10 Ways Hiring Catapult Leaders’ Black College Graduates Makes Companies Better
1. Hiring College Graduates Who Are Black Improves a Company’s Financial Performance
“Diversity significantly improves financial performance on measures such as profitable investments at the individual portfolio-company level and overall fund returns. And even though the desire to associate with similar people—a tendency academics call homophily—can bring social benefits to those who exhibit it, including a sense of shared culture and belonging, it can also lead investors and firms to leave a lot of money on the table.”
2. Hiring College Graduates Who Are Black Increases Investment Success Rate
“How do the financial outcomes of homogeneous partnerships compare with those of diverse collaborations? The difference is dramatic. Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%.”
3. Hiring College Graduates Who Are Black Leads to More Diverse Collaborations
A recent study showed “that members of traditionally underrepresented groups were more likely than white men to seek out people unlike themselves when forming entrepreneurial teams…”
4. Hiring College Graduates Who Are Black Leads to Proportional Representation
“Combined with the fact that group homophily tends to compound over time, it also suggests that if the goal is proportional representation over the long term, it’s better to overcorrect for bias early on, by hiring more people from traditionally underrepresented groups, than it is to undercorrect.”
5. Hiring College Graduates Who Are Black Shows Active Effort to Erase Bias
“When people choose to ignore bias or deny that it exists, they keep seeking out business partners, team members, and employees who share their traits, and they miss out on the quantifiable benefits of diversity.”
6. Hiring College Graduates Who Are Black Allows Companies to Counter Bias
“Bias is a measurable condition, but it is not a permanent one, on either the individual or the organizational level. By acknowledging it we can counter it, expanding our pool of potential collaborators and improving financial performance.”
7. Hiring College Graduates Who Are Black Leads to a Diverse Workforce Which Attracts Top Talent
“In numerous studies, research has shown that employees in pro-diversity regions, like the U.S. and Western Europe, prefer diverse work environments. In a survey of 1,000 respondents, the job site Glassdoor found that 67% of job seekers overall look at workforce diversity when evaluating an offer. The takeaway is the most talented individuals go to places that do better with diversity, and this may be what is driving diverse firms in certain contexts to outperform their peers.”
8. Hiring College Graduates Who Are Black Leads to Diverse Idea Exchange
“Significant research has shown that diverse teams can develop more innovative ideas. When people from different contexts work together, their unique perspectives often lead to greater creativity.”
9. Hiring College Graduates Who Are Black Conveys to Investors the Competence of a Company’s Senior Leadership
“Sociological research on market valuation suggests that investors value when firms use commonly-accepted best practices, such as the inclusion of diverse groups in hiring, and they penalize those that break these norms.”
10. Hiring College Graduates Who Are Black Leads to More Customers and More Innovation
“Numerous studies show that a diverse and inclusive leadership team and labor force can mean everything from increased customer bases to greater innovations. And that, according to those studies, can improve financial performance by as much as 30 percent.”
Research supporting information in this article:
- The Other Diversity Dividend. Harvard Business Review. Paul Gompers and Silpa Kovvali. July–August 2018
- When Gender Diversity Makes Firms More Productive. Harvard Business Review. Stephen Turban, Dan Wu, Letian (LT) Zhang. February 11, 2019
- Why is Black Talent Opting Out of Corporate America. Korn Ferry. Peter Lauria.