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DiversityInc unveiled the second annual DiversityInc Top Federal Agencies for Diversity list March 10 at a two-day event in Washington, D.C. The March 10 part of the event, “From EEO to Effective Diversity Management,” was aimed specifically at federal agencies and was attended by more than 200 people. It featured presentations from major military and corporate leaders, including Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Admiral Mark Ferguson, on diversity-management best practices.
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The federal-agency survey was sent to more than 500 agencies this year, with 30 actually completing the survey. DiversityInc found that many agencies have to go through several levels of confirmation in order to participate in surveys conducted by the private sector. Therefore, the next version of this survey will be available by the end of this month and will not be due until Jan. 14, 2011, to allow agencies more time to submit their data.
The survey focused on four key areas: Leadership Commitment, Human Capital, Communications and Supplier Diversity. More than 100 questions, all empirically based, focused on leadership development and mentoring, workforce and management representation, employee-resource groups, diversity training, diversity branding and supplier diversity.
Findings:
The focus of the event was to illuminate to the public sector what best practices The 2010 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® are using for effective results. DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti compared the aggregate data of the federal-agency participants with the 2010 DiversityInc Top 50.
The findings demonstrated that the participating federal agencies are far behind corporate leaders in some key areas.
Federal-Agency Leadership:
Participating federal agencies lagged behind the DiversityInc Top 50 in terms of strategies used to promote and show commitment for diversity throughout the organization. Sixty-nine percent of agency heads regularly meet with employee-resource groups, compared with 88 percent of DiversityInc Top 50 CEOs. Only 31 percent of agency heads personally sign off on supplier diversity, a key area for federal agencies; 86 percent of DiversityInc Top 50 CEOs do this.
Human Capital:
Workforce and recruitment representation for participating federal agencies was lower than the DiversityInc Top 50. On average, these agencies have 10 percent fewer Blacks, Latinos and Asians in their workforce and recruit 19 percent fewer than DiversityInc Top 50 companies. The comparative of current workforce demographics to new hires is critical because it shows progress.
Differences in women representation and recruitment are glaring. Participating federal agencies recruit 25 percent fewer women than represented in their workforce. DiversityInc Top 50 companies recruit the same percentage of women that are represented in their workforce.
Agency Communications:
Findings in the communications section showed that there is a need for increased communications about employee-development programs at the participating federal agencies. Only 8 percent of employees at the participating federal agencies participate in employee-resource groups and only 11 percent of managers participate in mentoring programs. On average, 24 percent of employees at DiversityInc Top 50 companies participate in employee-resource groups and 40 percent of managers participate in mentoring programs.
Supplier Diversity:
Participating federal agencies are ahead of the curve in procurement spent with minority-owned and women-owned business enterprises (MWBEs). These agencies spent 12 percent of their total procurement with MWBEs, compared with 8 percent for the DiversityInc Top 50 companies.
While the aggregate participating federal agencies trailed the DiversityInc Top 50 in key areas of diversity management and representation, there were five agencies that exhibited strong diversity management and diverse workforces. These agencies were recognized by employee size and in alphabetical order:
 100,000+ EmployeesÂ
•      U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
•      U.S. Internal Revenue Service
•      U.S. Navy
•  5,000–50,000 Employees
•      Army & Air Force Exchange Service
•      U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
I wish DiversityInc would do this type of survey at the State Level and see how they measure up with Federal afgencies and Private Sector Companies
I believe you will find a huge number of unique best practices if you include state agencies in the survey. You should really consider adding this group to your survey structure.
US Dept of Veterans Affairs has regional offices abroad and majority of the employees overseas are non-US citizens. US Navy and Army & Air Force Exchange Service have military facilities abroad and are hiring non-US citizens. If your survey is based on “all US citizens federal agency,” then IRS is number one.
It’s too bad we can’t see the complete list of agencies ranked. I suspect there are many agencies that do not divulge their numbers, such as NSA or CIA, which would bring a very interesting shift in the results of the survey. Is there a way to create a non-biased survey to include those agencies?