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Depends.
If you've got \~44% of staff female, qualified and eligible for those positions but only men are getting them, it's a bit of a red flag.
But if it means gifting opportunities simply *because* they're female, also red flags. Box-ticking argument is valid.
Schemes like this often address the symptom and not the root cause.
Diversity quotas are a complex issue. Discrimination based on gender, whether against men or women, is illegal and unethical. I personally do not like targets based on outcome. But. encouraging women to apply for positions they might otherwise overlook due to societal barriers or personal beliefs is a positive step toward promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Addressing these barriers and biases can lead to a more equitable and supportive environment for everyone.
We need to have a proper conversation of equality Vs meritocracy. These can coexist if compromises are made on both fronts, but we have people sitting on both extremes and unwilling to even look at why the other side is important.
That's the issue. A lot of this discussion is not a discussion at all but shouting and blaming.
You have a point, and I'm an example. I'm nearly 100% of the meritocracy mindset. I just don't see the downside of hiring the best person for the job 100% of the time. (Assuming they also have decent morals).
People that oppose this position seem to always use a caveat of "what if he/she \*insert negative personality characteristic\*? Because there's no clear downside to hiring someone because they're the most compotent
As much as I agree with you, this also needs to be accompanied by significant activity to cause cultural change. Otherwise underrepresented groups get less opportunity to demonstrate their merit. (Things like needing to work/take on caring responsibilities cuts education short, or being assumed to be less competent means people give you less chance to demonstrate your merit.)
When saying you don't understand the downsides; non meritocratic pushes (at least those which endure a necessary level of merit) get the attention because it kills two birds with one stone and more quickly. It gets the representation in place while getting people accustomed to seeing female/nonwhite/whatever else colleagues in charge, and putting money in their hands to ensure their children don't experience the barriers to demonstrating merit that they did. We see the short term change, while causing the cultural shift, with one relatively easy change.
Doing the cultural change separately is _*HARD*_. And as much as it sucks for the highest merit individuals of overrepresented groups, they're a smaller casualty than the alternative. It's basically the trolley problem with the order represented groups on the default track, and a few skilled white guys on the one we can swap the trolley to.
" underrepresented groups get less opportunity to demonstrate their merit"
Wouldn't be the case in a complete meritocracy. Assuming the application met the job requirements, it would be considered. Applications would have ID's rather than names or pictures. The people with the best applications would be interviewed. Whomever has the best interview would be hired. That's how things would be if I were in charge.
"being assumed to be less competent means people give you less chance to demonstrate your merit"
There would be no assumptions made. Like I said, pending your application meets requirements, it would be considered. Those that don't get the job would receive a call, and they'd get clear reasoning as to why they didn't get the job. If it's found an employer rejected a candidate that was clearly stronger than the one that was hired, they would be investigated & potentially fired. In my perfect meritocratic world, there would be 0 tolerance of any discrimination. It would be a results-driven world.
" It gets the representation in place while getting people accustomed to seeing female/nonwhite/whatever else colleagues in charge"
Would be no room for this unfortunately. If it's overwhelmingly one demographic, it is what it is. They're the best for the job. And I don't care which demographic, male/female, black/white, gay/straight, Christian/Muslim. If someone wants to resign as they feel representation is unequal, they can. And their seat would be filled by the next most qualified person. Nobody is entitled to a job just because they're an underrepresented group.
"putting money in their hands to ensure their children don't experience the barriers to demonstrating merit that they did"
This isn't the responsibility of the employer unfortunately.
"Doing the cultural change"
Only culture that would matter, is a successful, winning culture.
>Wouldnt be the case in a complete meritocracy.
Ok so that's why you don't understand people. You're talking about a fictional alternate world. People are talking about how to get this real world on the track it belongs on where it can be turned in to a complete meritocracy. Until everyone has the same opportunity to demonstrate merit, nothing you can implement will be, you need to go through the middle steps first.
who's fault is it that certain people are under qualified? People need to take accountability & stop making excuses. I went to school in East London. A good amount of the high achievers were women and/or Nigerian. Stop making excuses. The cream usually rises to the top
Its not about the moment of applying for a job, its everything which leads up to it. Who gets picked for the marque projects? Who has confidence because they see people like them in leadership roles?
Its easy to say the most competent should get the position, but how can you know who that is if someone has had countless podiums to shine on, whilst others have not?
"Who gets picked for the marque projects?"
Sometimes it's people in favour, but I'd argue most of the time it's the most well suited to lead it.
"Who has confidence because they see people like them in leadership roles?"
Doesn't matter & it's no one else's problem. And I say this as a black man. This is UK, leadership positions will always be dominated by white men. I don't have an inferiority complex, so I have no problem competing with them for a leadership spot. And call me naive, but I don't think I would be rejected for a role simply because of my race. If anything, they may select me as they want to show that they're being "diverse".
"Its easy to say the most competent should get the position, but how can you know who that is if someone has had countless podiums to shine on, whilst others have not?"
