Monsanto is a perennial Fair360, formerly DiversityInc Top 50 company, ranking on the list for ten consecutive years. The company ranked No. 39 this year and placed on four Fair360, formerly DiversityInc specialty lists. So if the company is managing diversity well, why did it shift to placing more emphasis on inclusion and putting inclusion before diversity? We interviewed the person responsible for the shift, Melissa Harper, VP of Global Talent and Inclusion & Diversity, to find out why.
Shane Nelson: Why did Monsanto change its diversity management strategy to putting Inclusion first?
Melissa Harper: We had certainly been on a long journey around what most people, and we, call diversity and inclusion. It’s critical to understand that both play a key role, but they mean different things. Therefore, they lead to different results. Diversity for Monsanto is simply about the demographics, so that’s the workforce composition. Inclusion is really the culture driver, so it’s the value you get from having a diverse workforce. So, we felt, and we changed and flipped the order and put inclusion before diversity because we recognized that to fast track results, we must have an all-in approach and strategy. This means everyone has to see themselves in this work and in this space of what diversity means. That’s really about the culture, so why not just put that first, and then we’ll certainly get to some of the results we started to see before.
