The enforcement strategy increasingly used by the EEOC and the OFCCP today is based on investigating “systemic disparities”, which is different than the individual complaints-based and/or small-scale investigations of the past. Tactically similar to class-action litigation, this enforcement strategy is structured to have the broadest possible impact by using statistics to identify disparities between groups in hiring, promotion, and termination rates (amongst other selection decisions).

Learn how enforcement agencies are using teams of statisticians and testing experts to recover record settlement, and how to prepare and protect your organizations in light of this "game changing" approach.

In today’s global economy, we work with people from different cultures—colleagues, managers, employees, customers and suppliers—who either came to North America as immigrants or are located in other parts of the world. Gain a better understanding of the influence of culture through different perspectives on how people think, and communicate and operate. Learn how to effectively give and receive feedback, and communicate with people who come from culturally different backgrounds.

Laws and policy are changing and you need to understand how these changes impact your organizations. During this session, we cover the new changes with the ADAA, OFCCP emphasis on Section 503, Section 508 Refresh, and state and international laws. Review recent litigations and hear how they could have been avoided.  Learn best practices for not only reducing risk, but helping your organization create a process-driven plan to open new market opportunities and provide value and return-on-investment based on crucial internet communications and technology (ICT) accessibility, CSR and marketing strategy.

For the first time in history, individuals from four different generations are working side by side in today's workplace, presenting both challenges and opportunities. This session heightens your awareness about life changing events that have shaped generational views. Understand and leverage the work philosophy of each generation and strengthen your human resources.

This session is for the Diversity practitioner who wants to have a practical, high-level overview of how to implement diversity within the corporation/organization or for the HR professional who is now responsible for the diversity function.  Learn the proper definition of diversity; identify the five elements needed in your diversity mission statement and the key differences between affirmative action and diversity.  Discuss a diversity business case, the strategic approach needed to ensure success as well as the pros and cons of metrics and practical tools for gauging ROI to ensure success.

The most critical challenge for leaders is to create value from the differences among employees—to find ways to leverage them for the purpose of generating the outcomes that are important to the organization. Discover an alternative, strategic approach to diversity, crafted specifically for emerging business leaders and the opportunities to practice the concrete skills that you need to foster engagement and productivity in a diverse business environment.  Learn how to incorporate diversity into your organization’s strategic plan and use it to yield game-changing results.

Using a case study, you learn how to build a diversity scorecard based upon your organization’s needs; identify key considerations for selecting ROI-focused measures; demonstrate your diversity initiative’s causal relationship to business performance and mission accomplishment; and apply steps in the diversity return on investment (DROITM) process. You learn the critical questions to ask, the metrics to use, the challenges you must be prepared to handle and the calculations and results you need to demonstrate the value of diversity programs within your organization.

Leaders, managers and employees often seek out HR for support, coaching and guidance on how to address challenges and ensure that differences are maximized in the organization.  In order for D&I efforts to create real change within an organization, all stakeholders need to understand their role and need to enhance their competencies to play this role effectively. One key group of stakeholders in the D&I Journey is HR. Leave this session with a roadmap for the HR D&I development journey so that you better understand the role that you need to play to drive D&I success. 

Building a truly diverse organization means more than broadening the demographics of your employees.  One group that is often overlooked from all aspects of diversity is military veterans.  Learn the size and purchasing power of today’s military consumer and methods for reaching this community. Realize the business benefits (tax credits, other support dollars) for hiring veterans. You also learn how to find VOSB/SDVOSB’s and confirm veteran-owned status.

Traditional diversity efforts often fail to produce results. From employee diversity training to employee engagement initiatives, substantial company investments can be maximized with strategic and solid program design.  This session analyzes case studies of successful programs and provides a framework through which you can evaluate the effectiveness of your companies’ programs. The framework and guiding questions help you identify ways to strengthen your diversity programs for results.

The true effectiveness and power of diversity is to ensure that all ideas get heard, that the playing field is level and that no one is subtly advantaged or disadvantaged based on their diversity.  Most organizations are still in Diversity 1.0 with their networks, trainings, recruitment, retention efforts.  To make sure all who are qualified can make it through the pipeline and not ultimately just dominant group members, companies must now move to Diversity 2.0. Understand the real purposes of diversity. Learn how to come to terms with how we bring our unconscious beliefs, assumptions, roles, and archetypes of people to the office. Provide tools for leaders to ensure that organizations are true meritocracies where the subtle inequities are observed and eliminated.

Refresh your understanding of diversity and inclusion and the meaning of inclusive leadership.  At the end of this session, you will be able to articulate the four competencies of an effective role model for inclusive leadership; identify the actions of an inclusion advocate; and provide the opportunity to consider your ability to be an inclusion advocate.

Today’s top Fortune 500 companies are maintaining 100% scores on the LGBT Corporate Equality Index (CEI) because it impacts recruiting, retention and market share. How do you rate on inclusion for LGBT employees? This session covers best practices and also looks at the current trends for LGBT employees from a U.S. and global perspective. At the end of this session, you will be able to track the inclusion of LGBT workplace equality as the next step in overall diversity programs, discuss all the aspects of diversity for LGBT employees, evaluate your company and be able to meet the 2012 new criteria in the areas of transgender health benefits and LGBT metrics using best practices, and much more.

