Working Mother has named the 2013 “Best Companies for Multicultural Women,” recognizing 25 U.S. corporations that create and use best practices in hiring, retaining, and promoting women of color. This year, multicultural women at the Best Companies received 15 percent of all promotions to manager and above as compared to 13 percent in 2011. However, multicultural female representation among the top tenth of earners at the Best Companies fell to 7 percent from 13 percent last year.

Working Mother's June/July Issue

Working Mother’s June/July Issue

The top five best companies for multicultural women are Deloitte, General Mills, KPMG, PwC, and State Farm.

The Working Mother Research Institute, which conducted the study, found a significant jump in participation rates for Best Companies’ education programs. For example, 42 percent of all employees participated in gender diversity education this year, up from 23 percent in 2012. A full 76 percent of the Best Companies have mandatory diversity training for their workforces.

The report shows that white women are leaving manager (29 percent), senior manager (26 percent), and corporate executive positions (20 percent) at the Best Companies at higher rates than they are being hired into those jobs. By comparison, multicultural women are being hired into these positions at exactly the same rate at which they leave them.

Twenty-three percent of executives who report directly to the CEO at the Best Companies are women, while 5 percent are multicultural women. That’s an increase over last year’s Best Companies, where women represented 19 percent of all executives reporting directly to the CEO, 4 percent of whom were multicultural women.

Female multicultural representation has held steady for the past two years at the manager, senior manager, and corporate executive levels at the Best Companies, shrinking significantly as they move up the corporate ladder. White men are the only employee group to gain representation as they advance in their careers.

The Working Mother Best Companies for Multicultural Women requires candidates to have at least 500 U.S. employees. Winners are selected based on their answers to an extensive questionnaire on representation; hiring, attrition and promotion rates; recruitment, retention and advancement programs; and company culture. The Working Mother Research Institute created a scoring algorithm based on the previous year’s benchmark results to determine the winners.

http://www.workingmother.com/best-companies/2013-best-companies-multicultural-women