Cisco’s Center for Collaboration Leadership clarifies for executives what type of leadership and business results are expected of them, making success easier to envision.

Plenty of programs move women through the pipeline for top jobs at this information technology and networking company. Deliberately sought out to fill positions at the VP level and above, candidates are then interviewed about their goals and provided with an executive coach to design a career plan. Female directors and VPs who join the Executive Action Learning Forum receive extra guidance, interact with female leaders and get a rare chance to study how different company strategies affect the bottom line. Members of the Connected Women employee resource group attend events that address a range of business topics, from office politics to online networking; some also participate in executive shadowing sessions, in which they observe those farther up the ladder.

Chairman & CEO: John Chambers

Interim Chief HR Officer: Jim Gemmell

% of senior managers who are women: 20%

% of corporate executives who are women: 17%

% of promotions to manager, senior manager and corporate executive positions that went to women: 24%

% of the top 10% of the company’s earners who are women: 18%

% of corporate executives with profit-and-loss responsibility who are women: 12%

% of the executives running divisions with revenues of more than a billion dollars who are women: --

% of executives who report directly to the CEO who are women: 20%

% of the members of the board of directors who are women: 15%

% of female workforce participating in mentoring: 64%

Swati is from New Delhi, India, and mom to daughter Rohini (7 ½).

Senior Director of Customer Value Chain Management Swati Saran was lucky enough to be mentored by her mother, who came from a small village in India and went on to start her own very successful enterprise against all odds while still maintaining a great work life balance. Her mother instilled in Swati a desire to succeed and lead.

Swati wanted to be a similar inspiration for women around the world. She completed a bachelor’s degree in engineering in India, then came to the U.S. to complete her MBA. She married, and became a mom. As Swati has advanced through her career, she has come to realize that women need to use their innate skill sets as strengths to succeed in the workplace.

Those soft skills, such as compassion, the ability to listen, and strong communication and collaborative skills, are ones she herself demonstrates. These skills, says Swati, are assets that allow women to distinguish themselves and be confident. Swati has mentored many women both inside and outside of the Cisco family and she has encouraged them to use these skills. Swati always tells her mentees to do the job well, allow themselves to have the confidence to communicate about their great work, and don’t stay in the shadows.

Swati has even forced herself to present to large audiences to build her confidence—and sometimes practices these presentations on her daughter. Her advice to women is to find a mentor with whom they can take risks, and practice skills in a safe environment.

Over the last three years, Swati has worked with many bright women who have had the passion to succeed and looked for advice on career growth. And her mentees have been successful: Two were promoted in the last three years and one has even gone up two levels.

 

Cisco employees who enroll in targeted health programs are eligible for up to $800 in incentives; if their families join them, they can earn $1,200.

There’s no need to worry about child care at this information technology and networking company, which plays host to 800 kids at two on-site day-care facilities (both at headquarters). Parents can utilize child-care centers or access up to 20 days of subsidized backup care annually. If they have older kids, they may also take advantage of the School-age Child assistance program, which offers private counseling for complex issues and makes education recommendations. Mentoring programs spring out of the 12 employee affinity networks, two devoted to women; the eMentor Me website, available to those in sales, marketing and operations, forges connections across the company. Moms blog and share their videos on a special online forum.

Chairman & CEO John Chambers

VP, HR Jim Gemmell and Jerry Dark

Women managers/execs 21% 

Women among top earners 18% 

Women hires in 2010 24% 

Average weeks of fully paid maternity leave offered 26

Allows new moms to “phase back” into work with reduced hours? Yes

Offers affinity group for new mothers? No

Offers backup childcare? Yes

Employees working flexibly 99%

Cisco’s Inclusive Advocacy program pairs multicultural employees with key leaders who mentor, coach and sponsor their ascent into senior positions.

At this information technology and networking company, it’s the chairman and CEO, John Chambers, who sends the message that diversity is important. Not only does he regularly meet with the inclusion and Diversity Executive Board to gauge whether each of his divisions is advancing multicultural employees, he also keeps the board of directors up to date on the hiring of women and people of color and even reviews supplier diversity data. To make sure that this emphasis filters down, even the managers who are responsible for selecting new employees undergo three hours of training annually to root out hidden bias and learn how to conduct an inclusive interview. To widen its impact, the company spent $130 million on giving to diversity-related organizations in 2010, sponsoring conferences held by the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, among others.

Chairman & CEO John Chambers
Chief Diversity Officer Marilyn Nagel

At Cisco, multicultural women represent…
13% multicultural women
4% of corporate executives
4% of senior managers
6% of the top earners
10% of the company hires
8% of the company promotions
11% of the company losses
Not tracked participants in mentoring programs
20% of participants in affinity groups

Cisco’s Home for the Holidays initiative allows employees to videoconference with faraway family members during the winter season.

