The number of minorities in Golden-based Coors Brewing Co.’s boardroom and in the executive suite during 2004 earned the brewer high marks on a new list of the 30 best companies for diversity.
Black Enterprise magazine included Coors, which merged with Canadian brewer Molson on Feb. 9 to form Molson Coors Brewing Co., on its 2005 30 Best Companies for Diversity list. The list appears in the magazine’s July issue, scheduled for release June 28.
The list, announced Tuesday, doesn’t rank the companies by number. It puts them in alphabetical order instead. Each was selected after an extensive survey of America’s largest publicly traded companies with significant U.S. operations.
“It is significant to note that we surveyed 1,000 companies and only 30 made the criteria. If other companies had made the criteria, it would have been 40, it would have been 50,” said Andrew Wadium, a spokesman for Black Enterprise.
The survey considered four criteria – the percentage of minorities on boards, in senior executive ranks, in the workforce and the percentage of procurement money spent with minority-owned suppliers.
Coors did well in all four when measured against companies of similar size, said Alfred Edmond Jr., Black Enterprise’s editor in chief. But the number of minorities on the Coors’ board (two of eight members) and in senior executive ranks (about 18 percent of the 55 senior managers) placed Coors in the top 20, Edmond said.
“It is an honor for Coors to be recognized for the ways in which our company actively promotes and embraces diversity in the workplace and the community,” Frits van Paaschen, chief executive of Coors Brewing Co., said in a news release.
While the New York-based magazine has done surveys of the best places for African-Americans to work in the past, the new study focuses on broader criteria, Edmond said.
“The expectation has evolved from a focus on affirmative action. It used to be, ‘This is a nice place to work,’ and today it is ‘Yeah, this is a nice place to work, and I have a good chance to become a manager,”‘ he said.
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
Tops in survey
Black Enterprise magazine’s 30 best companies for diversity:
Aflac
American Express Co.
Aramark
Bank of America
BellSouth Corp.
Citigroup
Coca-Cola Co.
Coors Brewing Co. (now part of Molson Coors Brewing Co.)
DaimlerChrysler Corp.
Darden Restaurants
Eastman Kodak Co.
Fannie Mae
FedEx Express
General Motors Corp.
IBM Corp.
McDonald’s Corp.
Marriott International Inc.
MGM Mirage
Nordstrom
Pepco Holdings Inc.
Pepsi Bottling Group
PepsiCo
PG&E Corp.
Pitney Bowes
Procter & Gamble
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.
Verizon Communications Inc.
Xerox Corp.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Yum Brands
