The Key to Uprooting Institutional Discrimination is a Diversity Culture Audit

Automation Workz offers a seven-phase plan for conducting these audits

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Mar 18, 2021, 08:36 ET

DETROIT, March 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Many companies rely too much on their HR departments to protect employees and their company brand from racism and gender discrimination, says Ida Byrd-Hill, CEO of Automation Workz, a business consulting company that also reskills adults for certification in tech support, network engineering, and cybersecurity.

Ironically, she says, HR departments are often the source of such discrimination, which often begins with the personal biases of top executives that are worsened by HR's unwillingness to challenge executives on their problematic beliefs.

While hiring a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) executive as many companies do is often viewed as a means for solving the problem, the reverse is true, Byrd-Hill asserts. "Normally, the DEI is hired by HR rather than the CEO and is given a nonexistent budget, with no accountability over other departments. If HR is the source of racial and gender discrimination, the DEI executive is going to produce little or no results. Corporations have been spending $8 billion annually on DEI with reversed gains in hiring and retaining diverse talent to show for it," she says.

To get a handle on this issue, a Diversity Culture Audit should be conducted; this audit was created by Byrd-Hill in 1990 when she was a vice president of F-O-R-T-U-N-E Personnel Consultants of Detroit. She used the audit to increase the number of diverse technical attorneys she placed into large manufacturing corporations and law firms. In just three years, 72 executives, 30 of whom were diverse candidates, were placed. More recently, she dusted off the Diversity Culture Audit concept with the start of the Black Lives Matter protests, expanding it from executive search and recruitment to include all operations of a business, including tech.

Ida Byrd-Hill states, "A Diversity Culture Audit documents the mindset of executives including HR and then coaches them to change the policies and procedures that flowed from their beliefs. Otherwise, racial and gender discrimination will regrow, like a wild weed that has been chopped down at the visible level rather than uprooted from its core."

When the Diversity Culture Audit is completed and a strong executive coach regiment is installed to guide the process of increasing revenue with diversity, racism organically disappears. Executives and shareholders, focused on the potential increased revenue, will keep racism at a minimum, thwarting the disruption of profits.

The Automation Workz Diversity Culture Audit employs seven phases:

Executives are interviewed to get an understanding of their job function and personal beliefs
Current and former diverse employees are also interviewed to determine what they may have suffered
The company is visited to review their entire operation
Executive Diversity Coaching services are initiated
Finance, HR, social media, marketing, public relations, operations and social responsibility functions are reviewed
Findings and recommendations are issued in an audit report that spells out how diversity can improve revenue
Recommendations are implemented

Watch a video about the Diversity Culture Audit concept here.

About Ida Byrd-Hill

Ida Byrd-Hill is an economist, futurist, educator and author of Invisible Talent Market. She holds an MBA from the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University, with a specialization in people management and strategy. Byrd-Hill has appeared on Good Morning America, numerous radio stations and podcasts.

Contact: Ida Byrd-Hill, (313) 483-2126; [email protected]; www.autoworkz.org

SOURCE Ida Byrd-Hill