Diversity charters are bringing about the changes that laws alone have been unable to accomplish.

Teaching companies about diversity is the easy step. Convincing them to embrace the concept and implement it as a strategic corporate issue is much more difficult. Managers can attend training and development sessions and then walk away, never acting on the information presented. Developing and implementing policies, procedures, and practices that promote diversity and inclusion require an ongoing commitment. Recognising this fact, the European Union developed a change instrument called a Diversity Charter that asks businesses to voluntarily sign a nationally adopted commitment to accept and integrate diversity in their respective companies. The psychology of this approach is impossible to miss. A company executive physically signing a commitment is more likely to follow through than one who sits in a meeting and nods in agreement but never takes the first action step.

In the United States, the approach to diversity has largely been legislative and legal in nature, generally awarding and withholding federal contracts based on minority business participation and supporting hiring through equal employment opportunity laws.

The Canadian approach has been much softer, having virtually no legislated mandates for businesses but being highly supportive of diversity through visa laws. The European Diversity Charters, on the other hand, use a voluntary system that has the strength of government backing and sets a multinational tone of inclusion.

The Diversity Charter is not intended to act like a law, which is why it is voluntary. However, this is not a lackadaisical approach, though it would be easy to get that impression. The business Diversity Charter signed by company executives is a document that promotes diversity policies impacting recruiting, hiring and retention decisions based on merit and performance, and professional training and development. It drives Human Resources and management best practices intended to achieve excellence, and that improves competitiveness, financial performance, social responsibility, and the ability to attract top talent.

Diversity as a Social Commitment

A member EU state adopts a Diversity Charter that is aligned with the country’s profile and needs. Businesses then adopt the charter as the guiding commitment and policy, and then adapt it to the specific company. SNCF, a French national railway company, adopted the charter in 2004, leading to additional efforts to make the workplace more accessible for the disabled. The bottom line: The railway was then able to hire talented disabled workers who bring new perspectives and ways of thinking to the company.

SNCF not only embraced diversity, it sees it as central to the company’s social commitment to promote community cohesion. As such, the company actively seeks ways to increase railway services accessibility to the underprivileged and reducing incidences of discrimination. Signing the Diversity Charter was not a one-time act. Rather, it was the first step of a long-term action plan. SNCF now carries out broad-based initiatives in neighborhoods to attract non-traditional applicants during job recruitment. What began as an internal diversity initiative has expanded to include external community service actions. The company reaches out into the communities, instead of hoping the community members will come to the company.

Initiating change is not always easy. Passing laws may expand diversity opportunities, but laws alone do not change attitudes. They force business compliance that is usually tied to financial penalties for lack of compliance. From the job seeker or holder’s perspective, laws do not provide any assurance that discrimination can be proven. They only give a person an avenue for addressing the issue.

To date, there are 11 Diversity Charters across the EU: Austria, Belgium, France (the first), Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Finland, Ireland, and Luxemburg. As the first country to adopt the charter, France has almost 2,900 signatories, and most of them are small or medium size enterprises. In fact, 30 percent of them employ less than nine workers. On the Diversity Charter website, France makes the remarkable statement that, “70 percent of them are committed to diversity for moral and ethical reasons.”

The Right Thing to Do

That is another way of saying that embracing diversity and inclusion is the right thing to do. When Luxemburg signed the Diversity Charter, 40 signatories participated, representing more than 24,000 employees. In one fell swoop, companies across the nation voluntarily committed to promoting workforce quality. It brings to mind the expression “there is power in numbers.” The power is further enhanced as the charter members network and exchange information about best practices. The pharmaceutical service provider and trader company Celosia AG, located in Stuttgart and a Diversity Charter signatory since 2008, has the power to influence diversity on a global basis. With 21 different nationalities working in the Stuttgart head office, Celosia was inspired to use its intranet to offer mini language programs that assisted employees at pharmacies working in 16 countries and employing more than 40,000 people.

Once again, that brings up an important point about policies promoting diversity and inclusion. The tenets of the Diversity Charter promote workplace diversity, but they also are instrumental in giving companies the tools they need to be competitive in a global environment. They are best practices tenets that apply to Human Resources practices and workplace culture, but they also lead to higher quality and innovative customer service. A case in point is Celosia’s language initiative prompted by signing the charter. Its Irish pharmacy chain published pamphlets in Polish and DocMorris, Europe’s oldest and largest mail-order pharmacy, published a brochure in Russian about the mail-order pharmacy. In addition, the French Distributor OCP committed itself to hiring disabled persons and to provide the training they needed to succeed.

An interesting question is whether some type of Diversity Charter program could accelerate diversity efforts on all fronts in the United States, Canada, Africa, and Asia. Admittedly, that is thinking about diversity on a global basis. What works on one continent may not work on another. Yet the expanding success of the Diversity Charters is a reminder that real and sincere change comes from actionable commitment and not just laws.