First, can you tell us a little about your own background and history with Cox?
I have been with Cox for 13 years. When I joined the Cox Communications family, I was part of their advertising sales organization in a human resources role. A few years later, I transitioned into an operations role where I had responsibility for part of our advertising sales organization. In 2000, I came back to human resources on the core side of our business to become a chief people officer, and I’ve been in this current role for seven years.

How do you define and meet your diversity goals and objectives? How does your department measure success?
Five years ago we received a challenge from our CEO to develop a diversity strategy that was integrated into every aspect of our business. As a response we established the Corporate Diversity Council, which is a group of senior-level diverse executives from across disciplines in our company, from both our corporate headquarters and our field locations.

The role of the Council is to look at every part of our business and make sure that we are developing plans that include our employees, our suppliers, our communities, and also our products and services in a way that all customers and employees clearly understand our commitment to diversity.

Our Corporate Diversity Council reports to our President and the executive team. It is the Council that develops the diversity strategy and makes sure the strategy is executed. We measure our success based on regular reporting of our progress.

What methods have you found to be most effective for recruiting Hispanic multicultural candidates?
It is very important for the Hispanic population to understand that Cox is embedded in and dedicated to them through our services and through our actions.

Part of this process was the creation of a multicultural marketing group, led by a Latino director. Through this group we developed products and services demonstrating an awareness of the needs of our Latino customers. This led to a heavy push in recruitment because there was a stronger connection between our company and the Latino communities. We know that if we are going to have products and services for the Latino communities, we need to have Latino employees who understand that community and speak Spanish.

Through this process we have not only become a standout media supplier for the Latino community, but we have also established ourselves as an employer who values the Latino culture and also the language skills that members of that community can bring to our company.

What do you say to those who feel that diversity programs are more about complying with EEO requirements and public image, rather than a real dedication to finding diverse candidates?
I think any progressive company today understands that it is in their best interest to have a mix of employees from every generation, race, ethnic community, gender, and sexual preference. Any company that doesn’t understand that will not be successful in terms of their bottom line.

For us, there is clearly a relationship between our diversity strategy and overall business results. We are required to participate in affirmative action programs because we are a government contractor, however that does not drive our actions. We balance affirmative action programs with our diversity strategy, which is a much broader plan of action in terms of how we interact with our employees, communities, and suppliers.

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For us, there is clearly a relationship between our diversity strategy and overall business results.

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What programs and initiatives exist to help your current workforce value diversity?
At Cox, we have defined diversity in a way that every employee can connect to our diversity strategy. Diversity includes everyone: it may be the life experience they bring, their geographic part of the country or the world, their education, their perspective, or any other aspect of who they are. What our employees bring to the office every day is part of our diversity strategy.

Part of the foundation of our diversity strategy is ongoing education for our company leaders and employees. Three years ago we trained all 22,000 employees in our program called “Creating an Inclusive Environment.” We consider this course to be the bedrock training that essentially defines diversity for Cox.

Before the company-wide training, many people did not understand what diversity meant. In many instances, they only thought it was about racial minorities. We spent a lot of time educating them about what diversity encompasses at Cox. For many non-minority employees, it may have been the first time they understood that diversity included them. It was a very positive experience. A couple of years after the training, we did an employee opinion survey and found that more than 91% of our employees identified “embracing diversity” as the most favorable aspect of our corporate culture.

Last year, in addition to the Corporate Diversity Council, we established local Diversity Councils in each of our 18 markets across the country. This extended the work our corporate council was doing and connected employees at every level with our commitment to an inclusive workplace.

How does your employee onboarding process help promote an inclusive atmosphere for diverse employees, right from the start?
One of the points that any new employee will come to know quickly is that Cox has a culture that invests in the development of its people. Cox is known in our industry for training and development, whether it’s a customer care representative, a universal phone technician, an accountant, a manager, or a senior executive. Part of this training is the program “Creating an Inclusive Environment.”

We have a strong culture around people in general. That is because we are a privately held company and family-owned. Our chairman is Jim Kennedy and he is the grandson of the founder of our company. We will have him come in during the orientation process to meet our new employees. Also, in Atlanta, new employees get to tour our heritage center. We spend a lot of time connecting them to the core values of our company, which are built around people.

I always like to tell people I have one of the best Human Resource jobs in the country because our organization understands that it is through employees that the company succeeds. Early on, employees understand that even though Cox is a very big company, it is also a very collegial environment, a collaborative environment, and a very team-oriented environment.

What programs does your company offer to minority groups?
We made a conscious decision not to sponsor affinity groups at Cox. Instead we created the Diversity Council because we want our culture to be concerned with valuing all the diversity that everyone brings to the table.

We feel that because of the inclusive culture we are trying to build, and because of the collegial nature of our core culture and values, affinity groups would not be complimentary to our mission. Our Diversity Councils have the same objectives, but are more effective in our company culture than affinity groups.

Employees can also express their opinions or voice concerns about our diversity efforts in our employee surveys, and they should feel comfortable approaching a leader or supervisor to discuss how things are being done in the company.

Many companies struggle to bring diversity to all areas. Has Cox been successful in achieving diversity in upper management? How were you able to achieve this?
The overall representation of minorities is good in upper and senior management. We are striving to hire more Hispanic employees and develop them to management levels because we believe in promotion from within. Cox offers training and development for employees online and in classrooms.

What is your company’s leadership commitment and involvement in diversity? How has the CEO or other top officer of the company embraced or championed diversity?
When we first started the diversity council, it was our CEO who was banging his hand on the table, saying “we have to do something about this!” That commitment has continued. Every time our diversity council gets together, our president meets with the council to hear what they are doing, challenge them in areas on which he feels we need to focus, and review metrics in the four areas of our strategy.

What role does diversity play in the overall success of your organization? How are you able to correlate bottom-line results to workforce diversity?
When we developed our diversity strategy and we created a multicultural marketing department, we discovered we did not have products and services that were attractive to the Latino communities.

One of the many successes of the multicultural marketing department was the development of a package called Paquete Latino that bundled together some of our services at a competitive price. We were amazed at the rate at which subscriber numbers for that package accelerated over an 18-month period of time. For us, that was one of the most significant bottom-line milestones with our diversity strategy. Paquete Latino awakened our entire company to the fact that an investment in diversity really does have a bottom line impact.

What would you say to Latino candidates applying to Cox today? What can they do to use their language and cultural skills to their best advantage?
First, employees at Cox do not have to fear being punished or in some way treated differently for speaking their first language in our environment. Our last five years of employee opinion surveys and focus groups affirm that employees feel they can be themselves here.

Second, I would tell Latino candidates that it is an asset to speak Spanish or any other language in our company.

What do you want prospective diverse employees to know about Cox and its commitment to diversity?
Cox Communications is a company that is open to all ideas, all people, all cultures and all communities. By coming to join us, they are joining a very collaborative organization that supports their development and their career, as well as connections to their community, in a very positive way.

Learn more about careers with Cox Communications

About the Author: LatPro Inc

An innovator in the online employment industry, LatPro was launched in 1997 to become the very first job board connecting Hispanic bilingual candidates with employers. Our staff authors share targeted advice gained during our 10 years serving Hispanic jobseekers and diversity-conscious companies.

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