When it comes to managing your financial assets, you can rest assured that the employees at State Street weren't hired based on skill or merit, but their gender and the color of their skin:
Leaders at one of the largest investment firms in the world, State Street Global Advisors, will need to ask permission to hire White men as it rolls out a diversity hiring initiative.
"This is now front and central for State Street — it's on every senior executive's scorecard," said Jess McNicholas, the bank's head of inclusion, diversity and corporate citizenship in London, according to the Sunday Times.
"All of our leaders have to demonstrate at their annual appraisals what they have done to improve female representation and the number of colleagues from ethnic-minority backgrounds."
I seem to remember people like that Ibram X. Kendi guy stating that the only cure for past discrimination is present discrimination. This is what that looks like when it comes to an HR department near you.
The company aims to triple the number of Black, Asian and other minority staff in senior positions by 2023, the Sunday Times reported. If executives don't meet the target, they will face lowered bonuses.
What does this look like?
Company recruiters will need to create panels of 4 or 5 employees to assist them in hiring middle management. At least one of these will need to be a woman and one will need to be non-white.
The firm will still hire White men, McNicholas said, but recruiters are required to show that women and minority applicants were interviewed by the panels.
Maybe you think that's no so bad. After all, this is just about diVeRsiTy and iNcLuSioN!
State Street has denied the allegation, or at least the phrasing, that its managers need "permission" to hire white men. It's not that they specifically need approval when generic-white-dude Carl Smith submits his resume (because that would be extremely illegal under discrimination laws).
It's just that the hiring managers will have to prove they interviewed women and people with darker skin tones before pulling the trigger on Mr. Whitey, thereby creating discriminatory barriers and extra HR policies that are specific to white men. Totally not the same thing.
Oh, and just in case any of those hiring managers actually does go through with the extra effort it will take to interview and hire those nasty white guys, they'll be financially penalized for it!
The publication claimed State Street managers needed to get special approval if they were to pass over female or minority candidates for white male hires.
While the bank denied those claims, it does want to triple the number of Asian, Black and other minority staff occupying senior roles in two years, and will cut executive bonuses for those who fail to meet these targets.
The problem with establishing a few "underrepresented" categories on these panels is that the slippery slope never ends. Soon, that panel will need at least one bisexual genderfluid pantheist, a transgender polygamous disabled woman, and so forth and so on.
If you start hiring based on external appearances, you're on the fast track to making your company weaker and less diverse in the areas that really matter.
The company is pledging to "hold ourselves accountable for strengthening black and Latinx owned businesses."
Oh well: History has shown that divisiveness and discrimination based on subjective categories always creates a more fair and equal society, right?
Any of you who have investments with State Street might not have the most qualified and merit-worthy financial advisors anymore.
But if you end up penniless, at least you can rest assured it was in the name of #DoingBetter.
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