Is the Bottle Half Full or Half Empty? Summary of Coca-Cola's Annual HR Task Force Report

As you may remember, a few years ago, Coca-Cola settled a large race discrimination lawsuit. The agreement included the creation of a task force to ensure that appropriate HR systems are in place at the company. Each year the company produces a task force report, summarizing the results for the year in terms of nine HR systems, including: staffing, compensation, diversity education, etc.

The report is useful in understanding what kinds of practices and metrics might suggest that the company is doing a good job in terms of racial diversity in HR.

Here are some key findings summarized below:

On the positive side:

representation of African-Americans has risen from 19.7% to 21% at the company;

no adverse impact was found in filling jobs from pay grades 14 and up; and

promotion rates for minorities and African-Americans is higher than for non-minorities for executive and managerial jobs

On the other hand, the task force report noted a number of areas where the company was not meeting its goals and targets, including:

the company had not paid enough attention to the development of a diverse pipeline of internal candidates;

the performance management process continues to produce adverse impact for African American employees in a number of job grades

In 2003, a distinct gap remained between white employee and black employee perceptions of the diversity climate. Indeed, there was an across-the-board decline in perceptions of the diversity climate.

Interested readers can go here and read more about the task force's report. Many of the metrics that are used should be of interest to our readers.