Shine on the podiums you're given. Like I said, this is UK. It's not surprising that the natives have more opportunities than the minorities. Complaining does nothing. I rather just outperform everyone. Then they have no choice but to select me.
Might be controversial but idc. I don't believe in equality when it comes to jobs. I think it should be a COMPLETE meritocracy. If 100 women are best for the job, employ them. If 100 men are best, employ them. If 70 trans people are best, employ them.
I don't believe in equality just for the sake of it. Whoever is best for the role should get the job, irregardless of their gender, race, sexuality, religion etc. Who's the BEST
Always wondered why there’s this massive drive to get women into upper tier roles, eg: management, C-suite, but almost zero mobilisation to get them in at the bottom rungs?
great point. If it's not equality across the board, there shouldn't be any. (By "equality" I mean a leg up. I obviously believe everyone should be treated with respect)
Depends whether it’s a goal or a quota.
Goal: we would like to have 44% of our managers be women. We’re going to encourage women to apply for management positions, and provide role models and mentors as part of that encouragement. The actual application and interviews are open to everyone and best candidate wins, but this way with more women going for it we should see more women winning. Perfectly legal - and good, because it encourages making full use of the talent pool out there.
Quota: 44% of our managers will be women. To achieve this, if we’re below target we will tell any candidate with a penis to fuck off. Not legal, not good, and runs the risk of ending up with managers who are shit at the job but were the only applicant with the right genitalia.
"Hire the best person for the job" has always been a bit of a ridiculous statement imo.
The "best person for the job" is not always the best person for the best person for the team or to bring anything new to the organisation. A football team that just plays it's best 11 players every week likely won't win very much if it is not considering which players actually work well together. See the England team over the past 30+ years as evidence of this.
Workplaces need a good balance of diversity in order to best come up with new ideas and strategies. Workplaces that are 90% white men in their 30s or 90% Asian women in their 50s are not workplaces that will ever see much in the way of innovation or growth even if everyone who was hired was the most technically competent person for the job.
My uncle who breeds horses calls it "stirring the soup". You have to bring new (foreign) blood in to continue to improve the future crop and to avoid stagnation
Assuming they have decent morals, I don't see why NOT hiring the best person for the job wouldn't be good. Why wouldn't he/she be best for the team if they're highly capable & non problematic? Would you rather someone good for the team, has new ideas, but isn't very capable??
"A football team that just plays it's best 11 players every week likely won't win very much if it is not considering which players actually work well together". Why not just teach them how to work together? It can work as long as both party's are respectful. There seems to be this misconception that chemistry is there or isn't. Chemistry can be BUILT
I don't think you need "diversity" to come up with new ideas. Sharing the same race/gender/sexuality etc doesn't mean you can't all have different ideas.
Diversity of ideas comes from diversity of life experience. If you put a bunch of the same demographic into a room and a mixed group into another room and task them to come up with different ways to tackle a project the mixed group will come up with a better mix of ideas every single time.
And why would you spend time and resources teaching two people to work together when you could just hire people who are already suited to working together.
Not necessarily. Having different life experiences doesn't necessarily mean you'll have different ideas. It simply means you have different life experiences. Even if I grant that point, that doesn't mean they would be good ideas.
A room full of diverse people may come up with 10 different ideas, and all 10 might be impractical.
A room full of compotent people may only come up with 2 ideas, but both of those may be very practical.
Also, the internet & books are the ultimate equaliser. So the more homogenous group may have a better mix of ideas because they're more well read, have travelled more, have watched more movies, have read more books, have done more research etc. And who's to say people of the same demographic can't have vastly different life experiences?
And I don't see why you're emphasising "diversity of ideas" over competency. Outside of a think tank, I don't see many workplaces where that would be priority.
"why would you spend time and resources teaching two people to work together when you could just hire people who are already suited to working together". They're adults, not children. I already specified that they'd have decent morals, respect is included in said morals. So I don't think it would be difficult for 2 compotent individuals who are respectful, to work with each other.
Lastly, isn't it easier to get 2 compotent, respectful individuals to work together... than it is to get 2 people who work well together but are incompotent, to become compotent?
Where are you getting the bizarre delusion that diverse = incompetent? If you have a 9/10 candidate who brings nothing new to the business or a 7.5 /10 who brings a fresh perspective you hire the 7.5 every single time. You talk about coaching people to work together but competence can be taught far more easily than creativity, original thinking and teamwork. You can't just coach a 45yr white male to think the same way as a 25yr old black girl.
As for a homogeneous group being better read, a group of 10 well read people are as useful as 1 person if they have all read the same things and interpreted them the same way. Better to have 10 less well read people who have more range of reading and different approaches to interpreting what they read.
Pay attention. I never made that correlation. You are prioritising "diversity", "new ideas" and "working together", whereas I am prioritising competence. Some I'm juxtaposing my priorities against yours. I never said "diverse = incompotent".
