{"id":10965,"date":"2007-05-07T06:50:58","date_gmt":"2007-05-07T13:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2007\/05\/07\/the-content-of-their-character.html"},"modified":"2007-05-07T06:50:58","modified_gmt":"2007-05-07T13:50:58","slug":"the_content_of_their_char","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/07\/the_content_of_their_char.html","title":{"rendered":"The content of their character"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting study of what sorts of activities actually make a company more diverse<\/a> (i.e., including more women and minorities in the upper ranks of a company).<\/p>\n

What works?  Mentoring.  Having a point person or task force for diversity.<\/p>\n

What doesn’t work?  Networking.  Diversity training.<\/p>\n

The big “news” here is the idea that diversity training doesn’t really have an impact.  Diversity training is widespread, because employers like it (push the staff into a room a couple of times a year, have a guest speaker, go back to business as usual, and be able to point to how committed to diversity the company is) and because they think it provides them some legal protection.<\/p>\n

But it’s a goofy concept at it’s foundation.  Consider the possible audiences:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Someone who eagerly wants more diversity in the workplace:  preaching to the choir.<\/li>\n
  2. Someone who eagerly does not want more diversity in the workplace:  unlikely to be swayed.<\/li>\n
  3. Someone who wants to hire the best person, regardless of the demographic:  likely to be resentful of being told to weight in things they don’t think should be weighted.<\/li>\n
  4. Someone who had no idea that this was an issue:  are there people like this out there, and do you want them working in your company?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The only possible audience that’s going to go with the feel-good of diversity training is this last group, and I can’t imagine it’s a very large one. <\/p>\n

    For everyone else, the “celebrate differences” schtick is going to come across as unnecessary, unpersuasive, or simply irrelevant.<\/p>\n

    The stuff that does seem to work is interesting though.  Mentoring is essentially building an “old boys network” one link at a time.  And the point of having a point person or task force on diversity is accountability — a broad, general program without specific focus on leadership and responsibility is likely to get pushed to the side in favor of day-to-day issues, even in the best of circumstances.  Accountability focuses the mind wonderfully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    An interesting study of what sorts of activities actually make a company more diverse (i.e., including more women and minorities in the upper ranks of a company). What works?  Mentoring. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-job-jollies","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3387,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/12\/04\/come_see_the_vi.html","url_meta":{"origin":10965,"position":0},"title":"“Come see the violence inherent in the System!”","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 4-Dec-02 6:55am","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting bit from someone's experience in mandatory diversity training, wherein a woman's claiming she had never been oppressed became grounds for oppression itself. Yeesh. (via InstaPundit)...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132467,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/30\/its-the-diversity-president.html","url_meta":{"origin":10965,"position":1},"title":"It's the Diversity President!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 30-Dec-16 8:44am","format":false,"excerpt":"Hey, I thought racial diversity and quotas and forcing a breadth of ethnic inclusion in leadership were the sort of \"political correctness\" things that Trump was going to put a firm stop to.Instead, it appears that, suddenly realizing a scarcity of Non-White People in his cabinet appointments, he's decided he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":50508,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/06\/the-diversity-of-the-gop.html","url_meta":{"origin":10965,"position":2},"title":"The Diversity of the GOP","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 6-May-15 11:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"To be fair, there are some variations -- Rand Paul's higher level of isolationism, Mike Huckabee's more populist economics -- but, by and large, it's difficult for me to see many significant differences amongst the herd of GOP presidential hopefuls. Originally shared by +Clay Jones: GOP Diversity Visit the post\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135245,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/01\/watch-means-lets-find-someone-else-blame.html","url_meta":{"origin":10965,"position":3},"title":"Because “On My Watch” means “Let’s Find Someone Else To Blame”","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 1-Nov-17 11:16am","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't particularly blame anything Donald Trump has done for Safullo Saipov's terror attack in New York City. Honestly, his policies to date have been fairly ineffectual, and there's little sign that anything he's done (or could have done) played a role in this attack (or might have stopped it).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Chuck-Schmer.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":27837,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/09\/complexity-and-diversity-leads-to-resilience.html","url_meta":{"origin":10965,"position":4},"title":"Complexity and diversity leads to resilience","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 9-May-12 1:11pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It only makes sense, it seems to me, that exposure to local biodiversity would lead to better resistance to allergens. Embedded Link Backyard Biodiversity May Stem Allergies : Discovery News A decline in the variety of life -- including the plants and animals that live around us, as well as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24984,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/01\/gop-quote-of-the-year.html","url_meta":{"origin":10965,"position":5},"title":"GOP Quote of the Year","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 1-Jan-12 10:01am","format":false,"excerpt":"Of last year, at least, at least, though I suspect we'll hear this theme riffed again and again in this new year. From Rick Santorum, whom I've tended to avoid because he's been an also-ran until some very recent polling (and who, the article suggests, isn't likely to do much\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}