"Diversity" in the Workplace

thePITman

Well-known member
Honestly curious... is it legal for a company to financially compensate its manager for hiring and promoting more females than males? (or vice versa?)

In the name of "diversity," our company wants more women in management and leadership positions. Let me be clear: I think it is desirable and advantageous to have equal representation at all levels in the company. But with this new directive, my company has created a financial incentive (a bonus) for those managers who increase the number of women managers they have under their management over the course of X years.

So, in order to increase percentage of women managers, you need to decrease the number of male managers. Therefore, my company is financially incentivizing managers to hire or promote more women managers than men. Is this legal?

I don't mean this to come across as negative... I think the goal is admirable, but the means by which they are attempting to get there is discriminatory and a conflict of interest, both of which are either illegal or against our company's code of ethics.
 
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Seems like a poorly planned out incentive program. Obviously, you want the best candidate in the job, but if the incentive is high enough, a manager is going to choose the female over the male (and hope they're reasonably competent). Not to mention that it won't help the female manager out either, as she'll have to deal with starting off her career with everyone wondering if she got hired because she was the best candidate or simply because her hire put money in the hiring managers pocket.

It reminds me of an old Larry the Cable Guy joke - when asked about a company program that awarded employees $100 for any cost savings ideas, he said, "Change the award to $50 and you've saved the company 50%". ;)
 
I can't imagine this is legal. I mean you can hire more female managers as a process, but you'd better not ever tell anyone that's the goal, and especially that you're going to financially compensate management for doing so.
In my 30+ years in the workforce, there are so many more female managers than ever before, even upper management and CEO's. The notion that there is a glass ceiling or there is any discrimination against females anymore is simply false.
 
I mean, sex is a protected class.


I think your company is playing with fire.
Seems like a poorly planned out incentive program. Obviously, you want the best candidate in the job, but if the incentive is high enough, a manager is going to choose the female over the male (and hope they're reasonably competent). Not to mention that it won't help the female manager out either, as she'll have to deal with starting off her career with everyone wondering if she got hired because she was the best candidate or simply because her hire put money in the hiring managers pocket.

It reminds me of an old Larry the Cable Guy joke - when asked about a company program that awarded employees $100 for any cost savings ideas, he said, "Change the award to $50 and you've saved the company 50%". ;)
So you want the most qualified and not just the most qualified woman?
 
Honestly curious... is it legal for a company to financially compensate its manager for hiring and promoting more females than males? (or vice versa?)
It depends on the parameters you use and how you go about it, but the short answer is yes. It's legal,and certainly desirable for a very large company to so, at least in the eyes of EEOC. We'll go on the assumption of no treachery - more females were better qualified, therefore they were selected fairly.

Can you go the affirmative action route and unilaterally promote women instead of men to reach the goal? Well-l-l-l, you better have a darned good reason. Plus affirmative action also means addressing your recruiting efforts to make more women promotable into those positions.

tl;dr - this link does a good job of explaining the issue:

In the name of "diversity," our company wants more women in management and leadership positions. Let me be clear: I think it is desirable and advantageous to have equal representation at all levels in the company. But with this new directive, my company has created a financial incentive (a bonus) for those managers who increase the number of women managers they have under their management over the course of X years.
So, all companies of 100 employees or more are required to fill out an annual EEOC report - I'm assuming that your company is meets that. The EEO-1 form is a company profile that shows workforce demographics, including breakdowns by race/ethnicity, sex and job categories (craft, admin, management). It also compares each data point to the demographic of the employable workforce in that city or county.

If 52% of the community is women, it would be ideal your workforce mirrors the community, or be close to that same figure. Not mandatory, but preferable. Say your company management team has 2%. How do those managers legally increase that number? By working to ensure that a) women in the company are aware of the career opportunities, and what they need to do make themselves eligible for manager (training, work experience, etc). Also, holding job fairs for entry level jobs where you know women will be.

BUT - it's not that simple. What is the racial makeup of the women at your workplace, and in the community? In central Ohio that's mainly black, white, or Hispanic. So you might have sufficient Hispanic women, but not white or black.

HOWEVER, you can't do these things for women only, or for white women only, black women only, etc. - , they have to be available to all. So you make sure you have some of those activities in a target-rich environment while emphasizing they are for everybody. And that applies for any racial or cultural category where you have a lower number than the community

Again, it's perfectly legal and reasonable for high-level manager to have as one their goals to increase the number of female managers. They just have to work toward that goal in a legal fashion.