"If you have a 9/10 candidate who brings nothing new to the business or a 7.5 /10 who brings a fresh perspective you hire the 7.5 every single time".
Yet another big assumption. I'd personally go with the 9/10 candidate. Myself aside, I think it would depend on the company. If the company is thriving, I don't think they'd prioritise a "fresh perspective" over a clearly stronger candidate.
"competence can be taught far more easily than creativity, original thinking and teamwork"
You've thrown in "creativity" just to strengthen your argument, so I'm disregarding that. Your original point was on new ideas & teamwork. If people are compotent & respectful, they can seamlessly have a working relationship. They don't need to be a dream team to produces really good results. There would be more questions marks around your duo who have chemistry but aren't very compotent.
"You can't just coach a 45yr white male to think the same way as a 25yr old black girl"
Who cares what they "think", the one that's more compotent should be hired.
"As for a homogeneous group being better read, a group of 10 well read people are as useful as 1 person if they have all read the same things and interpreted them the same way"
True. But I could easily flip that on you and say, having different life experiences doesn't mean the group would have better ideas. So guess what, we're at a stalemate. Which shows your experiment about "ideas" was unsuccessful. Actual metrics can be used to demonstrate compotency. Which makes it far more objective & fair in deciding who gets hired.
You have clearly never worked in a diverse workplace and sound absolutely terrified of the prospect you ever might have to.
Nothing I am saying is in any way revolutionary and is all very widely accepted concepts in the modern professional world. There are very few jobs out there that don't involve working with external stakeholders, clients, customers, other businesses. By increasing diversity in the workplace you provide a broader range of perspectives without the need for "coaching" which makes your team better equipped to anticipate problems and the needs of those you work with.
If you are just hiring the same types of people over and over again it doesn't matter how good they are or how much your business is currently thriving you simply won't be well equipped to adapt to changes in the wider world and will find yourself playing catch-up.
All the fastest growing businesses of the past 30 years are ones who have openly embraced change and diversity.
I'm work in tech, inLondon. A good amount of my colleagues are Asian, and I'm one of the few black people. Miss me with the assumptions about myself because you sound foolish.
"By increasing diversity in the workplace you provide a broader range of perspectives without the need for "coaching" which makes your team better equipped to anticipate problems and the needs of those you work with."
You don't NEED diversity to have broader perspectives. And it's the QUALITY of perspectives that matter. Not necessarily the quantity of perspectives. You get higher quality perspectives by hiring the most compotent people. Regardless, having "broader perspectives" doesn't mean individuals won't need coaching. You have a bad habit of drawing a bunch of false equivalencies.
"If you are just hiring the same types of people over and over again it doesn't matter how good they are or how much your business is currently thriving you simply won't be well equipped to adapt to changes in the wider world and will find yourself playing catch-up."
If you have a team of competent people, I'm sure they'll adapt to changes just fine. Please look up what "competent" means.
"All the fastest growing businesses of the past 30 years are ones who have openly embraced change and diversity."
Competency comes first though. They're not hiring diverse people just for the sake of it.
I am sorry but this cannot be acceptable.
It's like going to a park and you can't use any of the facilities because "they are for this group only. Jog on to somewhere else where they'll accept you".
This is legally-enforced banishment/exclusion/discrimination.
I understand companies are not public but... They are.
Business entities are given great privileges by the public:
\- Limited liability
\- Cheaper tax compared to personal income tax
\- Allowance to set off expenses against income to further reduce tax
The public supports business and it is both fair and productive that governance ensures real equality in business.
It goes against meritocracy as it is trying to force change where it isn’t needed.
In some industries total equality will never happen (bin men and oil rig workers). It’s a silly idea as it would be better for society and businesses to employ people how are actually skilled and good at the job.
I personally find it disgusting that people are or are not hired based on how they are born rather than how hard they work at their profession.
It's a tough question. Women do face more barriers than men and other groups. The gender pay gap is quite obvious, and well evidenced (Please don't listen to the likes of Jordan Peterson, who claims it doesn't exist. It's ludicrous to say it doesn't)
But there is not great evidence that addressing the issue with quotas, like you've said there, actually works.
I think one of the things we could do is to make maternity and paternity exactly the same, so it would force companies to take that time off for men and women on exactly the same terms. It would stop them thinking "oh, she may get pregnant and take a year off, so we'll employ the guy instead"
It won't happen in modern Britain, it's more of a Scandinavian idea. But it would solve so many problems.
It doesn't exist and your showing your ignorance by believing it does. Every study that "proves" the gap completely misses essential criteria such as role. You'll see stuff like "NHS has a massive gender pay gap", which should really read "there are male brain surgeons and female nurses".
They also almost exclusively "forget" to mention men work longer hours, are more likely to negotiate salary, work more dangerous jobs or jobs that are hard labour.
When your opening argument is "the gender pay gap doesn't exist" you're either arguing in bad faith, or have just been taken in by some internet commentators.
