Three Ways VMware Made Diversity Gains Stick

Many companies have had diversity-related aha moments in which they realized that their culture needed to become more inclusive, but fewer have translated these revelations into significant, long-term change. In fact, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts are often seen as something “extra” or as “help” for underrepresented employees rather than as critical investments in fostering a healthy business culture and generating bottom-line results. Making matters worse, DEI efforts around the world are now being pared back in response to economic headwinds, political backlash, and legal decisions.

During VMware’s 10-year DEI effort from 2013 through November 2023, when VMware was acquired by Broadcom, we had to learn how to make diversity gains stick well past aha moments and through ups and downs in the business cycle.

Through this effort, VMware has steadily increased the percentage of women it employs globally and, in the U.S., the percentage of underrepresented employees (the populations that are most challenging for tech companies to hire and retain) at rates that are within the top decile of the tech industry. This journey has lessons for other organizations that seek to prioritize DEI efforts that move the needle in ways that are sustained over the long term.

An Inclusive Culture Requires New Relationships

To become more diverse and inclusive and retain its successes, VMware tried novel ways to change the culture over the long term, both from the leadership level down and from the employee level up. Working in partnership with Exponential Talent, a DEI consultancy, VMware sought structural changes that incorporated DEI into the organization’s cultural DNA.

A key goal was to ensure that meaningful relationships were built across levels and differences within the company. Company leaders decided that bringing together people with different backgrounds and experiences and connecting them at an authentic and emotional level was essential to resetting implicit biases in people’s brains.

In addition, the company realized that if everyone receives value from their time spent advancing DEI goals, it can sustain efforts even when there is variability in the business cycle.

Two key actions helped VMware set the stage for success:

1. Establishing accountability. This is table stakes for any successful long-term initiative. VMware specifically tied DEI goals to the incentive structure, starting with bonuses for top executives in 2018. By 2020, it had extended them throughout the vice president and senior director levels, and by 2022, it had expanded bonuses for reaching companywide DEI goals throughout all levels of the organization. This was real money, not just an award or a verbal acknowledgment.

Critically, leaders at the CEO, C-suite, and HR leadership levels were true believers in DEI. VMware executives celebrated people who had made great progress toward their DEI goals, while also holding leaders accountable in their reviews when progress was well below average on specific goals, such as the retention of women or underrepresented minorities in key roles.

2. Creating a transparent DEI dashboard. The company fostered radical transparency by developing a DEI dashboard that is accessible to employees at the senior director level and above across the organization. The dashboard shows hiring, promotion, and retention rates according to gender globally and to race and ethnicity in the U.S., as well as organizational characteristics such as function, location, and level. The dashboard also includes employee survey scores by demographic group to make visible the gaps in how people experience the culture, including majority groups.

One sales leader who was meeting hiring and retention goals was surprised to learn that women in sales did not experience the culture the same way as the men in his organization. This executive committed to conducting listening sessions with women to collect actionable insights and foster more inclusive behaviors. “I didn’t think I had a problem with diversity until I saw the inclusive culture scores for my organization,” the executive shared. “I have some work to do.”

Three Best Practices for Long-Term Culture Change

Beyond establishing accountability and a DEI dashboard, the secret to long-term success involves having a laserlike focus on creating systemic culture change. At VMware, a cultural reset began to happen only when leaders and employees built relationships in which they got out as much as they put in. Three intentional practices proved critical in engineering a structure that created the space for those mutually beneficial relationships to flourish:

1. Expand the scope of reverse mentoring. Some companies implement reverse-mentoring programs that focus on generational differences, pairing younger workers with older executives to educate them about technology and other emerging issues. VMware invested significant resources in reverse mentoring across all dimensions of difference. An LGBTQ+ employee might educate a heterosexual leader about their perspectives, an employee in Barcelona might work with a leader in the U.S., or a woman of color might mentor a White male leader.

More than 250 pairs of leaders and employees participated over three years, including 44% of the company’s senior vice presidents, who volunteered. Leaders signed up to be paired with employees from underrepresented populations who were less senior to them for three to six months in order to learn from their experiences and hear firsthand how leadership efforts were landing with employees. The mentors received coaching along with specific guidelines and expectations for engagement that set the time commitment, the level of trust, and a tone of openness, vulnerability, and respect and helped participants gain the maximum benefit from their relationships.

