Ford's Diversity Roll-Out Cuts the Mustard
Like its latest car ads, diversity Ford style comes with the élan of a V engine turbo easing through the gears. More modest onlookers are left gawping in wonder.
Times have certainly changed since a series of PR disasters in the late 1980s included the airbrushing of black Ford workers' faces out of an advertisement. At a national conference in Ford's Centre for Manufacturing Excellence in Dagenham recently, the company's diversity and inclusion policies were placed in the equivalent of a car show room for HR practitioners to cast coveting eyes over. They were given the fanfare of a new model roll-out, with videos and gloss oozing from every corner.
With most of the delegates itching for the equivalent of a test drive but having to make do with presentations in a style evocative of Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear programme, I cornered my namesake, Jenny Ball, HR manager on the Dagenham site, to tell me what was really behind it all. How did she and her three female HR colleagues feel about their own landmark appointments for a start? I asked. 'We all do our jobs as managers first and foremost, but we also have ambassadorial roles too. I suppose as the first all-woman HR team in Dagenham we are role models, but really we don't think about that most of the time,' she said.
But were Ball and her colleagues not aware of the epoch making role of their HR predecessors thirty eight years ago? (In 1968 a group of women sewing machinists went on strike against a sex biased grading structure. No-one recognised it then but the tea and biscuits with Barbara Castle were communion wafers of pay inequality's requiem mass. The 1970 Equal Pay Act followed shortly after.) Ball nods with interest. Who is giving this interview to whom? I wonder.
Then in the late 1960s, investigations of race discrimination complaints were a regular part of the Ford HR territory. I know. I used to meet investigating officers from the Race Relations Board who despaired at their own inability to nail Ford with allegations of racial discrimination. Jenny Ball has a different take however. 'Without trying to be defensive or anything, diversity has been part of our approach for a long time in Ford,' she says. 'We were conducting ethnic monitoring back in 1967 and had equal opportunities policies in the 1980s, these incidents were flagged up and prompted the company to move forward. It's part of our history.'
Well yes but racism didn't just go away at Ford did it? Matters came to a head in 1999 when Sukhjit Parmar, a Dagenham engine plant worker won a claim of racial discrimination and victimisation. Then there was the advert episode and a complaint of racism in the allocation of delivery drivers' jobs, which ended up with a threatened CRE formal investigation. Global president Jac Nasser flew in from Detroit to take personal control of a growing crisis. 'This did all happen, didn't it?' I ask.
Yes again, but the reality today is very different. These events were the catalyst to action in Ford. Jac Nasser's arrival produced an agreement on the establishment of a structure of joint equality committees in every part of the business, and a National Joint Equality Committee to oversee the implementation of equality and diversity practices throughout the company. Then Ford embarked upon an approach to diversity and inclusion which, Ball claims, '…has put the company at the leading edge of practice.' The foundation was an audit of policies and practices, conducted with the collaboration of the CRE and known as the Diversity and Equality Assessment Review (DEAR). 'DEAR has absolutely become part of our business, and that is not a cliché,' Ball says emphatically.
One way or another it seems, Ford has arrived pretty much where it ought to be. The joint equality committees have a life of their own. 'There are too many of them to be controlled by HR,' says Ball. The DEAR approach and a system of annual audits by the national equalities committee have put a rigour into equality and inclusion.
But when pressing issues of output, quality, change and skill levels are on every managers' agenda, how do you make space for diversity? Ball explains. 'As plant managers we have a set of objectives known as SQDCME,' (she rolls it off like a mastered tongue-twister.) 'It stands for safety, quality, delivery, costs, morale and environment,' she explains. 'That's six priorities in all plants, not just in Britain but throughout the world, and they are followed through right down to work group level. It's a wonderfully effective process and you have a score card with the whole thing cascading down from senior management level. 'Within the “morale” heading there is “diversity” without question.'
DEAR identified recruitment selection, development, communication, corporate citizenship, policy and planning and auditing for equality as the priorities for action. Each of these is assessed in every plant and sub-unit of the company. In manufacturing plants the objectives are incorporated into the SQDCME system. Each heading has five or six criteria that are examined and measured against a descriptive, evaluative framework. Managers collect evidence folders during the year to demonstrate how they are meeting up to their specific targets and the metrics of equality auditing are built onto that.
Managers are assessed by the audit and metrics which give rise to a traffic light red, yellow or green indicator of how things stand on each of the six headings in each small part of the organisation. Getting your colours to green is important. 'After each annual audit you end up with your six areas and you have quite a detailed breakdown of what you will have to do to turn that level to a green. So then you produce your action plan, based on the audit and your previous audit's recommendations for improvements,' says Ball.
Diversity, it seems, is being tackled with the logistics of line control, which Henry Ford used to revolutionise capitalist production in the twentieth century. From Ford's point of view, it has been necessary. Not just because the bad press was damaging to the Ford image, nor even because the company was genuinely dismayed at the monster emerging as Nasser flew in on his trouble shooting mission, but because there was a realisation that no modern company can harbour such festering sores of grievance and still prosper. Back in the showroom of Ford's Diversity conference, Sean McIlvean, Executive Director HR Ford of Britain, is offering his reflections on the experience.
'What we saw in 1999 filled us with horror,' he says. 'But since then the company has made tremendous strides and operates best practice in a variety of diversity issues.' What is his view of legal regulation then, in retrospect? After all, Ford has been stung by the law, as its history relates. 'Regulation is not red tape; it's about pointing companies in the right direction.' The Pauline conversion comes to mind.
There's nothing minimalist about Ford's approach today. Now it reaches out to distant corners of its own organisation and hinterland communities. The basis for much of Ford's proactive work on diversity and inclusion is a comprehensive survey of its workforce. The aim is to achieve inclusivity as well as diversity. 'We want all our employees to relate to the company's work on diversity,' says McIlvean. Activities include sponsorship of organisations as varied as Asian Arts and Childline. Campaigns seek to involve all employees in supporting the worthy causes, through a Ford trust, which is in turn, linked back to the DEAR objectives. A range of activities are launched during Ford's 'Diversity Week.' New dimensions of disadvantage are being explored, such as those who have caring roles for frail or disabled parents. They make the point that diversity is not an 'us and them' exercise and that everyone has a stake in its success.
There is something impressive about all of this. Of course, image is not necessarily reality, but there is a method, awareness and determination about the way Ford is approaching diversity and inclusion that other companies might do well to follow. The company that gave rise to Fordism, books like Upton Sinclair's 'The Flivver King,' and Huw Beynon's 'Working for Ford,' evocative descriptions of a rapacious, ruthless tradition in people management, is now shining a beacon for a better approach. I can hardly believe the transformation from what I knew (or thought I knew) to today. I may of course, have been taken in by the gloss and presentation. I don't think so however. Not this time.
Copyright © Chris Ball
chris@jamesball.net
6 April 2006