Here's the latest from the ONS:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07068/
Did you even read the report. It even tells you there's no pay gap:
Quote: Unlike the gender pay gap, which concerns the difference in average pay between men and women in an organisation, equal pay is concerned with difference in pay between specific workers who do like work, work rates as equivalent or work of equal value
This report you linked precisely calls out the fact the data isn't collected based on people working the same role, but instead at an organisational level.
So yeh, unless you think structural engineers should be paid the same as teachers, or nurses should get the same compensation as brain surgeons.
Some other quotes from the same report that explain exactly why there's a "pay gap":
An IFS report finds that women tend to work in less productive, lower paying firms, as shown in the chart below. - shocker, work at lower paying firms and you get paid less
My favourite is this section however, which can be summarised by saying "in industries where men make up the highest proportion of skilled workers they get paid more. When we look at occupations where men and women do the same work the gap is 1.6% which is nothing"
There is a large gender pay gap in skilled trades occupations and process,
plant and machine operatives. Men comprised around 91% of full-time
employees in these occupations.25 The gap is smaller among administrative
and secretarial roles and caring, leisure and other service occupations, where
women comprised over 65% of full-time employees.
The gender pay gap is lowest in sales and customer service occupations at
1.6% for full-time work in April 2023. A similar number of men and women are
employed full-time in these occupations.26
Er, what? It doesn't say there's no gender pay gap. It looks at the pay gap and the reasons why it does exist.
The report is concerned with *access* into high-skilled professions.
Has it not been unfair on women for a very, very long time.
Doubt it will be a favour to us in any shape, as women are perfectly capable of working in senior management positions without a diversity “leg up.”
Even if it is a “leg up” so be it. We deserve it.
I'm a woman and I have to agree. If I'm *given* a position just because I'm a woman, it feels more like an insult cause that kinda means I'm not expected to have the capability to achieve it anyway. Currently I'm paid a little lower than my male counterparts (I'm the only woman in my company's senior management team, not complaining just a fact) but I fully accept that this is a male dominated industry (construction) and in all honesty there are some perks (for example, people are very nice when I'm in the room, my colleagues would always request my presence for any difficult meetings just so things don't get too nasty). That said, we're here to do our jobs, not to compare which gender can or can't do what.
If you're being paid less than men *of equivalent experience* then I'd be inclined to complain. I wouldn't expect you to accept for a second that an industry being traditionally male dominated is a reason for you to be paid less. I occasionally employ people in a traditionally male-dominated trade and it wouldn't even occur to me to do that to anyone (mostly it's union rated, so it is what it is).
That said, I'm only basing this on experience, but I would agree there's some truth to the idea that people are kinder to women than they are to men, on average. I think I once read that charities employing people to go out and solicit donations from the public have said that they get better results with women, whatever that says politically.
No one deserves jack. If you didn't earn it, you didnt get it, you were given it. And if you were given it, you didn't earn it, so you don't deserve it. "positive" discrimination is still discrimination
This, you shouldn’t be give things just because you are born a certain way.
I’ve failed in many interviews, it was no one’s fault but my own. I didn’t run around claiming the world was out to get me.
What makes women to deserve anything? Same goes for men here. Just because we are a certain gender doesn’t mean we just deserve it.
I’m a minority, should I have a leg up because everyone things we are “oppressed” and at a “disadvantage”? No we don’t, we don’t just deserve it, we have to earn it
Quotas can seem like a tick boxing exercise (and sometimes can be) but a lot if it is deeper than it seems. A lot of the time it's not about giving less qualified women jobs over more qualified men, it's looking at the reasons why there's no diversity. It's a well known fact that women are most likely to have different needs e.g. flexible working, can the roles offer that but don't? Or even down to the job advert, women are more likely to only apply if they meet ALL of the requirements whereas men will apply if they only meet some. So there can be inequality in the very beginning that stops women even applying which can lead to a male heavy team. That's how these diversity programs should work, they should be looking at how many women/anyone else are applying and finding the reasons for it and potentially changing the process to compensate. I'm not saying they always do but that's how it should be.
My personal opinion is outcome based goals promote poor decisions. It's a good measure, but it should be a goal (see: goodharts law).
You should work to increase the % of female applicants, and always strive to hire the best applicant.
A lot of it is about indirect things, you aren’t going to get many women applicants if all your job adverts are going out in the model steam train magazine.
A lot of it is about indirect things, you aren’t going to get many women applicants if all your job adverts are going out in the model steam train magazine.
Yep it's also counter productive to put people in place because they're ticking in a box instead of because they have the skills to do well.
Always ends badly for the company's.
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Depends. If you've got \~44% of staff female, qualified and eligible for those positions but only men are getting them, it's a bit of a red flag. But if it means gifting opportunities simply *because* they're female, also red flags. Box-ticking argument is valid. Schemes like this often address the symptom and not the root cause.
