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I work in the public service and agree that equity was probably not the (main) motivation for the strategy they picked. Most of what you hear about equity is signalling buzz. Most managers I've asked told me they face no pressure to hire for diversity. Seems like this team just found a hack (which I doubt is common) to shorten their screening process. Mostly likely they don't care who will be hired anyway. People here seem doubtful, but the public service and hiring processes are so heavily decentralized. It's totally plausible for a team to do this without being motivated by equity.
Of course, there is obvious bias because they could never get away doing the opposite strategy (e.g, filtering out equity groups). That said, there are policies which increase the proportion of white workers, like requiring citizenship and the ability to speak french.
There's enough examples now of a) hiring managers being explicitly told not to hire white men, and b) hiring managers' bonuses relying on meeting diversity hiring requirements that I have a very hard time believing this.
Is the pressure bimodal: extreme in some extremely converged companies and totally absent in others? Or are people just reluctant to admit they're under pressure?
In a world of 750 million people (Europe + US + Canada) that's supposedly dominated by wokeness, there are going to be enough businesses for the 'man bites dog' story of 'we're not hiring white dudes' story to pop up as much as people interested in that story wants, even if 95% of businesses are hiring relatively meritocratically, putting aside diversity initiatives that even the vast majority of right-leaning people would shrug at.
I also think, that most people at a high level in corporations legitimately believe they've missed out on talent due to structural issues, and since they're greedy capitalists, that's costing them money, which is why they're investing in diversity initiatives. Why not find the gay Latinx trans woman who will find a better way to increase production targets by 3% and earn me a bonus?
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I haven't spoken to many senior managers, mostly mid-level managers. My impression is that senior elites and execs in companies pay more attention to diversity so it would make sense for the public service to match that as well.
I'm very interested in cases where managers in the canadian public service had bonuses tied to diversity requirements. Do you have any examples you can link to?
Ahh yes, performance agreements. My experience with these is that people don't commit to targets they can't already meet. After all, these objectives are mostly self-imposed, and the exercise is more of a formality. That said, I'm sure it's sometimes the case some execs have to work hard to meet their diversity targets. Thanks for sharing.
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Neither of these things are in any way comparable - the former seems like an obvious prerequisite for a public service job, and the latter actively impacts on the quality of your employee in a country where a significant proportion of the population speaks French as a first language (approx 20% in Canada). The fact that they happen to select for white workers because whites are more likely to possess these desired characteristics is just an unintended consequence of having these policies.
Just because a policy happens to result in an increase in the proportion of a certain demographic does not mean it is analogous to explicitly demographically based policies.
The point is, there are other policies which will impact demographics. I don't want to change the subject too much, but I actually think the french level requirements in the canadian public service lead to worse outcomes than white-male exclusion, even if it were scaled up 100x. It's currently impossible to manage employees or be in a sufficiently senior role unless you speak french, even when the vast majority of francophones opt to read,write and speak in english when working. When my team is hiring, I'd rather work with a "non white male" constraint than a "must speak french" constraint. The french requirements are often unnecessary and make it very difficult to hire talent. As a french speaker, I've leapfrogged colleagues of similar productivity because they were anglophones who couldn't even be considered for a number of promotions.
Still, though, I agree that on the surface one policy sounds a lot better than the other and that they're not analogous with respect to why they impact demographics.
I would say it’s more than just “on the surface”. One policy is based on immutable characteristics, the other is based on the possession of a skill which they would like employees to have. “Any policy that affects racial composition is tantamount to racism” is an extremely tenuous position at best.
You claim that a “non white male” constraint isn’t as bad to you as a “must speak French” constraint, but in spite of your explanation it’s hard to see why this is so. You can make the argument that the French requirement is extreme and should be relaxed since it isn’t integral to job performance, but employees can learn French if they want to get a promotion, and it actually represents a specific skill that can be of use in employment. White men can’t simply assume a different demographic if they want to, and their exclusion isn’t for lacking a certain skill but instead for ideological/diversity reasons. It’s easy to see which condition is far more restrictive and far more difficult to justify.
I didn't say the french policy was racist, just that it led to worse outcomes. I probably won't convince you. You're not a canadian public servant and don't see what it's like. I'm not defending the no-white-male policy or anything. Apologies for the what-about-ism, I made an off-topic comment and now I'm just elaborating.
Here's a situation I've seen a ton: An employee wants to become a manager, so they go on paid french training, putting their job on pause for weeks or months. When they come back, they inevitably don't use their french because francophones don't care and don't want to slow down important conversations by speaking to a french novice. Once their newly acquired french abilities atrophy, the training cycle repeats. I've seen this happen to a ton of really talented people with passion for their domain.
Also, learning french as an adult is pretty difficult, especially when the public service is not at all immersive. Even francophones usually prefer english because they'd prefer not to learn twice the terminology, check weird grammar rules or slow down communication.
I see where you're coming from. However the outcomes I've experienced suggest the french-requirements are a worse policy.
That’s interesting. In Texas(which has a similar percentage of Spanish first language speakers to Canada’s French first language speakers), Spanish speakers are generally willing to put up with novices by slowing their conversations down.
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Okay, I’m outside right now, so it’s hard for me to draft anything. A few things, though:
Difficult =/= impossible. It might be hard, but this does not mean it’s equal to something you literally cannot change. You’ve made a case for why the French barrier is bad, but not for your comparison.
Your comments seem to imply that you have no real experience with the “non white male” policies, so making a comparison between whether language barriers or diversity-based demographic barriers are worse based on your experience is premature at best. This could be taken as evidence of a lack of diversity initiatives in the Canadian public service, but I’m not too inclined to rely on anecdata as a source because of 1: potential issues with unrepresentativeness and 2: distortions relating to perception.
The studies I’ve seen relating to hiring biases in the Australian public service (the country where I live), while not exactly extrapolable to the Canadian situation, suggest that "diversity hiring" is de facto being practiced and that it is endorsed. These biases favouring women and minorities in the Australian public service were found in a study conducted by the behavioural economics team of the Australian government, and in light of this finding they discourage blind hiring because it might prevent public servants from discriminating in the Appropriate Direction.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170702213823/https://pmc.gov.au/resource-centre/domestic-policy/going-blind-see-more-clearly-unconscious-bias-australian-public-services-shortlisting-processes
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