Employees at this technology company consistently rate its support for flexibility as one of the best things about working there–and now they have even more reasons to love it: In 2009, the company introduced job-sharing, formalized both part-time schedules and full-time work-from-home arrangements and added global policies that made flextime and telecommuting easier to use. An estimated 95% of the workforce adjusted their hours last year, and 90% worked off-site, something most employees report doing two days per week, on average. With 706 videoconferencing rooms in 48 worldwide locations, anyone can hold a meeting from anywhere. For mothers of young children, the biggest news may have been the launch of Off/On Ramp, which offers extended leaves of up to two years, including one with full benefits. Also new: four fully paid weeks off for adoption.

Chairman & CEO John Chambers

SVP, HR Brian Schipper

Women managers, senior managers and corporate execs 22%

Women among top earners 18%

Women on board of directors 15%

Women corporate executive hires in 2009 11%

Women participating in management or leadership training in the past year* 3%

Women participating in formalized executive succession planning last year* 1%

Women promoted last year who utilized a formal flexible work arrangement 84%

Do formal compensation policies reward managers who help women advance? No

 

*Percentages reflect number of women participants versus company’s total female workforce.

Cisco’s online Multicultural Multigenerational Tool Kit shows employees how to work effectively with people from other cultures and age groups.

Talented women do well at this information technology and networking company, which just introduced its Inclusive Advocacy program for high-potential employees. Multicultural women enrolled in the program are partnered with senior executives from other business units and global regions for a full year of coaching and professional opportunities—and often walk away with promotions and plum assignments. The message that success is within reach for everyone is reinforced at the annual Diversity and Leadership Symposium, at which senior executives describe their own journeys as multicultural employees. Diversity awareness training is required for all hiring managers, but the Executive Talent Insertion program is specifically designed to attract a wide slate of experienced candidates to top jobs in engineering, finance, sales and operations, with a focus on female and minority professionals. Staffers who want to develop the skills they need to advance can rely on quarterly leadership events that are held by the 11 employee networks as well as ongoing initiatives such as the Achieve development program for African-American employees. Other standouts include five workshops on career development from the Asian-American Network.

Multicultural Women 13%
Chairman & CEO John Chambers
Chief Diversity Officer Marilyn Nagel

At Cisco, multicultural women represent…
4% of corporate executives
4% of senior managers
6% of the top earners
20% of the company hires
11% of the company losses
17% of participants in mentoring programs
13% of participants in career counseling programs

*Denotes a member of the Top 5 Best Companies for Multicultural Women

30 private lactation rooms are available to employees at Cisco’s headquarters.

The opening of a $38 million LifeConnections facility last November in San Jose, CA, brought applause from parents who work for this tech giant. Uniting child care, medical and fitness centers under one enormous roof, the facility offers a wealth of services to the 52% of workers who live near headquarters. Full-time childcare is available for 400 employee kids, while their mothers can enjoy a 48,000-square-foot gym and a convenient walk-in doctor’s office that provides everything from pediatric checkups to physical therapy. Of course, moms don’t have to work at the office. In fact, 85% of employees flexed their hours or worked off-site last year, leading management to formalize such arrangements. A pilot program now allows staffers with workplace difficulties to videoconference with a career coach.

Chairman & CEO: John Chambers

Senior VP, HR: Brian Schipper

Women managers/execs: 22%

Women among top earners: 17%

Women on board of directors: 17%

Women corporate executive hires in 2008: 28%

Women participating in management or leadership training in the last year: 30%

Women participating in formalized executive succession planning last year: 35%

Women promoted last year who utilized a formal flexible work arrangement: 1%

Formal compensation policies reward managers who help women advance: No

Instead of bemoaning the lack of multicultural women in the IT industry, this technology leader aggressively seeks out the best candidates in the business.

In 2008, Cisco developed a global recruiting strategy to better identify top multicultural women in the field and hired a diversity oversight manager to keep the initiative on track. But it’s already easy to find women of color in prominent positions at Cisco, including Chief Technology Officer Pad masree Warrior and Judy Lin, who serves as senior vice president of the Ethernet Switching Technology Group. Like her peers, Pad masree is straightforward about why she came to the company, explaining that it fuses “a relentless focus on success” with “a very inclusive culture.” Now, in a bid to attract the next generation of IT workers, the company is tapping multicultural employees like systems engineer Danielle Desalu to volunteer with its IT Rocks program for high school students. Its mission? To let young women of all ethnicities know that technology is a field in which they can succeed.

Multicultural Women: 13%

Multicultural Women Managers/Execs: 7%

Chief Diversity Officer: Brian Schipper

Hires who are multicultural women: 10%

Hires who are multicultural men: 22%

Multicultural women managers/execs: 7%

Multicultural men managers/execs: 26%

Top 20% earners who are multicultural women: 5%

Top 20% earners who are multicultural men: 23%

Multicultural women on board of directors: 0%

Offers formal compensation program to reward managers who specifically help multicultural women advance: NO

Rates managers on the number of multicultural women employees advancing: NO

Uses outside recruiter to focus on finding multicultural women candidates: YES

Offers support groups specifically for multicultural women: NO

Offers mentoring programs specifically geared toward multicultural women early in their careers: NO

Offers sponsorship program specifically geared toward multicultural women early in their careers: NO