The Best Companies Invest in Diversity and Equity Efforts

While 2020’s pandemic challenged businesses, it was also a time of racial reckoning.

“The past year has been a wakeup call for our country and for Boothby Therapy Services in the areas of diversity, equity and inclusion” says Christopher Boothby, co-founder and vice president of business services at Boothby Therapy Services in Laconia. “The Black Lives Matter movement, and the killings that precipitated it, forced us as leaders of a company to confront that we might not be innocent bystanders to this scourge, that if we were not actively fighting against this then we were unintentionally complicit.

“Frankly, this realization came with the immediate recognition that we did not even know where to start. How do we understand this hate? How do we find more comprehension of the whole issue and what do we need to change in our company within our own practices and processes?” Boothby says. “We realized there were many questions that we didn’t have the answers to. As a company, we are seeking outside help and guidance to provide us with a better understanding through a facilitated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion process. We are in the early stages of this process, which we anticipate being an ongoing one.”

They are not alone. Several companies, from Red River, a national IT firm based in Claremont, to Alene Candles, a contract manufacturer of candles in Milford, have sought outside expertise to tackle their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

DEI Committees
Much has changed over the past 18 months. Many companies set up committees and task forces comprised of employees and often headed by a senior leader.

Sanborn Head & Associates, a Concord-based engineering and consulting firm, also created subgroups to review company policies and practices from a DEI perspective.

After doing an internal review, Mainstay Technologies, an IT and cybersecurity firm with offices in Belmont and Manchester, found it had “an overwhelmingly white, high-majority male technical pool to pull from. Many of the graduating classes at technical colleges that we hire from are 100% male, 100% white.”

So Mainstay looked for a way to change. CEO Ryan Barton says, “We have consulted with the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and are formulating plans for partnering with schools, targeting children as early as possible, and looking to eliminate any unequal barriers to entry in the IT and cybersecurity fields.”

Lindt & Sprüngli, the Stratham-based chocolatier, hired Jermaine Moore of The Mars Hill Group (pictured) to facilitate listening sessions between senior managers and employees of color. President and CEO Daniel Studer and his vice presidents heard stories about what it means to be a person of color working at Lindt. As a result, the company created a Diversity & Inclusion Committee, which identified four areas of focus: education, celebration, community and recruiting.

“A strong D&I strategy not only enriches our work environment, it removes barriers and creates bridges that enable us to achieve our highest potential as an organization,” says Lisa Cloutier, vice president of HR at Lindt.

Red River’s DEI team runs a monthly book club, and they recently promoted a recruiter to focus on DEI initiatives beginning with their hiring process.

Bill Condron, president and CEO of The Granite Group, made DEI a top priority in the company’s most recent strategic plan and, along with Chief People Officer Tracie Sponenberg, leads its DEI committee of employees from various departments.

MegaFood’s DEI team mapped out advancement opportunities for those on the manufacturing floor and provided unconscious bias training.

Mascoma Bank’s team, with the help of consultants, developed a core set of metrics. Those include: building a pipeline of diverse applicants; increasing diversity among senior leaders and the board of directors; fostering a culture that treasures diverse opinions and ideas; and contributing 3.5% of the bank’s philanthropy budget to nonprofits focused on racial inequities.

To learn what other organizations are doing and to assist with their own endeavors, Bangor Savings Bank’s DEI Council completed a two-day Racial Equity Institute Training and attended the American Bankers Association’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion summit.

Making Education a Priority
Education is one of the first steps companies take.

“Almost exactly one year ago, when George Floyd was murdered, I found myself struggling for words and actions like a lot of white people. And our company did as well. We always thought of ourselves as inclusive, but were we doing enough? We absolutely were not,” says Sponenberg of The Granite Group, a distributor of plumbing, HVAC and energy products based in Concord. Sponenberg says she knew she had to educate herself first.

That included hosting weekly Zoom sessions with other HR professionals about race and diversity, extensive reading and taking a course on diversity through NH Businesses For Social Responsibility.

Red River initially hired a consultant to guide them toward creating an inclusive atmosphere. That was followed by cultural humility training for all employees and a follow up training plan.

Through Virgin Pulse, an employee health and wellness platform, employees at CCA Global Partners in Manchester, a cooperative with more than 2,800 retail locations, can access “learning journeys,” that focus on such topics as race and identity, as well as understanding gender, sexual orientation and identity. “Talk about Race” helps define race and racism, explores its effects and explains how to talk about race.

