Making Diversity "Stick" in the Workplace: The Need to Equip Diverse Employees with Skills to Succeed by Mary Seto

Diversity, to me, is having an employee population that reflects the working population at large, including people from different races, countries, cultures, religions, ages, genders and lifestyles. Hiring a diverse array of employees is the easy part. Yet it cannot be seen as an end to itself, for if a company or a law firm is to retain those hires and to flourish as an eclectic business environment, it must equip those “diverse” employees to succeed.

In most cases, and in most places, such an endeavor still requires bringing employees up to speed in an environment created and dominated by white males — and this goes for law firms as much as it does for any other industry. Many sectors far surpass the legal profession in their integration of diverse workforces. From the viewpoint of an executive in the manufacturing business, I can attest that diversity is a quality we consider in choosing our outside legal counsel.

For diverse employees of the law or any professional sector to assimilate wholly into their respective corporate culture, we must equip them with a set of social tools I call “soft skills.” In contrast to more defined characteristics, such as technical ability or professional experience, soft skills are intangible and less quantifiable. Employees who exhibit soft skills add depth, value and diversity to the workplace. They contribute to meetings; they make their voices heard in brainstorming sessions; they recognize favors and find ways to acknowledge them. Habits such as these may not be technical, yet they largely determine how far an employee can rise within an organization. Without them, technical talent and expertise cannot be applied, and a talented hire can be made to feel stifled and invisible. If someone does not seem to “get it,” consider that perhaps no one has taken the time to explain what “it” is.

We are not born with soft skills, and for those of us not raised in a white-collar American family, acquiring these skills may require conscious effort — a learning process that peers accomplish over a lifetime. In this regard, I was fortunate. When my parents moved from Hong Kong, I was just three years old. They had the option of settling in New York City’s Chinatown, where they would have known the language and could have assimilated more easily in a familiar culture. Instead they chose Brooklyn, where their limited English language skills meant they had trouble communicating on even the simplest level, yet it forced the family to learn the language and adjust to life in America. Needless to say, my parents were unable to help me with my school work, though they were always supportive. They insisted that I perfect my English, which they saw as essential to a good education and to a better life. In a sense, they gave themselves no choice; we were thrust into a community with few Asian immigrants and we had to work hard to assimilate into the culture to succeed.

I was young enough to make that transition with relative ease (in hindsight, and somewhat ironically, more Chinese language instruction might have proved useful later in my life). But having watched my parents adapt to life in America, I remain keenly aware of the challenges that people face when they attempt to fit into a new culture. I can empathize with the many immigrant children who struggle to keep up the same grades and SAT scores as their American-born peers, without the benefits of parental guidance and support. Similarly, in the workplace, those from diverse backgrounds often must work that much harder just to stay afloat. Companies cannot assume that one version of employee orientation will fit all, just as law firms cannot expect a class of diverse junior associates to arrive with an identical set of polished social skills.

Professional mentorship helped me succeed, and I now feel the duty to “pay it forward” to new employees. When I have mentored people within my company, I have shared my own experiences, such as how I overcame the fear of speaking in public and how I consciously worked to get noticed and impress my supervisors. Just as a law firm trains new hires on the technology systems, so too can it instruct them on how to run a meeting, how to make a presentation to a group, how to network at a party — and, to borrow a phrase, how to win friends and influence people. Teach them that small gestures of appreciation to those who have helped in their careers, such as hand-written thank-you notes, can go a long way towards cultivating mentors. Once we acknowledge the enormous value of employees’ social skills — both inside and outside an organization — the benefits of developing those skills become evident. Further, that investment signals to employees not only that their cultural differences will not impede their advancement, but also that their supervisors will embrace these differences.

In the case of a privately-held company, the employers’ buy-in to this philosophy will determine its success. At Bel-Art, where I have worked for 18 years, the principals have long been progressive about hiring women and minorities (long before diversity was ever recognized as an issue), particularly in a blue-collar manufacturing environment. And even here, there has long been tension between those managers who were hired with college degrees and those who were promoted from the operations side. Yet for two years before my son started school, I was able to stay in senior management while working four days a week. That flexibility and accommodation of personal needs is a testament to the importance placed on retaining diverse employees, and one of the reasons why I chose to remain with the company.

Whatever their motivation may be, employers and their personal vision will guide the culture of a company. If these measures to support and retain diverse employees do not radiate from the top, they will be shrugged off. Directives from human resources have a fraction of the impact that a few choice words from a senior partner or a corporate executive carry. Attitudes trickle down. Inside a firm, they may feel atmospheric. Outside a firm, clients notice those attitudes. We hear the words attorneys use among themselves and we observe how power is distributed among partners and associates. When hiring outside counsel, we take measure of how a law firm’s values coincide with our own, and we want to see that the firm is supporting its diverse attorneys.

My concern is that employers are at risk of failing to follow through with the promise to hire and retain diverse employees. We have to accept that it is no longer politically incorrect to acknowledge the elephant in the room: that diversity is important and, furthermore, that it depends on recognizing and addressing differences in employees’ abilities. Allowing diverse hires to work alongside colleagues who can help guide and mentor them, and providing training experiences in these less concrete areas, can help those employees merge smoothly into their position and demonstrate, with confidence, their full value.

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Mary Seto is the Executive Vice President of Bel-Art Products, a manufacturer of products for laboratory, health, industrial and safety use. She is currently managing one of its subsidiaries, Maddak Inc, which is in the home healthcare field. She formerly served as Bel-Art’s Chief Financial Officer and as its Vice President of Human Resources. She has an MBA in Finance from Saint John’s University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and Finance from New York University.