During a special company-wide Town Hall meeting to celebrate Latinx Heritage Month, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. was pleased to welcome featured guest Dr. Robert Rodriguez, a nationally recognized author, speaker, and consultant, to share his expertise on fostering Latino talent in corporate America.
A recent member of the Hispanic delegation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Dr. Rodriguez was named one of the “Top 100 Most Influential Latinos in Corporate America” by Hispanic Business magazine. ChicagoUnited honored him as one of the “Business Leaders of Color” and he received the Maestro Award from Latino Leaders magazine for his commitment to the Latino community.
Organized by the company’s Latinx & Allies Employee Resource Group (ERG), team members from Oregon to New York and everywhere in between logged on for an engaging virtual presentation and Q&A session moderated by Cristal Feliciano, the company’s Latinx & Allies Employee Resource Group (ERG) co-leader and Vice President of Benefits and HRIS for 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc.
Latinx Impact vs. Representation in Corporate America
After a brief introduction, Dr. Rodriguez kicked off the meeting with key statistics illustrating the growing relevance of the Latinx community to corporate America, both as the fastest growing workforce demographic and as a huge consumer market, estimated at $100 billion and growing.
Dr. Rodriguez noted that despite the growing percentage of Latinx employees in companies, the Latinx community is not proportionally represented in the C-suite. “It’s not close to mirroring the economic contributions of this population,” said Dr. Rodriguez.
To address this issue, Dr. Rodriguez said recruitment tools need to change. In the same way marketing techniques can segment and target messaging to reach the Latinx community, so should recruitment efforts. And once hired, companies need to make any changes necessary to remove roadblocks that might prevent moving those recruits into management roles.
Best-Practices to Foster Latinx Talent
Some best practices identified include when companies host Latinx-only talent summits or Latinx-focused development programs. According to Dr. Rodriguez, these lead not only to better retention but “increased promotional velocity” for helping Latinx team members rise up the corporate ladder.
In addition to discussing ways to engage office-based employees, Dr. Rodriguez recognized the even bigger challenge of engaging deskless workers in distribution or manufacturing roles who might not have company email addresses or access to a computer, and who might be working different shifts and therefore miss out on support systems their office-based employees are able to access. It’s an issue that many companies face. “They are all kind of struggling,” he explained. To level the playing field, “Meet them where they’re at,” he said, suggesting companies record events and share in breakrooms or host multiple on-site events.