The Business of Diversity

Affirmative action” is one of those phrases that make many people uncomfortable, but it provided The Home Depot with an opportunity to expand its reach within the government sales sector by becoming a federal contractor.

Because an affirmative action program had to be in place for federal compliance, the company decided to meet the challenge head-on and open the doors for frank dialog on the issue at the same time.

“I think the company was really ripe for having a more open discussion about diversity and affirmative action and how they work together,” says Jeff Spratlin, The Home Depot’s director of associate relations and government compliance. “And that’s a testament to how The Home Depot was built. No matter what the challenge is, we attack it with every ounce of energy we have.”

The Home Depot has nearly 2,000 stores and more than 300,000 employees; if a Department of Labor audit were to occur, it would likely be on a location-by-location basis. The retailer needed a solution that was expansive enough to be the focus of a company-wide initiative, yet specific enough to create individual action plans for each store.

The clear choice, according to Spratlin, was Peopleclick’s Affirmative Action Solutions. Even if The Home Depot hadn’t already had experience with the Raleigh, N.C.-based company through use of its Recruitment Management System, it would have selected Peopleclick “in a heartbeat” for the provider’s previous success with large global organizations.

“For the most part, the core product is off the shelf, but Peopleclick has been incredibly flexible in taking that core product and customizing it to meet our needs,” Spratlin says.

It wasn’t just the large number of stores: It was also the sheer volume of data that would need to be processed and the need for meaningful reports capable of being turned around on a short timeframe. Hires, transfers and promotions needed to be visible from a variety of angles to accurately track how well the company is representing its customers and its communities.

The solution came in the form of the Peopleclick CAAMS reporting platform, which is short for Complete Affirmative Action Management System. Randy Jesberg, senior vice president and general manager of Affirmative Action Solutions, says one-quarter of all affirmative action plans nationwide are powered by Peopleclick. What’s new about CAAMS is the range of diversity capabilities Peopleclick has added in response to increasing demand — particularly from retailers — for diversity reporting based on its methodologies.

“In many cases, people’s compliance programs have matured beyond basic government reporting and have moved into supporting business improvement programs that enhance top- and bottom-line results,” Jesberg says. “There’s a broader understanding in organizations of the information they’re looking at and how it will help to take the business to the next level.”

Overall, he says, retailers have recognized the importance of maintaining a diverse workforce, “one that is reflective of the communities they serve.”

Being able to monitor and analyze the make-up of that workforce makes for a strong business case. Compliance may be a common driver, Jesberg says, “but people are often surprised at the business benefits they gain.”

On-demand, flexible trend analysis means that data can quickly and easily be extrapolated from a store basis to a district or division. As people are hired, promoted or separated from the organization, the CAAMS system regularly analyzes HR data, evaluates the composition of the workforce and creates easy-to-understand views of the demographics and trends.

Managers receive regular updates and are able to study that data through various viewpoints and work to develop plans that address areas of under-representation. There’s even a tool that assists with compensation studies.

The diversity metrics didn’t reveal anything that caught The Home Depot completely by surprise, Spratlin says. They did, however, confirm the existence of a “gap” in a very “vivid” way.

More and more women homeowners were coming into the stores looking for help and do-it-yourself supplies, Spratlin says, “and we saw a trend in women looking to go into the DIY business. We were seeing women looking for opportunities … [beyond] ‘traditional’ roles. Now we’re seeing them in more true merchandising departments, like lumber and building materials, millwork, electrical, plumbing — things like that.”

If there were any surprises, he says, they came in how readily the solution was accepted — as well as championed — within the organization.

“We went into this knowing that the scope would be a big challenge,” Spratlin says, “but we were prepared for that. What we didn’t foresee was just how much attention we would get internally from the leaders of the organization, and how closely they wanted to be aligned with this initiative.

“You have a tendency to think of something like affirmative action as nothing flashy. It’s not new lingo; it’s been around for a long time. Sometimes you lull yourself into thinking that it’ll just fly under the radar and not get a lot of attention, but because it was new to The Home Depot, this kind of energized it. A lot of people rallied around it.”