Many executives told us that the information they received from their reverse mentors was so valuable that they chose to keep the relationships going after the official program had ended. Many executives got actionable advice that helped them improve their inclusive culture scores. One sales leader received feedback from a woman mentor that his practice of starting meetings with anecdotes about American football made many women and international employees zone out. He took that feedback to heart and instead started meetings by giving kudos to employees for excellent work.

Likewise, employees also saw benefits from developing deeper relationships with leaders. As leaders got to know their mentors and their careers, they let these employees know about key roles that might help them develop their leadership skills, and they helped break down barriers to accessing such opportunities. More than 90% of reverse mentors and leaders who participated in the program expressed satisfaction with it, while 88% of leaders agreed that the conversations they’d had with their mentor had helped them grow as an inclusive leader. Eighty-one percent of the reverse mentors agreed that they’d gained the knowledge and experience they needed to progress in their careers.

2. Empower employee resource groups as strategic partners. More than one-quarter of VMware employees are members of what the company calls Power of Difference communities, or PODs. PODs are more than community-building employee resource groups, or what some companies call affinity groups. At VMware, POD participants have a seat at the table with leadership and directly influenced the company’s DEI strategy.

VMware’s POD groups differentiated themselves by serving as a direct pipeline for talent to move into leadership positions. One leader in the Pride POD moved into a director role in their executive sponsor’s organization, for example. The company chose senior-level leaders like them to lead POD efforts based on their highly strategic mindsets and superior influencing skills. Business leaders across VMware nominated POD leaders, becoming champions for a broader set of employee experiences and further embedding DEI into the company culture.

In return for dedicating up to 20% of their time to a DEI role, POD leaders were given employee stock or cash as compensation (depending on the year, as compensation plans changed over time), along with dedicated administrative and team support. As a further investment, POD leaders and their executive sponsors attended leadership development events that helped strengthen their capabilities. It became a badge of honor to be nominated for a POD leadership role, since these leaders experienced increased executive visibility and were recognized as key stewards of VMware’s culture.

3. Foster new dialogues between groups. VMware has expanded its dialogue initiatives in powerful ways. The company developed a sustained practice of storytelling to spotlight and celebrate differences and to offer new perspectives from a diverse group of employees. For example, on calls, participants engage in exercises that involved exchanging personal experiences that heightened awareness of how people experience the world differently.

For instance, following George Floyd’s death in 2020, VMware’s Black POD expanded its global Culture Club, an effort that also ended up being very powerful for many non-Black executives and employees. On one Zoom call, participants engaged in an exercise in which they signaled onscreen whether they had ever experienced particular forms of discrimination, trauma, or bias. When most of the Black employees indicated that they had been stopped by the police whereas non-Black allies had not, employees gained a deeper understanding of how people experience the world differently because of the color of their skin. Culture Club continues to this day and has expanded to include other PODs.

Recently, the Black POD brought together all leaders at the director level and above in an Executive Corner event, with the goal of increasing the visibility of these leaders with the company’s most senior executives. This group got access to the executive team and then flipped the script, asking the executives to share their experiences leading diverse organizations. One executive shared that in their personal life, they didn’t have a lot of Black friends but wanted to broaden their personal network. Their vulnerability helped them build trusted relationships after the event. Other executives — ones who were used to being in the racial and gender majority — pointed to the growth opportunities they experienced in forums like that one, where they were the minority. Such experiences have led senior leaders to step up to become more active and vocal in sponsorship and support for communities whose lived experiences differ from their own.

Steady Increases in Underrepresented Groups

What do VMware’s gains look like by the numbers? Women employees have grown from 22.6% to 29.2% — a nearly 7.0% increase companywide from 2014 to 2022 — and Black, Latine, and Indigenous representation in the U.S. workforce jumped from 7.9% to 12.0%.

Over the same time period, the number of women increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.5%, and the number of Black, Latine, and Indigenous employees at a CAGR of 6.9% — rates that are within the top decile of the tech industry.

As for the growth in women in leadership roles companywide, the percentage jumped from 21.3% to 27.1% over the same period (a CAGR of 3.1%). For Black, Latine, and Indigenous employees in the U.S., the figure rose from 3.6% to 8.0% (a CAGR of 10.5%), among the highest levels of growth at comparable tech companies.

Each of the strategies discussed above contributed to these results, moving hearts and minds while improving relationships across organizational levels. Increasing DEI became a part of the DNA at VMware. Only when people experienced DEI’s mutual benefits personally could the entire organization meaningfully change the culture and move the representation and engagement metrics in ways that stuck.