|
K.C. NEEL
A wake up call.
That's what most cable executives said when the NAACP gave the industry an overall "C" grade earlier this year for its efforts to diversify its ranks. Six months later, several MSOs have intensified their diversity efforts, yet most operators feel they were doing pretty well before the NAACP's report was released in April.
"We've been doing a lot since the report card came out," says Insight Communications SVP-human resources Judy Poole. "We applaud the NAACP's effort. We all needed a wake-up call."
"Everybody was put on notice after the NAACP report card came out," says Pandit Wright, EVP-human resources at Discovery Communications. "It definitely heightened the awareness and was a rallying call for the entire industry."
The NAACP ranked the top 10 MSOs in various diversity areas and concluded that the industry "is not very responsive to the African-American community in any category."
In all areas, the industry's average ranked between "poor" and "needs improvement." While the survey found that the industry showed a strong willingness to deploy services to African-American markets, they showed "very poorly in the advertising/marketing and vendor development categories."
The grades ranged from "B"s for Charter Communications and Prime Cable (now owned by Comcast) to a "D" for Insight Communications. AT&T Broadband, MediaOne (now owned by AT&T) and Comcast came out with "B-"s; Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems scored "C+"s; Cox Communications and Adelphia Communications came out with "C-"s.
Most operators will say they are doing a better job of promoting diversity than the NAACP report cards would indicate. For one thing, the information used to grade the MSOs was almost two years old when the NAACP asked each operator to participate.
The report also focused almost solely on African-American issues, sidestepping other ethnic and minority group needs. Many operators point out that their programs are designed to include all ethnic groups.
"Most organizations have concentrated on this issue on and off for years," adds Patty Clinch, AT&T Broadband's EVP-human resources. "We became aggressive on a broad inclusion basis a few years ago."
Diversity programs at most MSOs these days include representation from all racial groups, as well as people with different religious beliefs, lifestyles, disabilities and genders.
Diversity programs no longer can be dedicated solely to ethnic differences, says Discovery's Wright.
Discovery has launched a telecommuting project, developed a family institute to help people with work/family issues and has an emergency child-care program for employees. And it's not alone.
"We need to put the tools in place to make sure our work force is as diverse as possible, and that means giving people the tools to deal with their lives regardless of their situation," Wright says.
Charter Communications SVP-human resources Don Johnson agrees.
"We want to include everyone and not exclude anyone," he says. "We don't want to focus on just one group. Our employees represent a wide range of differences."
Comcast VP-resources/outreach Kathy Bryant concurs.
"The NAACP report helped us focus on issues that are important to the African-American community," Bryant says. "We knew there was room for improvement. But we knew that before the report came out. No matter what your difference are, you should be allowed to prosper and succeed."
Every company has to define what diversity means and how much focus to place on each piece of the pie, says Mae Douglas, Cox Communications' chief people officer.
Cox , Comcast and Charter all have hired executives whose main job is overseeing diversity issues as they relate to employees and vendors. Other MSOs have staffers who dedicate the majority of their time to pushing diversity within the employment ranks.
Charter has a long history of promoting diversity at every level. Johnson realized two years ago that the issue was so important that he hired Robin Greeley as EEO/ diversity administrator.
"We're very proud of the fact that we found Robin," Johnson says. "She's one of the few people around who actually has a (college) degree in racial and ethnic relations."
Although Greeley has been around for only two years, Johnson's emphasis on diversity goes back to the 1980s when he first got into the cable business with Cencom Cable Associates - the precursor to what's become Charter. Founders Jerry Kent, Howard Wood and Barry Babcock always placed heavy emphasis on hiring a diverse work force from the beginning, he says.
"We started Charter by hiring a number of minority and women VPs, GMs," Johnson says. The company was in its infancy in the mid-1990s when internal diversity programs designed to promote minorities from within the company were put into place.
"We started out small," Johnson says. "But the programs have grown as the company has over the years. The report wasn't the impetus for any of our programs, but it was important."
Comcast also punched up its diversity efforts after the NAACP report came out, but the company's initiatives first took shape two years ago when Comcast president Steve Burke selected Bryant to oversee the company's employee and vendor relationships.
The MSO's first companywide diversity effort was a leadership development program that is now in its second year.
"We recognized that we needed a proper pipeline (within the company's ranks) if we wanted a diverse work force to run the company in the future," Bryant says.
Some 22 Comcast managers were chosen for the pilot program. They met four times during the year. The sessions were designed to build business acumen, bring the managers to the attention of upper level executives and develop a network throughout the company.
