Focus on diversity: MGM MIRAGE recruits partners for program

Thursday, Feb. 27, 2003 | 11:05 a.m.

In the three years since MGM MIRAGE launched a formal program to track and improve minority representation at the company, it has demonstrated percentage increases in three major categories -- managers, vendors and contractors.

Still, the company is facing its greatest hurdle of all in trying to help thousands of rank and file workers -- many of whom are minorities -- work their way up to managerial and even executive positions.

In a move that executives say will help existing and future generations of workers move up that ladder, the company on Wednesday announced the creation of new partnerships with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, Nevada Partners and Culinary Union Local 226.

"Our property presidents discovered that, when searching for executive-level talent, there is a lack of qualified minority candidates who possess experience in our industry," Terry Lanni, chief executive officer of MGM MIRAGE, said during the company's second annual diversity conference at the Mirage resort.

The diversity conference is a forum for revealing the company's progress in recruiting, hiring and training minorities. While other casino companies such as Park Place Entertainment Corp. and Mandalay Resort Group also are pursuing diversity efforts, MGM MIRAGE -- one of the state's largest employers -- remains the only gaming empire to release figures on minority representation.

MGM MIRAGE executives have pledged to spend more time on the UNLV campus to teach and interact with students, Lanni said Wednesday. In addition, university faculty will spend more time at the company's properties.

"They will be able to structure frequent field trips, experience a sabbatical within our company or seek assistance on curriculum development," he said.

The company also will donate $500,000 to the hotel college to help recruit minority students over the next five years.

The money will be used to help pay for faculty trips to recruitment fairs and urban high schools as well as other efforts to attract minority students.

The ultimate goal is to train students into future company leaders, he said.

"The next (MGM Grand Online President) Bill Hornbuckle may well be a talented African-American child currently in the 7th grade," he said. "The next (Senior Vice President of Human Resources at MGM MIRAGE) Cindy Kiser Murphey may be a gifted Hispanic girl who's studying for midterms today. I don't know who these young people are but I know we want to reach them."

Until now, the college has focused primarily on recruiting minority faculty, said Stuart Mann, dean of the hotel college.

"When I got here five years ago, there was only one ethnic minority on the faculty. In order to do the job in recruiting students, we had to have role models."

About 19 percent of the college's faculty members are minorities. By contrast, only 2.3 percent of undergraduates at the hotel college are black and 6 percent are Hispanic.

The college aims to increase those percentages to reflect the community's diversity, Mann said.

The MGM MIRAGE partnership, likely the largest diversity campaign of its kind in the hotel and casino industry, won't just benefit the company or casinos in general, he said.

"This will help bring students into the fold (to) help the hospitality industry overall."

The company aims to replicate the program at other academic institutions it has relationships with, Lanni said.

Separately, the Culinary Union, together with Nevada Partners, will introduce a training program to allow low-level workers to advance into supervisory positions.

A majority of members in the Culinary Union -- which represents tens of thousands of beverage servers, housekeepers, bartenders, bellhops and other hourly workers on the Las Vegas Strip and across downtown -- are minorities.

Nevada Partners is a nonprofit group that offers job training to unemployed and low-income adults.

"We know that taking the first step from a front line staff position to a supervisory job can be a difficult transition," Lanni said. "We believe this innovative collaboration will allow the largest number of front line employees the greatest opportunity to successfully make the transition."

In essence, the company is looking for more workers like Cathy Ballard.

Ballard started work at the company's predecessor, MGM Grand Inc., in 1993 as a reservation specialist for the just-opened flagship resort. She advanced into a human resources position and then, after MGM Grand's merger with Mirage Resorts Inc. in 2000, transferred to the Golden Nugget.

Now assistant director of human resources at the Golden Nugget, Ballard, who is black, says she never felt discriminated against on the way up.

Still, the company is just beginning to understand the meaning of diversity and the value it has for the company, she said.

Ballard, 43, is now training other managers who will soon start to give diversity training to all front-line employees nationwide.

"We are the catalyst to take it a step further," she said.

Wednesday's meeting attracted scores of local and national leaders representing various ethnic groups. Many praised the company for its progress and openness. Others lambasted executives for not awarding coveted contracts, for not doing more to reach out to other ethnic minorities beyond blacks, Hispanics and Asians and for tapping talent far from its home base.

"I don't mind these questions," Lanni responded. "We're kind of in the hot seat. No company is perfect and we need to learn."

The company is paying more than lip service to the issue, attendees said.

"They are changing the culture, they are changing the way they do business -- perhaps not as fast as people would like it to be, perhaps with not as many (local) contacts as people would like them to have," said Bob Bell, a board member of the black-oriented Urban Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas.

The Urban Chamber has criticized the company for not making a concerted effort to identify minority-owned firms using local contacts.

George Herrera, president and chief executive officer of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, urged minority groups to work together to bid for bigger-ticket business rather than battle each other for prominence.

"The politics of division is a very dangerous game," he said.

He also suggested that MGM MIRAGE look into funding venture capital projects that can help minority firms gain much-needed capital.

"We can't continue to grow on a balance sheet that's debt-ridden."

MGM MIRAGE is newer to the kind of diversity education that has been taking place in consumer products and automotive industries for years, he said. Still, the company should be commended for initiating a "back and forth" dialogue with minority groups and establishing a model that other companies in the entertainment and hospitality industry can adopt, he said.

At year-end, about 52 percent of the company's roughly 41,000 employees in North America were minorities -- about the same percentage as a year earlier. Male and female employees each make up about half the workforce, similar to 2001 figures.

At the end of 2002, about 28 percent of the company's managers and higher positions were held by minorities -- a 12.4 percent increase over 2001's 26.3 percent minority representation for managers and above.

Last year, the company spent about 10 percent of its roughly $680 million in purchases for goods and services with certified or accredited women-owned, minority-owned and disadvantaged businesses. In 2001, it spent 5.5 percent of its $445 million budget with such firms.

The company spent 22 percent of a $57 million construction budget with minority firms last year. In 2001, it spent 14 percent of a $56 million budget with minority firms.

MGM MIRAGE initiated diversity training and hiring policies after civil rights leaders intervened during the impending merger of MGM Grand and Mirage Resorts.

The company kicked off several major diversity initiatives last year: