Hiring for Diversity

CHAPTER 11Mobilizing Your Organization in Diversity Hiring

When 2020 began, Eileen Benwitt, Chief Talent Officer of Horizon Media, the world's largest independent media agency, was already years into leading the company's diversity and inclusion initiatives. Previously, Benwitt and her talent team had been focused mostly on diversity hiring through internship and entry-level recruiting, leading company-wide diversity surveys, and establishing diverse affinity business resource groups. Benwitt had even organized a passionate DEI council in the hopes of engaging the rest of the company in their diversity efforts. Nevertheless, every year, despite enthusiastic praise for the diversity work, there was little to no active engagement from the rest of the organization.

“It felt like we as an HR team were in an echo chamber talking to ourselves about the importance of diversity,” says Benwitt. “There wasn't a burning desire to get involved, and motivation was lackluster across the organization.”

It's not as though Benwitt and the team lacked a vision or a plan. Much of the foundational work had already been done. The plan, which the team had articulated to the rest of the agency, was to be an agency of belonging where DEI would be at the heart of everything Horizon Media did. The team had even created a framework called the “Wheel of Belonging” that laid out 11 functional priorities that could one day be carried out by ten impact teams (community relations, funding and resources, ...