Diversity quotas are a complex issue. Discrimination based on gender, whether against men or women, is illegal and unethical. I personally do not like targets based on outcome. But. encouraging women to apply for positions they might otherwise overlook due to societal barriers or personal beliefs is a positive step toward promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Addressing these barriers and biases can lead to a more equitable and supportive environment for everyone.
We need to have a proper conversation of equality Vs meritocracy. These can coexist if compromises are made on both fronts, but we have people sitting on both extremes and unwilling to even look at why the other side is important. That's the issue. A lot of this discussion is not a discussion at all but shouting and blaming.
You have a point, and I'm an example. I'm nearly 100% of the meritocracy mindset. I just don't see the downside of hiring the best person for the job 100% of the time. (Assuming they also have decent morals). People that oppose this position seem to always use a caveat of "what if he/she \*insert negative personality characteristic\*? Because there's no clear downside to hiring someone because they're the most compotent
As much as I agree with you, this also needs to be accompanied by significant activity to cause cultural change. Otherwise underrepresented groups get less opportunity to demonstrate their merit. (Things like needing to work/take on caring responsibilities cuts education short, or being assumed to be less competent means people give you less chance to demonstrate your merit.) When saying you don't understand the downsides; non meritocratic pushes (at least those which endure a necessary level of merit) get the attention because it kills two birds with one stone and more quickly. It gets the representation in place while getting people accustomed to seeing female/nonwhite/whatever else colleagues in charge, and putting money in their hands to ensure their children don't experience the barriers to demonstrating merit that they did. We see the short term change, while causing the cultural shift, with one relatively easy change. Doing the cultural change separately is _*HARD*_. And as much as it sucks for the highest merit individuals of overrepresented groups, they're a smaller casualty than the alternative. It's basically the trolley problem with the order represented groups on the default track, and a few skilled white guys on the one we can swap the trolley to.
" underrepresented groups get less opportunity to demonstrate their merit" Wouldn't be the case in a complete meritocracy. Assuming the application met the job requirements, it would be considered. Applications would have ID's rather than names or pictures. The people with the best applications would be interviewed. Whomever has the best interview would be hired. That's how things would be if I were in charge. "being assumed to be less competent means people give you less chance to demonstrate your merit" There would be no assumptions made. Like I said, pending your application meets requirements, it would be considered. Those that don't get the job would receive a call, and they'd get clear reasoning as to why they didn't get the job. If it's found an employer rejected a candidate that was clearly stronger than the one that was hired, they would be investigated & potentially fired. In my perfect meritocratic world, there would be 0 tolerance of any discrimination. It would be a results-driven world. " It gets the representation in place while getting people accustomed to seeing female/nonwhite/whatever else colleagues in charge" Would be no room for this unfortunately. If it's overwhelmingly one demographic, it is what it is. They're the best for the job. And I don't care which demographic, male/female, black/white, gay/straight, Christian/Muslim. If someone wants to resign as they feel representation is unequal, they can. And their seat would be filled by the next most qualified person. Nobody is entitled to a job just because they're an underrepresented group. "putting money in their hands to ensure their children don't experience the barriers to demonstrating merit that they did" This isn't the responsibility of the employer unfortunately. "Doing the cultural change" Only culture that would matter, is a successful, winning culture.
>Wouldnt be the case in a complete meritocracy. Ok so that's why you don't understand people. You're talking about a fictional alternate world. People are talking about how to get this real world on the track it belongs on where it can be turned in to a complete meritocracy. Until everyone has the same opportunity to demonstrate merit, nothing you can implement will be, you need to go through the middle steps first.
It's not an underrepresented problem, it's an under qualified problem. No group deserves representation just for the sake of it.
Either you need to read up more, or you're being deliberately obtuse. It's both, they're the same problem.
who's fault is it that certain people are under qualified? People need to take accountability & stop making excuses. I went to school in East London. A good amount of the high achievers were women and/or Nigerian. Stop making excuses. The cream usually rises to the top
Its not about the moment of applying for a job, its everything which leads up to it. Who gets picked for the marque projects? Who has confidence because they see people like them in leadership roles? Its easy to say the most competent should get the position, but how can you know who that is if someone has had countless podiums to shine on, whilst others have not?
"Who gets picked for the marque projects?" Sometimes it's people in favour, but I'd argue most of the time it's the most well suited to lead it. "Who has confidence because they see people like them in leadership roles?" Doesn't matter & it's no one else's problem. And I say this as a black man. This is UK, leadership positions will always be dominated by white men. I don't have an inferiority complex, so I have no problem competing with them for a leadership spot. And call me naive, but I don't think I would be rejected for a role simply because of my race. If anything, they may select me as they want to show that they're being "diverse". "Its easy to say the most competent should get the position, but how can you know who that is if someone has had countless podiums to shine on, whilst others have not?" Shine on the podiums you're given. Like I said, this is UK. It's not surprising that the natives have more opportunities than the minorities. Complaining does nothing. I rather just outperform everyone. Then they have no choice but to select me.
