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I worked for Aflac for over five years. They have a good track record as an ethical company that treats employees really well, etc. They also have a good track
by Mz 10y ago
I worked for Aflac for over five years. They have a good track record as an ethical company that treats employees really well, etc. They also have a good track record on diversity specifically.
They always said something like We hire "everyone" because we sell to "everyone." There are things you just will not think of if you are not part of a particular subgroup.
The other thing I will suggest is that in order to have diversity internally, you need a certain level of general respect for people of a sort that fosters good communication. If your people are too similar, the odds are really good that there will be implicit bias showing in how you word things or whatever. This implicit bias will be something that seems innocuous to insiders. Most people are not very welcoming of hearing that the way they do things smacks of implicit bias. This feels really ugly to them, so it is incredibly hard to change such things. Even if someone is willing and able to point it out, most people will not only not listen, they will actively deny it. But if you have a lot of implicit bias, most people won't even try to tell you that you are doing this Thing that excludes them and others like them.
I do blog a bit about such topics and would be happy to pull up a relevant post or two from my blog if you are interested. I have a track record of promoting diversity in online forums and I appear to be the highest ranked openly female member of HN. Those are my "credentials," FWIW.
I could probably also find you some research or articles, if you are interested. I have posted stuff about this, probably on HN, but definitely elsewhere and I could find what I posted elsewhere fairly readily.
- discombobulate 10y agoYes, please. Blog posts & research are welcome!
- Mz 10y agoHere is a thing I posted elsewhere, with links and discussion: http://www.metafilter.com/158703/Show-Me-The-Money http://www.metafilter.com/158703/Show-Me-The-Money Blog posts: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less-exclusive.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less-exclusi... http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/09/pronouns-and-paradox.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/09/pronouns-and... http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/01/defending-my-enemies.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/01/defending-my... The above are the easiest things for me to find. If I think of anything else, I will post it later. But these are just things readily remembered off the top of my head and readily found.
- discombobulate 10y agoI've read all the links. Thanks. Having a larger pool to hire from is appealing (from MetaFilter), 'I hire people, and I'm interested in any avenue I can take to improve the quality of my applicants. I have no social justice reason to do this - I have an interest in making my applicant pool broader (in order to make hiring easier) and more qualified (in order to have more awesome employees). Currently, one way I have to do that is to make my applicant pool more diverse.' The above quote doesn't indicate hiring for diversity per se. It's a byproduct of not excluding people. Oh, and I didn't realise Farsi was gender neutral. I know someone who speaks Farsi. I'll have to ask them about it.
- Mz 10y agoMy comment, later in that same discussion, is to the effect that putting any additional constraints on your applicant other than "good at the work in question" impairs your ability to get the most qualified people. In some sense, you don't need to "hire for diversity." You just need to hire the best, regardless of who they are. Seeking to The Best instead of The Best (White Middle Class American Male) will tend to be both more inclusive and raise the quality of your hires. It's a subtle distinction, but having gone back to revisit the discussion, I have started a draft for a blog post inspired by those remarks. Not sure yet where I will go with it, but I am glad you commented on it here too.