are a federal contractor. This won't give you the nice breakdown of levels, but instead will give you officials and managers, professionals, technicians, and clerical categories. You can quickly spot trends here that may illustrate how inadequate the AAP is for achieving a diverse executive staff. This, of course, prompts the big question: Why aren't our hiring efforts paying off?

A table showing female and minority "hire" and "quit" percentages answers the question at least partially. In our fictitious organization there is a net loss in both minorities and women over the time period observed. That is, from 1988 to 1993, more women and minorities are leaving than are being hired. You can also observe whether the hiring percentages maintain the status quo by comparing this table to your first matrix--the current relevant workforce percentages.

Why are minorities and females quitting at such a disproportionate rate? At what point in their careers are they quitting? Exit interview questionnaires should help answer some of these questions. This information can point to the cultural factors that interest the DOL.

Our exhibit provides an excellent way to "grade" your diversity efforts. It also shows that the hiring percentages must be much higher to offset the quit rate and to increase overall representation of minorities and women. To fill in this type of chart, you should go back as far as you can for data.

Senior management and cultural analysis

The next step in the process requires you to analyze as many senior managers and as many higher levels of managers as is possible. Use categories appropriate to your culture.

The question you are asking and answering is "What does it take to get to the top at my company?" This is important information for HR practitioners to know for both personal career planning and for counseling other employees on career choices. Once you have gathered the data, highlight the minimum values--the person entering the level with the least amount of all the categories. If you "took a risk" for a majority man, it is reasonable to expect you to take the same risk with a woman and/or minority.

Look closely at those things that everyone in the level shares. Concentrate on these first in your barrier-identification analysis. For example, does everyone have international experience?

At this stage you should also look at your succession planning process. It may have been the source for this data. If you identify and groom high-potential employees, you need to answer the questions as to how people are identified. Are minorities and women represented in this group? If all or most future executives pass through this system, yet the representation of women or minorities in the group is low or nonexistent, then this is a clear signal of a glass ceiling problem.

Barrier identification

Let's suppose that international experience is a major pipeline that you have identified. It is also a pipeline that the DOL has recognized and will be sure to look for if they audit your organization. Other "must consider" roads to the top include: executive development programs; operations or line experience; mentor, special projects and cross-functional assignments; and club memberships. You should fill out a table for each pipeline that you identify for your organization.

This is where you monitor equal access and thus discover artificial barriers. If you find unequal access, answer these questions: How are people identified for this road? Why haven't the expected numbers of women and minorities made it into this pipeline?

If your answer to this question is, "We assume or have found that women don't accept international assignments, so we don't ask anymore," you lose! This type of reasoning would clearly be considered discrimination against women. You can't make the decision for all women or even one.

Qualitative analysis

See the accompanying article for advice on how to use the data, theories that apply to the data and suggested actions to plan.

Patrick Kelly is an HR practitioner with 5 years' experience who has recently completed an audit for his organization, a manufacturer.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Society for Human Resource Management
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