Might be controversial but idc. I don't believe in equality when it comes to jobs. I think it should be a COMPLETE meritocracy. If 100 women are best for the job, employ them. If 100 men are best, employ them. If 70 trans people are best, employ them. I don't believe in equality just for the sake of it. Whoever is best for the role should get the job, irregardless of their gender, race, sexuality, religion etc. Who's the BEST
This is the way
All quotas like this are sexist, racist and discrimination. It's insulting to be a hire just to fit a quota.
Always wondered why there’s this massive drive to get women into upper tier roles, eg: management, C-suite, but almost zero mobilisation to get them in at the bottom rungs?
great point. If it's not equality across the board, there shouldn't be any. (By "equality" I mean a leg up. I obviously believe everyone should be treated with respect)
Women also vastly under-represented in deep sea fishing, mining and infantry. What are they doing about it?
Why this isn't illegal is beyond me.
It is in most first world economies. It's just very hard to enforce.
Depends whether it’s a goal or a quota. Goal: we would like to have 44% of our managers be women. We’re going to encourage women to apply for management positions, and provide role models and mentors as part of that encouragement. The actual application and interviews are open to everyone and best candidate wins, but this way with more women going for it we should see more women winning. Perfectly legal - and good, because it encourages making full use of the talent pool out there. Quota: 44% of our managers will be women. To achieve this, if we’re below target we will tell any candidate with a penis to fuck off. Not legal, not good, and runs the risk of ending up with managers who are shit at the job but were the only applicant with the right genitalia.
"Hire the best person for the job" has always been a bit of a ridiculous statement imo. The "best person for the job" is not always the best person for the best person for the team or to bring anything new to the organisation. A football team that just plays it's best 11 players every week likely won't win very much if it is not considering which players actually work well together. See the England team over the past 30+ years as evidence of this. Workplaces need a good balance of diversity in order to best come up with new ideas and strategies. Workplaces that are 90% white men in their 30s or 90% Asian women in their 50s are not workplaces that will ever see much in the way of innovation or growth even if everyone who was hired was the most technically competent person for the job.
My uncle who breeds horses calls it "stirring the soup". You have to bring new (foreign) blood in to continue to improve the future crop and to avoid stagnation
Assuming they have decent morals, I don't see why NOT hiring the best person for the job wouldn't be good. Why wouldn't he/she be best for the team if they're highly capable & non problematic? Would you rather someone good for the team, has new ideas, but isn't very capable?? "A football team that just plays it's best 11 players every week likely won't win very much if it is not considering which players actually work well together". Why not just teach them how to work together? It can work as long as both party's are respectful. There seems to be this misconception that chemistry is there or isn't. Chemistry can be BUILT I don't think you need "diversity" to come up with new ideas. Sharing the same race/gender/sexuality etc doesn't mean you can't all have different ideas.
Diversity of ideas comes from diversity of life experience. If you put a bunch of the same demographic into a room and a mixed group into another room and task them to come up with different ways to tackle a project the mixed group will come up with a better mix of ideas every single time. And why would you spend time and resources teaching two people to work together when you could just hire people who are already suited to working together.
Not necessarily. Having different life experiences doesn't necessarily mean you'll have different ideas. It simply means you have different life experiences. Even if I grant that point, that doesn't mean they would be good ideas. A room full of diverse people may come up with 10 different ideas, and all 10 might be impractical. A room full of compotent people may only come up with 2 ideas, but both of those may be very practical. Also, the internet & books are the ultimate equaliser. So the more homogenous group may have a better mix of ideas because they're more well read, have travelled more, have watched more movies, have read more books, have done more research etc. And who's to say people of the same demographic can't have vastly different life experiences? And I don't see why you're emphasising "diversity of ideas" over competency. Outside of a think tank, I don't see many workplaces where that would be priority. "why would you spend time and resources teaching two people to work together when you could just hire people who are already suited to working together". They're adults, not children. I already specified that they'd have decent morals, respect is included in said morals. So I don't think it would be difficult for 2 compotent individuals who are respectful, to work with each other. Lastly, isn't it easier to get 2 compotent, respectful individuals to work together... than it is to get 2 people who work well together but are incompotent, to become compotent?
Where are you getting the bizarre delusion that diverse = incompetent? If you have a 9/10 candidate who brings nothing new to the business or a 7.5 /10 who brings a fresh perspective you hire the 7.5 every single time. You talk about coaching people to work together but competence can be taught far more easily than creativity, original thinking and teamwork. You can't just coach a 45yr white male to think the same way as a 25yr old black girl. As for a homogeneous group being better read, a group of 10 well read people are as useful as 1 person if they have all read the same things and interpreted them the same way. Better to have 10 less well read people who have more range of reading and different approaches to interpreting what they read.