So, in order to increase percentage of women managers, you need to decrease the number of male managers. Therefore, my company is financially incentivizing managers to hire or promote more women managers than men. Is this legal?
Depends on how you mean "decrease". As a verb, or firing men to make room? That is not kosher. And who says you have to decrease the males? Who's to say they won't increase the number of managers over time? (I know, that's another issue - too many chiefs, etc)

But if the manager in question is diligent, they should be able to make a dent over time, as older managers retire or leave. The idea is to have a biggger the pool of women who are qualified. Think of this as financially incentivizing the executives to get the word out that career opportunity is available to all. And that is certainly legal

Caveat - this is not a quick process. Depending on your company's size and distribution. it might be reasonable to show a 1-5% increase in a year's time. Or you might not see any increase inthe first year. This 50% isn't going to happen overnight and it may never happen. There's nothing to say this is a guaranteed outcome. But there's a good chance an executive might make a noticeable dent over time.

I don't mean this to come across as negative... I think the goal is admirable, but the means by which they are attempting to get there is discriminatory and a conflict of interest, both of which are either illegal or against our company's code of ethics.
A reasonable concern. I would hope your company already has a diversity specialist who is well-trained in this. If so, they will tell you that despite your best efforts, sometimes you can't get the demographic numbers to change. So the form has a part where you list the "barriers" that prevent you/the company from working to bring company demographics closer toward mirroring the community's.

If you're getting the idea this annual EEO report is a pain, you would be right. I'd have to regularly pull demographic reports from HQ, and the categories didn't cleanly match the EEO report field, so I had to do a lot "oh, that should go there, this should go on next page," etc. And you did that four times a year - annual report, plus three quarterly updates.

I was a Diversity Specialist/Manager for three years. I never looked forward to that report. The spreadsheet they make you use is awkward, plus each quarter you had to list in detail the activities you did to change the numbers, and what barriers you encountered each time. On the plus side, our workforce demographics were very close to the communities for white-black and male-female. Biggest problem was trying to get more Hispanics, Native Americans, and AAPI's to apply for entry-level jobs, our numbers were always much lower than the community's. That was just a local culture barrier there.

Fortunately for me, there were two SME's at HQ who were always available to discuss what I was doing, let me know if I was approaching my targets in a legal fashion, and make suggestions.

Bonus? Oh yes, there was always a piece of the EEO-1 report that was one of my annual performance goals I had to work toward. So part of my annual pay increase was tied to that.

Glad I don't have to do that anymore! :geek:

 
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Honestly curious... is it legal for a company to financially compensate its manager for hiring and promoting more females than males? (or vice versa?)

In the name of "diversity," our company wants more women in management and leadership positions. Let me be clear: I think it is desirable and advantageous to have equal representation at all levels in the company. But with this new directive, my company has created a financial incentive (a bonus) for those managers who increase the number of women managers they have under their management over the course of X years.

So, in order to increase percentage of women managers, you need to decrease the number of male managers. Therefore, my company is financially incentivizing managers to hire or promote more women managers than men. Is this legal?

I don't mean this to come across as negative... I think the goal is admirable, but the means by which they are attempting to get there is discriminatory and a conflict of interest, both of which are either illegal or against our company's code of ethics.
ask Biden about his Kamala hire?
 
I know of some pretty interesting things that result from such attempts to give one group an edge to help them keep up with a given group. Seems when we give women an advantage we soon need to change the program to start up the Male advantage again, and that is not recieved well.

A local Dayton professional services firm was pressed internally with letters from an attorney representing a upper level client services administrator who had been repeatedly passed over for opportunities to become partner in their firm.

The solution they derived internally was to give performance standards to justify their actions. So when passed over again a month or two ago, this female who sat literally at the top of the performance categories they had developed to show her lack of qualifications, she decided to leave the firm and to go out on her own. Problem- non compete agreement. So now, the company is going to have to decide if they can prove in court a client manager who sits leads their own performance criteria is not worothy of partner. Or, can they make the non compete agreement stick, and force her to remain at the firm if she wants to live and work in that field within 60 miles of their office. The company will have to give up one side or the other according to her attorney. My point? When business sets guidelines to help or deter a given race or sex from achieving, they may put themselves in a very tenuous position. Today, it may be fine to give women the upper hand, but not if they block a Male from ascending if he can prove merit, and if he also can prove they limit his options via a noncompete agreement. They can not limit both ability to ascend and ability to leave and pursue similar field of work.
 
you know that isn't happening at all places in America now!!!
So you want the most qualified and not just the most qualified woman?

never did happen. Most qualified, 2nd cousin. Most qualified brother in law. Most qualified drinking buddy. Any of those, without the words "most qualified," lol. How easy the newly enlightened forget their former arguments against quotas and other influences, even market place ones. How easy they forget their arguments it's about "work atmosphere," "team players:" and every other rationalization for hiring family, buddies and look-alikes. They conveniently forget their arguments a company should be able to do whatever they want to do, they're only job is to make money....

Call it "fairness" or call it a market place demand. Welcome to the new world all those that are butt-hurt. On the plus side, maybe now your hard working daughters will have a shot to replace that idiot boss' son in the front office can't find his own stink-hole. Or maybe he'll get replaced by the boss' daughter that can't find her own stink hole.

Life goes on.
 
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