"They had to work on a real-life Comcast case study, and they had to devise a community relations program," Bryant says.
Of the original 22 managers, 14 have already been promoted, Bryant says. Another 22 managers were chosen to participate in the program this year, and the third group of managers met for the first time in late September.
"We felt this program would help develop people we felt had potential to move up in the company and would reflect the diversity of employment companywide," Bryant says.
Cox has several diversity programs in place, but since Douglas came on board in May, the MSO has stepped up its efforts significantly. One of the first things Douglas did was to hire an HR manager whose job is solely dedicated to luring college students into Cox's fold.
She also launched a mentoring program that lets veteran employees share their experiences with newer and lower-level staffers and developed a minority purchasing program that identifies minority vendors each system can use around the country.
Several other MSOs also have developed purchasing and vendor programs.
Time Warner launched a minority and women business development program about a year ago, according to Time Warner Cable spokesman Mike Luftman. Each division creates quarterly reports that go to corporate for evaluation.
Every Insight Communications system must generate a monthly diversity report, says Poole. That way, she says, "if an issue crops up, we can address it quickly and directly, but it takes time for policies and practices to spread across an entire company, especially when the company is a mish-mash of recently acquired properties."
Many MSO executives say their companies are trying to incorporate diversity into every facet of the business from recruiting and promoting employees to developing strong minority/women-owned vendor relationships to becoming involved in community programs to offering wider ranges of programming choices.
People look at diversity as an employment base, Charter's Greeley says, "but we must be responsive to a large diversity of customers and the communities we serve. For instance, that's why we put a lot of emphasis on hiring bilingual customer service representatives."
Other MSOs also say diversity only starts with hiring and promoting minorities.
"Some companies focus their diversity efforts at the human relations level pretty exclusively," says AT&T's Clinch. "But we think it's a much broader issue. It includes marketing, supplier management, community relations, external and internal communications, staffing, succession development and training - just to mention a few."
"It's easy to get locked into looking at this from a narrow perspective, but we can't," she adds. "Recruitment is extremely important, but effective training and succession is even more important long term."
A detailed succession plan can also help drive recruitment, most executives say. If potential employees see there is a path they can follow to move ahead - and they see executives who've already taken the path and have successfully moved up the corporate ladder - it becomes easier to lure top-notch talent. Even so, AT&T Broadband's goal is to have 80% of the company's employees in its internal succession program.
That's important in an environment where unemployment is averaging less than 4% around the country. Many of the operators say their markets have 1%-2% unemployment rates, making it very difficult to lure quality employment candidates.
Systems in larger metropolitan areas may have a hard time attracting minorities, but some smaller systems, which also face FCC equal employment opportunity, often find it even more difficult. Any system with six or more employees must abide by equal employment opportunity rules, Polka says.
"It's often harder, mainly because of where many of our members are located," says Matt Polka, president of the American Cable Association, which represents smaller, independent operators around the country. "They generally hire people from the communities they serve, and many times, the communities are not highly diverse. But it can be done and done successfully."
The cable industry didn't come out looking very good in the wake of the NAACP's report card on diversity issues. After surveying 10 MSOs, which represent about 66.1 million cable customers or 75% of the country's cable customers, the industry came out with an overall "C" grade.
So how did the organization come up with its grades?
Operators were rated for their performance on employment, hiring and promotions; service deployment; procurement/vendor relationships; advertising/marketing opportunities and expenditures; and charitable/philanthropy activity.
The NAACP asked for information on testing and deployment of new services in African-American communities. And companies were surveyed on their support of local communities' technological needs, as well as support provided to communities through schools and libraries.
Ratings included Excellent, Good, Needs improvement, Poor, Not rated/No points and not applicable. Each rating came with a corresponding number and a grade. The points for each category were totaled and divided by the total number of line items in a category to derive the overall point standing.
The study found that African Americans are only represented on three boards of the 10 cable companies graded. Employment is most represented below the officer level, although the survey did find there is a strong showing of African-American professionals in the industry.
The operators did not show a tendency to increase rates to offset the provision of new services, the survey found. And it has shown a willingness to deploy new services in African-American markets when deploying new services to the general marketplace. The industry also showed good in-kind community support, the survey found.
However, the NAACP said the MSOs have, for the most part, failed to use African-American media for advertising campaigns, and the industry scored its lowest ratings when it came to vendor development.
And while three companies received `A's for their philanthropic programs, the industry overall needs to goose its charitable efforts, the NAACP said.
Back to this issue
|
