PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — It’s been two years since the police murder of George Floyd ignited protests across the nation. Amid civil unrest, workplaces across the nation promised to become more diverse and racially equitable, with many making supportive statements in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Two years later, how have companies fulfilled those promises?
Jael Chambers runs the Philly-based diversity consulting firm Cultured Enuf. During the protests of summer 2020, he saw an uptick in workplace leaders and CEOs reaching out for guidance.
“[Amid] George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, we received some emails specifically from clients saying, ‘Hey, we heard of some of the great work you’re doing, can you help us create a statement?’ ”
But therein lies the problem, Chambers said. Many organizations hopped on the trend releasing symbolic statements without a real plan or desire to follow through with transformative actions.
“At that moment, some people were just excited to have their companies care about this topic, where they didn’t really keep their companies accountable,” he said. “As consultants, what I’m finding out from friends across the U.S. is that some people were just excited to get work and really didn’t work with partners effectively to say, ‘Here’s actually what you mean by your commitment.’ And so this needs to be a three-year process.”
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Chambers estimated about half of the organizations that reached out in 2020 seemed to only be interested in making statements, not truly following through on outreach.
There are outliers, of course, who have committed to their equity goals in the years since Floyd. Locally, Chambers praised the University of Pennsylvania, which recently partnered with historically Black colleges to recruit more under-represented students in medicine.
Chambers’ team thoroughly vets a company’s CEOs and stakeholders before they agree to take them on as partners. Still, he said they have had some clients drop out after the audit process, some citing costs as the problem.
“There are just so many actual statements that companies have said they’re going to do, and the money that they’re pledging, really only less than 1% actually have given that money in some way,” he added. “Just on a local level in Philadelphia, that’s very diverse, some companies said they are still struggling with the cost.”
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Meanwhile, who do companies answer to when they haven’t followed through on their diversity and inclusion goals?
Allison Green Johnson, chief diversity officer at Lincoln Financial Group, said the company set eight measurable racial equity goals in 2020. The Radnor-based organization also decided to ask its board of directors to hold them accountable.
“Not only did we make the public commitment, but we’re not backing away from it,” she said. “We report out, our board of directors is actively engaged, and they get an update on a regular basis.”
In other workplaces, Chambers said employees of color often end up being the judge.
“The ‘Great Resignation’ — everyone’s talking about it. Then you’re seeing a desire, especially for people of color, to really say, ‘Hey, I knew this was a toxic culture and unhealthy. Now it’s evident, because you’re not following through,’ ” he explained.
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The struggle to retain talented workers of color shouldn’t be a company’s only motivation to instate change.
“It’s more of, what type of company or organization do you want to be?” he said. “They have these values, they say these things, and they’re not aligning their behaviors with their values. If those are values you don’t want to work at, take them out of your values. When you say you want diverse people, you want to lift up women of color and be a place where people feel included, just say, ‘We want to be a place where people just come and work.’ ”
At Lincoln, Johnson said racial equity is a core value. While the company has long been committed to diversity and equity initiatives, the racial awakening of 2020 was a call-to-action to scale it up in measurable ways.
“We are seeing our culture grow and change,” she noted. “We’re seeing empowerment of employees speaking out, being heard, and being brought to the table for the solution and the engagement around it.
“Our fundamental value and belief is that everyone should have access and opportunity to grow their wealth or to sustain a financial future they’re proud of.”
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