Texas can be a double-edged sword. It’s among the best in the nation for business due to its workforce and economy, but among the worst for health and inclusion, according to CNBC’s 2022 ranking.
The state’s dueling titles are a motivator for the Dallas business community to study local companies’ initiatives aimed at creating more equitable workplaces and enact long-term change.
“When we look at that type of information, that’s the why,” said Hattie Hill, president and CEO of TD Jakes Foundation, at a Dallas Regional Chamber event Tuesday on the state of diversity, equity and inclusion in North Texas. “That’s why we’re all here today. Because we believe in the region, we believe in Texas, we definitely believe in Dallas.”
The chamber sent out a 72-question survey to its nearly 400 members with an active DEI contact. Only a quarter submitted responses for the chamber’s inaugural benchmark report on local companies’ DEI efforts.
More than half of the participating companies have a dedicated DEI department or team, and nearly 70% have a chief diversity officer. But counter to best practices, less than a third of the surveyed companies’ chief diversity officers report directly to a CEO, according to the report.
“This is a signal to the entire workforce as far as how DEI is prioritized in the organization,” said Mandy Price, co-founder and CEO of Kanarys, a diversity-focused tech company that partnered with the chamber to compile the report.
In 2018, the city ranked near the bottom for overall inclusion, coming in 272nd among 274 of the largest U.S. cities, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The benchmark report aims to provide chamber members a data-informed look at the current DEI landscape and outline actionable steps to create long-lasting change in companies, Price said. Of the 101 participating companies, three-quarters are for-profit and less than a fifth are nonprofits. About a third of the surveyed companies are professional services and 13% are from the banking and financial sector.
Among board members and executives at the companies, white men disproportionately held the jobs compared to the demographics of the region’s overall workforce.
While nearly 40% of the region’s population is white, 77% of executive seats are held by white people, according to participant SEC filings examined by Kanarys. Latinos make up nearly a third of people in Dallas, but represent only nine percent of the region’s business executives. Six percent of Dallas-area executives are Asian and five percent are Black.
The Dallas region has a wide gap between the number of women in the workforce and the number of women executives who are Black, Asian or Hispanic, the report said.
Despite disparities among executives, only 44% of participants have measurable board diversity goals.
In terms of talent acquisition, a majority of participants said they recruited from historically Black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions. While the report applauded recruiting students from diverse backgrounds as a promising and important strategy for Dallas companies, a lack of pay transparency in job listings inhibits pay equity, the report stated.
In Dallas County, women earned a quarter less than their male counterparts over a five-year period spanning from 2015 to 2020, according to the report. Across the state, women earn 87% of what men are paid in Texas.
More than half of the assessment’s participants indicated that they have pay disparity audit practices in place, but only 47% of participants have equity initiatives to close gaps.
A majority of surveyed companies have DEI as a publicly stated core value or organizational priority, with 60% of those measuring and tracking progress against defined metrics and goals. But less than half of the organizations hold senior leaders accountable for DEI goals in performance reviews, the assessment found.
“We can’t fix what we can’t measure,” Hill said.
A strength of the business community through a DEI lens is in its paid parental leave, according to the report. Nearly 40% of the companies offer up to 12 weeks of paid maternity leave and a majority offer paid maternity leave, paternity leave and adoptive leave at rates higher than national averages.
Across the country, only a quarter of employers offer some form of parental leave for the birth or adoption of a child.
The report outlines next steps toward progress, including setting clear, measurable DEI goals, conducting regular compensation audits and creating a dedicated DEI team with a direct line to the CEO.
Chamber president and CEO Dale Petroskey acknowledged the progress companies have made in creating more equitable workplaces, but said significant work is still needed.
“From a business standpoint, there is a strong correlation between a company’s commitment to DEI and its overall financial strength and success,” Petroskey said in a statement. “When companies realize this and make a commitment to DEI, our region will be more inclusive and equitable. Everyone wins.”