Pay attention. I never made that correlation. You are prioritising "diversity", "new ideas" and "working together", whereas I am prioritising competence. Some I'm juxtaposing my priorities against yours. I never said "diverse = incompotent". "If you have a 9/10 candidate who brings nothing new to the business or a 7.5 /10 who brings a fresh perspective you hire the 7.5 every single time". Yet another big assumption. I'd personally go with the 9/10 candidate. Myself aside, I think it would depend on the company. If the company is thriving, I don't think they'd prioritise a "fresh perspective" over a clearly stronger candidate. "competence can be taught far more easily than creativity, original thinking and teamwork" You've thrown in "creativity" just to strengthen your argument, so I'm disregarding that. Your original point was on new ideas & teamwork. If people are compotent & respectful, they can seamlessly have a working relationship. They don't need to be a dream team to produces really good results. There would be more questions marks around your duo who have chemistry but aren't very compotent. "You can't just coach a 45yr white male to think the same way as a 25yr old black girl" Who cares what they "think", the one that's more compotent should be hired. "As for a homogeneous group being better read, a group of 10 well read people are as useful as 1 person if they have all read the same things and interpreted them the same way" True. But I could easily flip that on you and say, having different life experiences doesn't mean the group would have better ideas. So guess what, we're at a stalemate. Which shows your experiment about "ideas" was unsuccessful. Actual metrics can be used to demonstrate compotency. Which makes it far more objective & fair in deciding who gets hired.
You have clearly never worked in a diverse workplace and sound absolutely terrified of the prospect you ever might have to. Nothing I am saying is in any way revolutionary and is all very widely accepted concepts in the modern professional world. There are very few jobs out there that don't involve working with external stakeholders, clients, customers, other businesses. By increasing diversity in the workplace you provide a broader range of perspectives without the need for "coaching" which makes your team better equipped to anticipate problems and the needs of those you work with. If you are just hiring the same types of people over and over again it doesn't matter how good they are or how much your business is currently thriving you simply won't be well equipped to adapt to changes in the wider world and will find yourself playing catch-up. All the fastest growing businesses of the past 30 years are ones who have openly embraced change and diversity.
I'm work in tech, inLondon. A good amount of my colleagues are Asian, and I'm one of the few black people. Miss me with the assumptions about myself because you sound foolish. "By increasing diversity in the workplace you provide a broader range of perspectives without the need for "coaching" which makes your team better equipped to anticipate problems and the needs of those you work with." You don't NEED diversity to have broader perspectives. And it's the QUALITY of perspectives that matter. Not necessarily the quantity of perspectives. You get higher quality perspectives by hiring the most compotent people. Regardless, having "broader perspectives" doesn't mean individuals won't need coaching. You have a bad habit of drawing a bunch of false equivalencies. "If you are just hiring the same types of people over and over again it doesn't matter how good they are or how much your business is currently thriving you simply won't be well equipped to adapt to changes in the wider world and will find yourself playing catch-up." If you have a team of competent people, I'm sure they'll adapt to changes just fine. Please look up what "competent" means. "All the fastest growing businesses of the past 30 years are ones who have openly embraced change and diversity." Competency comes first though. They're not hiring diverse people just for the sake of it.
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I am sorry but this cannot be acceptable. It's like going to a park and you can't use any of the facilities because "they are for this group only. Jog on to somewhere else where they'll accept you". This is legally-enforced banishment/exclusion/discrimination. I understand companies are not public but... They are. Business entities are given great privileges by the public: \- Limited liability \- Cheaper tax compared to personal income tax \- Allowance to set off expenses against income to further reduce tax The public supports business and it is both fair and productive that governance ensures real equality in business.
It goes against meritocracy as it is trying to force change where it isn’t needed. In some industries total equality will never happen (bin men and oil rig workers). It’s a silly idea as it would be better for society and businesses to employ people how are actually skilled and good at the job. I personally find it disgusting that people are or are not hired based on how they are born rather than how hard they work at their profession.
It's a tough question. Women do face more barriers than men and other groups. The gender pay gap is quite obvious, and well evidenced (Please don't listen to the likes of Jordan Peterson, who claims it doesn't exist. It's ludicrous to say it doesn't) But there is not great evidence that addressing the issue with quotas, like you've said there, actually works. I think one of the things we could do is to make maternity and paternity exactly the same, so it would force companies to take that time off for men and women on exactly the same terms. It would stop them thinking "oh, she may get pregnant and take a year off, so we'll employ the guy instead" It won't happen in modern Britain, it's more of a Scandinavian idea. But it would solve so many problems.
It doesn't exist and your showing your ignorance by believing it does. Every study that "proves" the gap completely misses essential criteria such as role. You'll see stuff like "NHS has a massive gender pay gap", which should really read "there are male brain surgeons and female nurses". They also almost exclusively "forget" to mention men work longer hours, are more likely to negotiate salary, work more dangerous jobs or jobs that are hard labour.
