Excerpt
July / August 2025, Case: "In the past few years, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs have been rolled back in both private and public organizations. For champions of workforce diversity, who feel as if their work is being undone, this is a difficult time. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that many management innovations designed to improve performance actually boost workforce diversity as well. And they don’t invite the backlash that formal DEI programs do. Executives across many industries have begun relying on high-performance management techniques that target different periods of the career cycle, from recruitment to retention. The animating idea of these efforts is simple: Valuing and supporting employees improves engagement and business outcomes. But it turns out that they also have a natural by-product: diversity. The authors describe five high-performance management techniques and how they’ve been implemented at well-known companies: referral programs at Oracle, skills upgrading at Walmart, mentoring programs at IBM, scheduling flexibility and stability at Gap, and performance-based retention at Amazon. Many techniques companies use to improve performance have a better record of fostering inclusion than diversity trainings and grievance processes do."