How Cisco Connects Purpose and DEIB to Profit and Growth

Here’s how DEIB programs can become essential business drivers that lead to stronger business results.

Does purpose drive profit?

Great Place To Work? research has found that when companies embrace their purpose and have clear communication from their leaders about how purpose is connected to performance, companies have better performance.

Cisco, No. 2 on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For? List in 2024, draws a direct line between its purpose and its business performance.

“We know that when we show up authentically in our purpose … it builds trust with our customers,” says Gloria Goins, chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at Cisco. Goins shared how purpose and diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging (DEIB) programs at Cisco are driving stronger business performance at the 2024 For All Summit? in New Orleans.

“At Cisco, our North Star is: How do we take our purpose and use it as a differentiator in the global marketplace?” Goins says.  “How do we make sure it distinguishes Cisco from every other company on the planet?”

Connecting DEIB and purpose

Why does Cisco connect its purpose with efforts to improve DEIB across the organization?

The answer is part of Cisco’s “Conscious Culture” strategy, which identifies how an inclusive workplace drives superior outcomes for the company’s mission.

To achieve it’s mission, Cisco sees that it needs every employee to fully participate, and that a more diverse set of voices leads to stronger results. High-trust culture is a crucial ingredient for success across environmental, social, and governance issues (ESG).

“Our vision at Cisco is to be the global leader in building diverse, equitable, accessible, and resilient communities to accelerate business growth and to fulfill our purpose of powering an inclusive future for all,” Goins says. “How are we going to do that? By embedding DEI in every single thing we do.”

In this way, DEIB is an unavoidable component of purpose, and a clear business priority with a measurable impact.

DEIB as a business strategy

For DEIB to have staying power within an organization, it must operate like any other business unit.

Goins says DEIB leaders should cultivate four skills:

Deep expertise for diversity and inclusion work. “DEI is a profession and a practice,” Goins says. “Your lived experience is part of it, but it is a profession with art, science, scholarship and pedagogy.”

Business acumen. “I tell my team all the time: ‘We can’t be business partners to the business if we don’t have basic business acumen,’” Goins says. That means going to earnings calls and taking trainings to understand how the business operates.

Knowledge of the organization’s mission and industry. You have to know how the business defines value, what goals it has in the market and how you want to differentiate yourself from competitors, Goins says.

The ability to create business results. It’s not enough to be strategic, knowledgeable, or have subject matter expertise, Goins says. DEIB professionals must also know how to execute, measure, and drive change — and connect those results to revenue.

Highlighting DEIB with customers

How can purpose and DEIB be used to increase revenue? It has to be embedded in everything a company does, and Cisco works hard to ensure customer-facing teams are comfortable and empowered to talk about these issues.

“We know that 78% of our customers care about DEI, they care about ESG,” Goins says. “How do we partner with our customers, our partners, our suppliers, to make DEI not only a business priority for us, but share that expertise to make it a business priority for them?”

There are three roles Cisco’s DEIB can serve with customers, Goins says.

Champion. Cisco can advocate for practices that customers and others can adopt to improve inclusion and belonging, such as the “Proximity Initiative” it developed.

Convener. The DEIB team might be just one of a group of voices bringing together expertise both inside and outside the organization to answer a customer’s questions.

Catalyst. The team can lean in to solve tough problems around the world through initiatives like Cisco’s social investment strategy.

How to ensure purpose creates business value

Goins shares five immediate actions that any company should take to ensure purpose is creating accretive value for the business:

1. Get leadership commitment. “Everything starts and ends with the leaders,” Goins says. “Make sure to define what is an inclusive leader, how you enable them, how you measure, and how you hold them accountable.”

2. Incorporate purpose into your core business strategy. “You have to align it with all the people and business policies or practices that you have,” Goins says. “Our operations — every policy, practice, procedure, and mechanism — has to reflect DEI inherently within it.”

3. Enable and empower employees to talk about purpose and DEIB. “They’re the ones that are going to activate it,” Goins says. “They’re the ones that are going to evangelize it.”

4. Seek customer engagement and alignment. Cisco is working with 24 customers who have asked for help, not with Cisco’s hardware and software, but with turning DEI into a business amplifier and accelerator, Goins says.

5. Measure impact and report progress. Cisco annually produces a “Purpose Report” that shares quantifiable progress toward its goals. “The connection between purpose and profit is real and tangible,” Goins says. “Purpose will give you a differentiator in the marketplace because it builds trust with your employees and your customers.”