Three years ago, dozens of large companies formed a coalition and declared an ambitious goal: move one million Black workers into good-paying jobs over the next 10 years by hiring or promoting them.
The resulting nonprofit, OneTen, was created amid a crescendo of calls to address racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. It called on its members, including AT&T, Bank of America, Cisco, Delta Air Lines , Dow, General Motors, Nike and Walmart. – commit to hiring and promoting Black workers based on their skills rather than college degrees.
Fast forward, the social climate has changed dramatically since then. Boosting black-only hiring programs has become increasingly controversial, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling last year against race-based affirmative action policies at universities.
OneTen, which has fallen far behind the pace needed to reach its initial goal, is at the forefront of a movement to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion methods in business. And it has been forced to change with the times.
The organization altered its messaging last year, especially since the Supreme Court decision, to emphasize that the policies it advocates will help “Black talent and others.”
More specifically, the organization's leaders realized that asking companies to commit to making changes was not enough. OneTen has helped its members rewrite job descriptions for hundreds of roles to eliminate unnecessary degree requirements and clearly state the skills sought and needed. The organization has helped design learning programs for companies like Delta and Cleveland Clinic, tailored to different fields. And it has created a network for human resources and hiring managers to share their challenges and suggest solutions, in virtual and in-person sessions.
OneTen also works to establish links between employers, training programs and workers.
“It's been a rocky start – we've learned lessons,” said Kenneth Frazier, founder and chairman of OneTen and former CEO of Merck. “But we still have aspirations to make a big difference.”
Many companies are reconsidering their diversity efforts after the Supreme Court ruling, and states like Florida and Texas have passed laws to restrict DEI policies. Lawsuits have been filed threatening companies like a fund in Atlanta focused on supporting Black women entrepreneurs.
Recent research suggests a decline in practices such as requiring diverse groups of candidates when interviewing for job positions. And the resignation of Claudine Gay, a Black woman, as president of Harvard has been celebrated by opponents of DEI initiatives in academia and business, who claimed she was a diversity hire.
Pfizer and two law firms, Morrison Foerster and Perkins Coie, opened their diversity scholarships last year to students of all races after lawsuits against them alleged racial discrimination.
“There is diversity fatigue,” said Debbie Dyson, CEO of OneTen. “What we're doing can't be 'This is a diversity issue.' Skills give you an alternative path.”
OneTen, whose founders include prominent Black business leaders such as Frazier and Kenneth Chenault, former CEO of American Express, promoted skills-based hiring from the beginning. According to the Census Bureau, more than 60 percent of all American workers do not have four-year college degrees. But requiring degrees in jobs hits minority applicants especially hard, eliminating 72 percent of black adults, for example.
According to workforce experts, adopting skills-based practices can help companies tap into a broader pool of dedicated, high-performing workers, while increasing career opportunities and household incomes for millions of Americans. One study estimated that up to 30 million workers without four-year college degrees have most of the skills to succeed in better jobs that pay 70 percent more.
OneTen started with a “super aggressive” goal and a message of diversity, said Plinio Ayala, executive director of Per Scholas, a nonprofit job training program. The shift toward emphasizing skills, he said, “makes a lot more sense and is gaining ground.”
OneTen's collaboration with Delta is a case study in the organization's revised approach.
Following OneTen's playbook, the airline removed the four-year degree requirement from 94 percent of its job openings, including pilot positions. Previously, about half of Delta's jobs required a college degree.
Initially, the company heard internal criticism that OneTen was only for black workers. But like OneTen, Delta moved to emphasize that skills-based hiring and promotion can benefit all workers.
“What's been very helpful is equity for all, and we're really leaning into that message of equity for all,” said Joanne Smith, Delta's chief people officer.
OneTen has also helped the airline create an apprenticeship program designed to move hourly workers into salaried positions with career paths that typically pay salaries of at least $60,000 a year.
Year-long apprenticeships involve classroom and on-the-job training, mentoring and support services. Graduates are guaranteed jobs. The program, which began as an experiment with six workers in 2021, grew last year to a group of 56, who were selected from 7,000 applicants.
Sanassa Diane was part of that group. She started at Delta in 2018 in a call center. “When you called the 1-800 number, I was the person on the other end of the call,” she said.
Diane, 28, rose through the call center hierarchy to become a customer service representative for an invitation-only service primarily for Delta's most lucrative frequent flyers, although she was still paid by the hour.
A little over a year ago, Ms. Diane entered the apprenticeship program and obtained a salaried job in the corporate sales department organizing contracts and agreements for Delta commercial customer accounts. Her salary increased more than 50 percent.
At first, the transition was daunting, she recalled, and she had “imposter syndrome,” the feeling of not belonging in a work environment. Delta got an outside counseling company in her workplace to help her manage her anxiety.
“Entering the business world can be challenging or scary if you're not used to it,” he said.
Ms. Diane, a college dropout, is taking courses toward a bachelor's degree in technology and management, and plans to climb the corporate ladder at Delta.
Despite Delta's adoption of skills-based hiring, the approach has yet to take off more broadly. In a OneTen survey of 500 hiring managers last year, 56 percent said eliminating four-year degree requirements would improve their hiring practices, but only 31 percent are doing so.
Those numbers point to the gap between recognizing a problem and altering corporate behavior, said Ginni Rometty, president of OneTen and former CEO of IBM. “That requires a cultural change,” she said. “And it takes time.”
Having refined its approach, OneTen is making progress, but it is still far behind the pace of creating one million jobs in a decade included in its name. So far, the coalition of businesses has raised 108,000 people who meet OneTen's definition: Black workers without four-year college degrees hired or promoted to jobs that pay family-sustaining wages, as measured by the salary calculator worthy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In the 30 percent allotted time, OneTen is about 10 percent of the way toward its goal, even though its list of member employers has nearly doubled to 65 companies.
Chenault, a former head of American Express, is now managing director of General Catalyst, a venture capital firm. He compares OneTen to “a startup that's in year 3.” He started with one approach, then saw a bigger opportunity and made a pivot.
“Yes, we focus on African Americans, but there is a broader opportunity,” he said. “If a company is going to adopt skills-first practices, it will do so for everyone.”
OneTen's expansion plans include working with community colleges as sources of talent and military bases as large civilian employers. But OneTen estimates that income gains for the more than 100,000 Black workers its coalition partners have hired or promoted total $12 billion.
Demographic trends could also help persuade employers to change. America's working-age population is aging, shrinking, and becoming more diverse. Millions of jobs are vacant due to a lack of qualified workers.
“There is a fundamental business reason for companies to adopt a skills-based hiring system, beyond all the social justice issues that got us off the ground,” said Frazier, president of OneTen.
