Diversity: attracting & retaining tax professionals.

• Author: Nash, Shannon King

It is no longer a secret. Inclusion of diverse backgrounds and opinions provides companies with a broader set of opinions and experiences, thereby allowing companies to get the right answers to tough, complex business questions in a rapidly changing business environment. More important, it allows each of us an opportunity to enrich our own lives.

Many organizations have taken concrete steps to ensure a significant diverse workplace. There still appears, however, to be a lack of diversity among tax professionals and in many tax departments. To address this shortcoming, this article discusses a number of ideas on increasing diversity. Part 1 offers some practical suggestions on how to attract minority tax professionals. Part 2 discusses how to develop minority tax professionals. And part 3 suggests steps that can be taken to retain minority tax professionals. (1)

Part 1: How to Attract Minority Tax Professionals

Attracting minorities to your organization must start with a commitment from the top of the organization to modify the hiring process. More fundamentally, companies must address the question of "Why diversify?" As previously stated, the ultimate goal of diversity cannot, or should not, be to pander or to satisfy the demands of "political correctness," but rather to enrich the overall organization and recruit, retain, and reward individuals on the basis of their skills and contributions, not their demographic characteristics.

The key issue addressed in this article is not why, but how. Our experience and observations--and quite candidly, the tax profession's history--teach that diversity does not happen automatically. It requires vision, effort, and perserverance.

Many organizations have implemented what would be considered "best practices" in recruiting and hiring qualified candidates. We have taken a number of the best practices and fine-tuned them with respect to hiring minority candidates. What follows is a non-exhaustive list of questions that every organization that is trying to diversify its tax department must address.

Evaluate Your Demographics--What are the current and historical demographics of your company's workforce and how have they changed during the last 10 years?

The commitment to diversity begins with taking a group "snapshot" of the people who work and have worked in your organization over the last 5-10 years. True change can only begin with accepting where you are and where you have been.

Evaluate Your Hiring Practices--What have been your company's hiring practices with respect to minorities?

Before an organization can develop a plan on how to attract minority tax professionals, it must address its past candidly. Many organizations publicly embrace a corporate commitment of a diverse workforce, but the "numbers" simply do not bear this out. Behind the walls of the organization there are no minorities in key positions to be found or the numbers have not significantly changed over the past few years.

Minorities need to see the genuineness of your statements. If you have not achieved your corporate objective or you are having problem achieving it, you should not hide from it. Candor about the past will build credibility with minority candidates.

Identify Where Minorities Are in Your Organization--Where are they in the organization? Where did their career with the organization begin? And for those who are no longer with the organization, why did they leave?

You can learn a lot about what would attract minorities to your organization from those currently within your organization--and even from those who have left. Not all minorities in a particular group, however, share the same values or have the same needs. To assume otherwise is a common stereotype that has it own implications.

Part 3 of this article focuses on the retention issues, but it is important to realize if you have a retention problem on the front-end of your hiring efforts.

Assess Your Attractiveness to Minorities--How many minority candidates have submitted applications? How many have interviewed? To how many have extended offers and how many have accepted the offer?

By evaluating the number of minority candidates who have applied for positions, you will be able to see how many minorities have been attracted to your organization in the past.

High numbers may show that you have been very attractive to minority candidates, but for some reason they have not made it through your interview process. Low numbers can be an indication that minorities are not aware of opportunities at your organization. It is important to evaluate how many minority candidates were extended offers and how many accepted. Again, these numbers may be able to shed light on how attractive your organization is to minorities.

Define Your Target "Pool"--What pool of tax professionals is the company targeting--gender, race, sexual orientation? Does the company know what would and would not be attractive to that target pool?

Defining the pool of candidates is crucial before you can begin attracting minority tax professionals. You may be targeting one pool--by gender, race, or sexual orientation--or several pools at once. Once you have narrowed down your pool or pools, you will need to determine what is attractive to your target pool. A...