Also read: federal agencies, diversity events, diversity management

Last week, The Wall Street Journal carried an op-ed piece written by Sen. James Webb, D-Va. "A plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers," wrote Webb. "The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future."

Although the sound bite from his essay may be distressing to those traditionally underrepresented and his comments came on the heels of last week's poorly handled Shirley Sherrod incident, which illustrated a lack of diversity management in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the White House, I think, in total, Webb's full article deserves serious discussion and consideration.

DiversityInc is a metrics-oriented publication. The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® has been measuring diversity-management best practices and results for 10 years. Three years ago, we started a Top Federal Agencies competition. If you compare the results of the federal agencies that chose to compete with corporate efforts, our data shows that government diversity-management initiatives are not as robust as corporate efforts, with some exceptions, such as the U.S. Navy.

In addition to our data, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s most recent “Annual Report on the Federal Workforce” found several pockets of workforce-diversity underrepresentation.

• Although Blacks and Asians are overrepresented in the government workforce, compared with the total labor pool, white federal workers have a higher average pay grade
• Men have a higher average pay grade than women
• The number of federal employees with targeted disabilities has been steadily declining for more than a decade, dropping from 1.1 percent in 1999 to less than 1 percent in 2008
• Latinos, the fastest-growing population in the United States, also remain underrepresented at all levels of the federal labor force, accounting for only 3.6 percent of the senior pay level and 7.9 percent of the total federal workforce. In 2008, Latinos made up 14.3 percent of the entire workforce (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• DiversityInc Top Federal Agencies data shows that new hires for federal service are less diverse (both race and gender) than the existing workforce in those agencies at the same time our country and its workforce are becoming more diverse

Over the years, DiversityInc has chronicled the small number of Latinos and people with disabilities in federal jobs. Click here to read "Why Are Federal Agencies Not Hiring Latinos?" and click here to read "Which Federal Agencies Fail at Diversity? EEOC Tells All."

So why do I agree with Webb? It has been my hands-on direct observation that federal diversity efforts are an outcrop of equal-opportunity programs. Where the government had a head start on the civilian sector decades ago, government programs have not evolved to keep up with the best practices in diversity management as measured in the DiversityInc Top 50.

This is not the fault of federal EEO/diversity professionals. The results show, where top management supports them, they have excellent results. However, they are positioned in the enforcement and compliance EEO department, which limits their influence and relegates their efforts to be more marginal than corporate efforts. Webb is on the right track; I see that when diversity efforts are relegated to compliance, white people can be marginalized. "Diversity" and EEO ends up meaning "a program for everyone but white men." This isn't the way the companies on the DiversityInc Top 50 do things, and here are my recommendations to bring federal diversity efforts more in line with corporate efforts that have been proven to be more successful:

• Compliance should be handled by attorneys. Compliance training should be mandatory and NOT confused with diversity training
• Diversity efforts should be evaluated by metrics-based results and the bottom line should be on equity AND quality at ALL levels
• The senior diversity professional should report to top management
• Diversity programs should be focused on development of all talent. For example, mentoring programs should be for all employees; employee-resource groups (ERGs) should be open to all employees, and non-race/gender groups should be formed, such as LGBT, people with disabilities and life-stage groups, such as eldercare
• ERGs should have business plans; the goal of ERGs should be a benefit to the agency
• Senior management must become more visible and hands-on in managing diversity and holding their reports accountable for results
• Diversity councils should have equitable representation, especially to include white men

Good diversity efforts help everyone, including the group Webb is worried about (white men). For example, we have seen that mentoring and ERGs are the cornerstones of building equitable talent development—yet the federal agencies that participated in our Top Federal Agencies for Diversity had only 10 percent of managers in a structured mentoring program, compared with 40 percent of managers at DiversityInc Top 50 companies. Equitable mentoring programs— which include everyone—ensure that talent rises to its potential. This is just one example where expanded diversity efforts would benefit white people.

In conclusion, I believe Webb has made some good points, but rather than throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I think the valuable expertise and experience of the diversity/EEO professionals in the federal government should be liberated—and accountability for results should be at the most senior levels of federal agencies. The dramatic growth of corporate diversity efforts underscores the bottom-line benefits of proper diversity management—and white people (as well as everyone else) benefit when management optimizes the productivity of the workforce.