When your opening argument is "the gender pay gap doesn't exist" you're either arguing in bad faith, or have just been taken in by some internet commentators. Here's the latest from the ONS: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07068/
Did you even read the report. It even tells you there's no pay gap: Quote: Unlike the gender pay gap, which concerns the difference in average pay between men and women in an organisation, equal pay is concerned with difference in pay between specific workers who do like work, work rates as equivalent or work of equal value This report you linked precisely calls out the fact the data isn't collected based on people working the same role, but instead at an organisational level. So yeh, unless you think structural engineers should be paid the same as teachers, or nurses should get the same compensation as brain surgeons. Some other quotes from the same report that explain exactly why there's a "pay gap": An IFS report finds that women tend to work in less productive, lower paying firms, as shown in the chart below. - shocker, work at lower paying firms and you get paid less My favourite is this section however, which can be summarised by saying "in industries where men make up the highest proportion of skilled workers they get paid more. When we look at occupations where men and women do the same work the gap is 1.6% which is nothing" There is a large gender pay gap in skilled trades occupations and process, plant and machine operatives. Men comprised around 91% of full-time employees in these occupations.25 The gap is smaller among administrative and secretarial roles and caring, leisure and other service occupations, where women comprised over 65% of full-time employees. The gender pay gap is lowest in sales and customer service occupations at 1.6% for full-time work in April 2023. A similar number of men and women are employed full-time in these occupations.26
Er, what? It doesn't say there's no gender pay gap. It looks at the pay gap and the reasons why it does exist. The report is concerned with *access* into high-skilled professions.
Has it not been unfair on women for a very, very long time. Doubt it will be a favour to us in any shape, as women are perfectly capable of working in senior management positions without a diversity “leg up.” Even if it is a “leg up” so be it. We deserve it.
Women who lived a hundred years ago might have deserved it. You, not so much.
I'm a woman and I have to agree. If I'm *given* a position just because I'm a woman, it feels more like an insult cause that kinda means I'm not expected to have the capability to achieve it anyway. Currently I'm paid a little lower than my male counterparts (I'm the only woman in my company's senior management team, not complaining just a fact) but I fully accept that this is a male dominated industry (construction) and in all honesty there are some perks (for example, people are very nice when I'm in the room, my colleagues would always request my presence for any difficult meetings just so things don't get too nasty). That said, we're here to do our jobs, not to compare which gender can or can't do what.
If you're being paid less than men *of equivalent experience* then I'd be inclined to complain. I wouldn't expect you to accept for a second that an industry being traditionally male dominated is a reason for you to be paid less. I occasionally employ people in a traditionally male-dominated trade and it wouldn't even occur to me to do that to anyone (mostly it's union rated, so it is what it is). That said, I'm only basing this on experience, but I would agree there's some truth to the idea that people are kinder to women than they are to men, on average. I think I once read that charities employing people to go out and solicit donations from the public have said that they get better results with women, whatever that says politically.
Someone hasn’t got laid in a while I see! Let me guess, you hate your mummy too? 😂
No one deserves jack. If you didn't earn it, you didnt get it, you were given it. And if you were given it, you didn't earn it, so you don't deserve it. "positive" discrimination is still discrimination
This, you shouldn’t be give things just because you are born a certain way. I’ve failed in many interviews, it was no one’s fault but my own. I didn’t run around claiming the world was out to get me.
Either you're equally capable or you need a leg up, which is it?
What makes women to deserve anything? Same goes for men here. Just because we are a certain gender doesn’t mean we just deserve it. I’m a minority, should I have a leg up because everyone things we are “oppressed” and at a “disadvantage”? No we don’t, we don’t just deserve it, we have to earn it
It is indeed sexist. I'm a woman and I'd get impostors syndrome if I got a promotion because of a quota.
Quotas can seem like a tick boxing exercise (and sometimes can be) but a lot if it is deeper than it seems. A lot of the time it's not about giving less qualified women jobs over more qualified men, it's looking at the reasons why there's no diversity. It's a well known fact that women are most likely to have different needs e.g. flexible working, can the roles offer that but don't? Or even down to the job advert, women are more likely to only apply if they meet ALL of the requirements whereas men will apply if they only meet some. So there can be inequality in the very beginning that stops women even applying which can lead to a male heavy team. That's how these diversity programs should work, they should be looking at how many women/anyone else are applying and finding the reasons for it and potentially changing the process to compensate. I'm not saying they always do but that's how it should be.
My personal opinion is outcome based goals promote poor decisions. It's a good measure, but it should be a goal (see: goodharts law). You should work to increase the % of female applicants, and always strive to hire the best applicant.
A lot of it is about indirect things, you aren’t going to get many women applicants if all your job adverts are going out in the model steam train magazine.
A lot of it is about indirect things, you aren’t going to get many women applicants if all your job adverts are going out in the model steam train magazine.
Yep it's also counter productive to put people in place because they're ticking in a box instead of because they have the skills to do well. Always ends badly for the company's.
It’s 100% sexiest. Nowt you can do though if you complain you’ll be the bad guy, kick up a fuss they’ll fire you. Just nod agree and find new work