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Interview with A. Shuanise Washington |
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| Published on July 7, 2006 |
1.What does diversity mean to you? Why is it important to have a diverse workplace?
Diversity to me should be defined in its broadest sense. It is all the ways that people differ. It goes beyond race and gender attributes, and includes differences in an individual's background, experiences, behaviors, etc. But it can only be defined this way if we value diversity for what it is supposed to give us, which is a wide spectrum of perspectives that feeds the pipeline for the best ideas and solutions.
Diversity also helps drive shareholder value. At Altria and its operating companies, having a diverse and inclusive workplace helps us gather different points of view from employees; reinforces the message that we care about the communities in which our companies do business; enhances the quality of our relationships with stakeholders; and allows our companies to make fundamentally better business decisions because they are soliciting and considering more viewpoints.
2. How does your company measure success regarding diversity?
At Altria and its operating companies, we look at measuring diversity as a continuous progress in our efforts to increase diversity in our workforce, our supply base and in our community programs.
In particular, beyond basic metrics that look at workforce representation, one of the most important measures of our success is our workforce retention rates. This measure provides a gauge of whether employees, hired at Altria or one of the operating companies, are choosing to stay. I am proud to say that Altria and its operating companies enjoy consistently high ratings in retention within its minority and women employee populations.
3. What kind of opportunities do you give small business within your company? What's the process that they need to follow to be able to do business with your company?
Altria and its operating companies have a long history of successful supplier diversity programs. These programs have dedicated supplier diversity professionals that report into the procurement functions. The programs are designed to help match available opportunities to qualified minority and women businesses. Altria and its operating companies have spent more than $1 billion each year with minority and women businesses since 1999. For additional information about these programs, visit the Altria website (www.altria.com) and the websites of our domestic operating companies, Kraft Foods (www.kraft.com) and Philip Morris USA (www.philipmorrisusa.com).
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