Monster a Model for Diversity Benchmarking

Maynard, MA, June 27, 2007—Online careers and recruitment company Monster today announced the Monster Top Companies for Diversity- a comprehensive, employee-focused quantitative assessment methodology for evaluating a company's diversity and inclusion performance against a national standard. Monster's Top Companies for Diversity measures the perceptions of a company's employees regarding the employer's performance on specific diversity factors across three broad categories: organizational commitment to diversity, fairness in compensation and culture of inclusion; results are then compared against an established national benchmark for analysis.

"Employers are faced with new recruitment challenges as today's diverse online job seekers are drawing insight from past and current employees by way of blogs and social networking sites - they're not just relying on content on values and programs enumerated on a prospective employer's web site," noted Steve Pemberton, chief diversity officer, Monster. "Monster's Top Companies for Diversity was designed to help companies take measurable strides toward achieving cultures of diversity and inclusion, and market back their successes to job candidates in a meaningful way."

Monster's Top Company for Diversity seal is awarded by Monster to employers that score in the top 25 percent for overall performance, and also meet several additional set criteria as defined by Monster. Companies granted the seal can leverage it as a recruitment and branding tool, as the award gives job seekers direct insight into how effective prospective employers are at fostering cultures of diversity and inclusion. The seal will be integrated across the Monster platform - on job ads placed on Monster, on job seeker facing advertising and landing pages and in related press materials. In addition, winning companies will also be granted use of the seal for their own marketing purposes.

The Monster Top Companies for Diversity was developed with input from top diversity officers at leading U.S. corporations, including Candi Castleberry-Singleton, Motorola's vice president of global inclusion and diversity.

"Diversity initiatives have got to be sustainable, which is why Monster Top Companies for Diversity is so promising. Companies that successfully promote workplace diversity can leverage Monster's seal to highlight their diversity efforts, and thereby further enhance their ability to cultivate a robust talent pipeline," said Castleberry-Singleton. "Also, we designed the tool to help companies identify areas that need improvement, from communicating with employees more effectively, to developing diversity-specific recruitment and retention tactics," added Castleberry-Singleton

Monster's Pemberton also noted, "We're in the midst of a long-term demographic shift in the U.S., where the workforce is becoming increasingly more diverse. For companies to successfully compete for the best talent, they need to communicate in a way that will resonate with the workforce they are trying to attract."