CoreMedical Group, a health care staffing agency in Manchester, enrolled all managers in an online program that, once completed, was rolled out to all staff.

Merchants Fleet, a fleet management firm in Hooksett, launched a virtual series in 2020 exploring such topics as “Black in America: Three Perspectives” and “Demystifying Trans Identity.” After the company hosted a DEI event for employees, a new “I Am” initiative invited employees to discuss their identity using the “I Am...” prompt on Merchants’ internal social media page.

Mascoma Bank embarked on a 12-week course conducted by CQ Strategies entitled “We All Belong: Foundations of Cultural Competency,” exploring organizational culture, implicit bias and institutional forms of bias. And, since September 2020, 85 team members have attended the program. It is available monthly for all employees, and new hires are required to complete a 45-minute online “Valuing Diversity” course within their first 30 days.

Vapotherm, a medical device manufacturer in Exeter, holds roundtables every other month that focus on creating a safe space for employees to share personal experiences around diversity and inclusion topics.

For Bangor Savings Bank in Portsmouth, diversity is one of its eight core values. All 800 employees were required to take Introduction to Bias training, and 175 managers were required to complete management bias training.

Employees at Bellwether Community Credit Union in Manchester must participate in Respectful Workplace Training, and the credit union expanded training this year to include a session on diversity.

Northeast Delta Dental, a nonprofit dental insurance provider in Concord, hired Moore of The Mars Hill Group, to provide employee training that included three two-and-a-half-hour sessions on Building a Diverse and Inclusive Culture, Understanding Unconscious/Implicit Bias, and Anti-Racism (strategies to fight racism within one’s sphere of influence).

Delta Dental also held Focus Fridays for those who wanted even more. Additional 90-minute sessions examined privilege, how to be an ally, the importance of inclusive language; and a session where employees could reflect on what they learned.

Recruiting Diverse Talent
Diversity training often highlights how companies must be purposeful in recruitment and develop welcoming cultures.

“Our hiring practice has resulted in a workforce that is much more diverse than New Hampshire’s current population demographics as a whole. The talent we have hired in our company come from countries like Jordan, Bosnia, Romania, China, Russia, Iran, India, Singapore, Greece, Canada, Dominican Republic and Brazil,” says Robin Finnegan, HR manager for Geophysical Survey Systems in Nashua. “This diversity also helps GSSI attract other potential employees to our company because we don’t all look and sound the same. We hire international students, hire employees in need of a work visa; we relocate employees and work with our staff that are looking to secure permanent resident status.”

Sonenberg of The Granite Group says, “In order to really live and breathe DEI, we have to look at how we are presenting ourselves to the world.… Most of our managers are white men. So they hire mostly white men. That needs to change.”

To attract a more diverse pool of job applicants, Red River expanded its outreach to such organizations as Out in Tech and Latinas in Tech. And, to diversify its pipeline, MegaFood, a manufacturer of dietary supplements in Manchester, offers remote roles when feasible and uses inclusive language in job descriptions.

Cohen Closing & Title, a woman-led business with a workforce that is 90% female, started an internship program to attract candidates of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds with a goal of hiring them when they receive degrees.

Cohen Closing & Title presents a Future Female Leaders scholarship to Eve Brown-Ryder. Courtesy photo.

Culture and Policy
Companies are also examining their cultures and benefits. Recognizing that everyone does not observe the same holidays, Sanborn Head added two floating holidays that may be used for other holidays. Bangor Savings Bank added Juneteenth to the list of floating holidays, which already included Indigenous People Day, and added 16 paid volunteer hours for employees to focus on racial equity causes.

Mascoma Bank is compiling questions to assess its vendors’ commitment to DEI, examining internal diversity, equity and inclusion in their respective organizations.

Sunrise Labs, a developer of medical devices in Bedford, is reviewing the language it uses in documents to ensure all terminology is racially sensitive.

And, at Alene Candles, whose workforce speaks several languages, the candle company uses translators, Google Translate and a bilingual HR generalist to break down language barriers.

Wire Belt Company of America, a manufacturer of conveyor belts in Londonderry, celebrates the diversity of its workforce (where seven languages are spoken) with an annual Diversity Day when employees volunteer to bring in dishes from their native countries to share with co-workers.