This session reinvents diversity and inclusion for the 21st century by providing listeners with a “human behavior” framework for understanding how exclusion and intolerance occur with respect to both people and ideas, even with individuals and in organizations that are committed to diversity and inclusion. The session looks at how close-mindedness takes place and suggests measures you can take to be more open-minded and to entertain new ideas. Learn how to become more flexible, adaptable and agile – necessary attributes for a 21st century world.

The demographics of today’s workforce are becoming more and more diverse and it’s not just about race and gender. The many dimensions of diversity include, but are not limited to, age, sexual orientation, disability, religion, language, work and communication styles, and globalization. This poses a challenge for leaders who are trying to create inclusive teams from such diverse perspectives. This session uses a documentary entitled From Breakdown to Breakthrough: A Story of Inclusion as a catalyst to demonstrate how a diverse team can accomplish a daunting goal. The ensuing discussion pulls many workplace applications from the film.

This session introduces research from The FutureWork Institute (FWI) on the challenges and opportunities that the newest generation brings to the workplace. Our newest workers have developed hypertext minds that leap around with cognitive structures that are parallel, not sequential. Are we ready for them? Do we know what their ideal workplace looks like, or the organizations they most admire? Might we have to teach social skills to a group that, at graduation, have spent 11,000 hours in school and 15,000 hours in front of the TV? Get ideas and successful practices from the FWI research, gathered from organizations that have developed innovative practices to build relationships and engage this generation.

More than 75% of men and women believe in the benefits of gender parity, but only 20% believe their company is actually doing something about it.  Hear about strategies for building diversity know-how, including best practices for garnering support for a women’s network. Get the top strategies used by savvy change agents at global companies including communicating network activity, managing push back from others, and building alliances at all levels will be featured. Learn how to build the business case for developing and elevating women to senior roles, and how to leverage relationships with key stakeholder groups including customers, suppliers, employees and Boards.  Learn how gender balanced leadership elevates diversity and inclusion overall and how to provide specific strategies for obtaining that balance.

Come prepared with the top three strategic objectives of your enterprise and leave prepared to speak the language of your chief executives: CHANGE!

In this power-packed session, we examine the 10 points of passage for every successful D&I strategy. Bring a copy of your strategic plan for immediate application. The presenter shares seven of the 12 Pillars of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, which your executive team uses to evaluate your current D&I offering.  Learn the five competencies EVERY diversity practitioner must possess to help ensure organizational competitive advantage.  You will leave with three real-time strategies to help you create, build, enhance, and even resurrect your organization’s diversity focus.

A strategic plan for D&I from a talent management perspective provides strong advantages in terms of defined goals, pre- and post-assessment, and the ultimate convergence of domestic D&I with intercultural competence goals for effective operation in the global multicultural workscape.  At the end of this session you will be able to reframe D&I programs within the strategic framework of talent management; reconsider the goals of D&I within the framework of intercultural competence; understand the role of assessment tools in strengthening strategic D&I development; and blend D&I goals of the domestic multicultural workplace with those of the intercultural competent global workscape.

In this interactive session, you examine Rockwell’s story of white male leader engagement. Many companies have long struggled with engaging white male leaders in D&I (diversity and inclusion) efforts. Rockwell started their engagement journey with the premise that without white male leadership their D&I effort would become a compliance based, recruitment effort that would ultimately provide no real long term cultural change. The step-by-step process is one of transforming mindsets one leader at a time. The leadership within Rockwell is fundamentally changing the way diversity and inclusion is being implemented and practiced inside their organization by starting with examining and shifting their own personal behavior and actions.

Learn the strategic concepts and the differences of the “giving a fish” (offering sequential attention to the diversity issue of the moment) and “empowering to fish” (fostering development of a universal capability that can be used with the issues of the moment, those of the past and those of the future).  Explore the pros and cons of each strategic option, review an example of a universal model and examine the requirements for implementing a universal approach.

For decades, organizations have aspired to make their workforce more diverse. Many have been successful in creating a more diverse workforce; however, they now face the bigger challenge of making their workplace equitable.  The four phases included in making your organization more equitable are: Courageous Leadership, Courageous Conversation, Courageous Action and Courageous Commitment.   Learn how to gain buy-in at the C- level, transition diversity into equity, create a strategic equity plan, institute accountability at all levels of the organization and implement systemic strategies that ensure equity.

In this powerful session, you review the top five reasons strategy execution fails and the 10 approaches to avoid failure.  Examine the four definitions of strategy with eight methodologies for award-winning D&I strategy formulation and execution. This includes a review of your organization’s value proposition and organizational life cycle status, in order to determine whether you have the right D&I strategy. The presenter introduces the McKinsey 10 – Strategy Stress Test and discusses the five quantifiable outcomes your executive leadership team expects D&I to yield.  The session also examines the 12 characteristics of an impactful leader.

Cultural Competence (CC) is likely the single most significant innovation in the practice of D&I.  As D&I has evolved, globalization has led to the realization that without CC, organizations are going to fail to achieve their potential in this global, culturally diverse world. Based on over 30 years of first-hand experience, the presenter provides insights on a proven CC model being used by over 50 major corporations. Through small group breakouts we will clarify what CC is and is not, and examine where CC should reside in your organization.  Learn how to apply CC to enhance your organization’s competitive advantage. Examine cases that demonstrate the ROI of CC and how it significantly impacts an organization’s effectiveness and profitability. Learn how to develop an action plan to build CC in your organization.