At Blue Cross Blue Shield, diversity starts from the ground up

Banner Staff

In a field as competitive as health care, staying one step ahead of the competition is critical.

And as chief diversity officer for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA), Betsy Silva Hernandez knows that to gain that extra step, you’ve got to attract talent from across the racial and ethnic spectrum.

“Within our organization, we really count on the creativity of all our leaders and associates to run a successful health care company, provide superior service to both our member and providers, provide innovation and improve quality of health care,” said Silva Hernandez, who has more than 20 years of senior-level diversity and operations leadership experience at organizations like Freddie Mac and the American Express Company. “And in order to do that, we recognize that a diverse workforce will allow us to ultimately meet that goal.”

While the company already has a workforce comprised of 21 percent minority employees — which mirrors both the communities BCBSMA serves and its board of directors, which is also 21 percent minority — it has recently enlisted some help in developing that diverse workforce: the resources and talent pools of ethnic professional organizations and civic associations.

“We want to be working with organizations that are financially sound, that have a commitment to diversity nationally and also at a local level, and that provide a venue for us to be able to recruit at the same time that our employees have development opportunities in that organization,” said Silva Hernandez.

BCBSMA has begun to establish partnerships with a number of organizations that fit the bill, including the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, the New England Regional Black Nurses Association, the Latino Professional Network, the National Association of Asian American Professionals, and the National Black and Hispanic MBA Associations, whose members all possess master’s degrees in business administration.

Silva Hernandez admits that tapping into such a wide array of civic and professional groups and cultivating lasting relationships with them can be frustrating and protracted, often taking between a year and 18 months for the developments to bear fruit. But when they do, she said, the payoff can be significant.

“We hosted for the ALPHA (Association of Latino Professionals in Finance & Accounting) Association a keynote speaker that focused on multicultural marketing trends and opportunities,” Silva Hernandez explained. “And we knew from the professional organizations we work with that at that session would be individuals focused not just on finance, but on information technology, on marketing, on organizational development … and we have recruiters who have openings for those types of jobs.”

So BCBSMA put their recruiters — as well as senior company leaders — where the professionals were, bracketing the keynote speech with over an hour of networking opportunities.

The approach enabled company personnel to welcome the people and share a little bit about Blue Cross Blue Shield and its organizational values in what Silva Hernandez said was “like having your own personalized job fair.”

“And I am still getting e-mails from individuals asking me for contact information for some of the recruiters, because they still want to follow up with them,” she said.

The overwhelmingly positive response to the ALPHA event doesn’t surprise Silva Hernandez. What surprises her is that more companies don’t see the value in building relationships with ethnic and professional groups from the ground up.

“At some of my former employers, I would struggle for the human resources group and some of the business units to really be involved and engaged with these professional organizations,” she said. “But they’d act like, ‘For the amount of time and money it takes, I’d rather just hire a search firm,’ or ‘I’d rather just go out to a college and do the recruiting.’

“For whatever reason, they didn’t understand it, and ‘it’ is establishing that relationship. And Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is one organization that really does get it, and does it well.”