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:
www.constangy.com
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!