By the numbers

T+D, May, 2003

A wake-up call about proving training's worth to his organization set this HR professional on a mission to quantify and measure the impact of diversity on the bottom line.

Ed Hubbard's life is all about numbers, big ones and small ones. He has written 37 books and is currently at work on six. He mountain-bikes 20 miles a day. He sleeps only four to five hours a night. And when he began the research that would become his life's work, he developed 2500 measures that can be used to demonstrate HR's impact on the bottom line; the number is now closer to 4000.

To Hubbard, numbers are the golden keys that can open doors for training and HRD professionals, allowing them access to executive suites, boardrooms, and other places where corporate influence is at work. And he learned that the hard way. Almost two decades ago, he was doing HR work in a department of more than 35 people. After an overnight reorganization, Hubbard and his boss were the only two left. When they asked upper management, bluntly, "Why did you kill our department?" the answer was just as blunt: "You guys couldn't prove your value to this organization."

Thus, Ed Hub bard became a man with a mission: "I wanted to close off that argument once and for all," he says. So he developed his 2500 measures, then turned his attention to diversity initiatives in particular.

In 1997, he published Measuring Diversity Results, a work that shows practitioners "how to position diversity in a way that measures soft skills against financial investment. A lot of people looked at me as though I had two heads," Hubbard admits. "There is a lot of good work in diversity theory. Our contention is that for every discipline there's a theory and a science. We do the applied science side."

Hubbard continues, "Some folks thought we were diluting the notion of diversity. Their position was that it's just the right thing to do, doesn't have to have a bottom line. I agree that it's the right thing to do, but we must account for the dollars being spent."

When Hubbard talks about diversity, he's not just talking about race or gender--the obvious, visible differences between people. He defines a diverse workforce as "a collective mixture characterized by differences and similarities that are applied in the pursuit of organizational objectives." That collective comprises diversity of these types:

* workforce diversity--race, gender, age, and "situational identity" (sexual orientation)

* behavioral diversity--work styles, ways of thinking, beliefs, values

* structural diversity--work teams, cross-functional cooperation, telecommuting

* business diversity--strategic planning, competencies, and the like

* global diversity--location of operations, markets.

Through his research, Hubbard determined that we can look at diversity's impact on organizations in terms of return-on-investment and can calculate it. "It's a huge opportunity," he says. "It's nor about counting heads; it's about making heads count." The Diversity Measurement and Productivity Institute, a division of Hubbard & Hubbard, helps companies decide what to measure and how to measure it. Seven other divisions offer services from customized training and development to management research and technologies, and such products as Hubbard's and others' books, as well as MetricLink, proprietary productivity-measurement software with mote than 300 user organizations. In total, the company employs more than 70 people worldwide.

Hubbard and his wife, Myra, incorporated their firm in California in 1985. At the time, their sons were eight and 13. He admits that getting a business off the ground while raising a family was tough--in fact, he wrote How to Start Your Own Business With Empty Pockets. Now that their boys are grown, Ed and Myra nurture their partnership by working and traveling in their 40-foot RV, stopping in campgrounds during downtime so Ed can write. Every year for their anniversary, they take a "workation" to Maui, where they spend two weeks working and three weeks vacationing or vice versa.

In working with such groups as Prudential Insurance and the city government of Rotterdam, Hubbard advocates "solution-based diversity training--awareness in the context of solving a business problem." Absent that keen business focus, he says, what's the point? "Why would it make a difference that your company employs different-colored people?" he asks rhetorically. "It doesn't make a difference if they're all used the same way. It's nor about representation; it's about utilization. Everyone who walks in the door has something to contribute; most people want to do a good job. But we must have organizational processes that value difference, and that allow and reward risk raking."