In the past decade, diversity management has grown from a compliance-based offshoot that only examined racial and gender diversity in the workplace and was primarily housed in HR departments to what organizations increasingly consider the most vital aspect of their ability to be competitive in the war for talent and for customers/clients, suppliers and vendors.

The diversity definition has changed as well. While "diversity" used to be a code word for Black, today it encompasses Latinos, Asians, American Indians, people of mixed racial heritage, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people, people with disabilities, people of different generations, people of varying religious groups and immigrants.

Why is diversity management so essential? It drives employee engagement across all groups, regardless of race/ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability and religion. Engagement fosters productivity and innovation, which are crucial to sustainability.

DiversityInc is in the unique position of assessing this because in 10 years of running The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity^®, we have collected in-depth data on more than 500 companies. Participation in this survey demonstrates how far diversity management has come. Last year, there were 449 participants, up from 118 in 2003 and 256 in 2006.

Consider these factors from the four areas of diversity management measured in the DiversityInc Top 50 survey: CEO Commitment, Human Capital, Corporate and Organizational Communications, and Supplier Diversity.

• Twenty-eight percent of chief diversity officers in the DiversityInc Top 50 now report directly to their CEOs, compared with 18 percent in 2005.
• Last year, 25 percent of managers at DiversityInc Top 50 companies were Blacks, Latinos and Asians, compared with 20 percent in 2005. Nationally, Blacks, Latinos and Asians were 15 percent of managers in 2005 and 17 percent last year (EEOC).
• Last year, all of The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity had employee-resource groups, compared with 70 percent in 2005. These groups are defined as company-sponsored groups, open to everyone, that are used to educate, recruit, retain and reach out to the marketplace. At DiversityInc Top 50 companies, 84 percent of CEOs meet regularly with leaders of these groups, compared with just 34 percent in 2005.
• Formal mentoring programs, both across cultural groups and with same cultural groups, have become an essential part of diversity-management programs. At DiversityInc Top 50 companies, 38 percent of managers participate in a formal mentoring program, double the percentage in 2005.
• All of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies offer domestic-partner benefits for same-sex partners of employees, compared with 64 percent in 2005. Nationally, 53 percent of companies offer these benefits (Human Rights Campaign).
• Eighty-six percent of DiversityInc Top 50 companies offer training and mentoring to minority- and women-owned suppliers, compared with 42 percent in 2005.

What are the most successful diversity-management practices? Those with measurable results that both increase cultural competence and deliver a strong result that aligns with the company's business goals. Those increasingly are focused on employee-resource groups, also known as affinity groups or employee networks. These groups are used for diversity recruiting, diversity retention, employee engagement and increasing cultural competence as well as to reach customers/clients/suppliers. Other diversity best practices include formal, cross-cultural mentoring programs, diversity training to ensure cultural competence across the organization, and talent-development programs that help people realize their potential.

Diversity management has been under attack from organizations that fail to understand its long-term impact on corporate sustainability, but DiversityInc has debunked all of these so-called studies. SHRM, for example, published a poorly researched study that wrongly hypothesized that diversity management was a casualty of the economy. Similarly, The Wall Street Journal erroneously claimed "the death of diversity" based on a Rand Corp. study that used obsolete data, which the lead author admitted wasn't relevant anymore. And BusinessWeek published a "study" on the failure to promote diversity in senior management that was actually based on a pop-up web-site quiz with anonymous respondents.

What are the real frontiers in diversity management? Measuring employee engagement across cultural groups; studying the impact of generational communications; and understanding how to implement global diversity on a local level in countries where the issues are very different.

For in-depth information on diversity-management best practices, please see www.DiversityIncBestPractices.com.