Giving Compass' Take:

• Jay Coen Gilbert explains how a survey of B Lab's staff revealed that the company was not sufficiently diverse or inclusive and which practices stood in the way of true diversity. 

• How can your organization identify the practices that stand in the way of diversity and inclusion? 

• Learn more about the importance of diversity and inclusion.

B Lab, the organization I co-founded in 2006, is the nonprofit behind the global Certified B Corporation movement. B Corporations redefine success in business: They compete to be Best For The World and meet the most rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.

Yet, in a 2017 survey of our staff, only 57 percent of B Lab’s staff who are people of color feel they can bring their whole selves to work, compared with 96 percent of their White coworkers.

B Lab, an organization of roughly 65 people, is 68 percent White — whiter than the U.S. population, which according to the 2017 estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau is 61 percent White, non-Hispanic or Latino. That wasn’t what surprised me. What surprised me was that the staff survey suggested that our culture is more like 98 percent White. More specifically, White middle-to-upper-class culture. Things I hadn’t noticed were negatively affecting our team’s experience at work.

For example, our primary office location is in a largely White affluent suburb of Philadelphia, and that has created an unwelcoming environment for some team members.

Compounding these issues, B Lab has almost no people of color in leadership, creating a lack of role models for career development and contributing to a sense of isolation. It shouldn’t have been surprising to learn that only 29 percent of people of color at B Lab said there were role models they could relate to at B Lab, compared with 79 percent of their White peers.

Like many organizations, for-profit or nonprofit, the team at B Lab is running hard all the time. In an environment like this, every person’s understandable reflex when filling open positions is to fill them fast and get someone talented and aligned on board ASAP. Faster if possible.

As a result, we too often have valued a speedy hiring decision over a strategic hiring decision. That often means we have filled full-time positions with interns—aka easily accessible, known quantities who have demonstrated they can do the work and are a “good cultural fit.” And they can start tomorrow. At one point, roughly one-third of all B Lab staff were former interns. As in many organizations, interns often come from our personal networks: The schools we attended, a neighbor or colleague’s children, or just local talent.

Read the full article about diversity and inclusion by Jay Coen Gilbert at Medium.