Gender Based Hiring Quotas in Australia 68

[Hurricanes]

So... I work for a large-ish consultancy in Australia. Recently they have introduced quotas. 50% of new hires must be female. Also, as there is a lack of female representation in senior positions, preference must be given to a female rather than a male when promotion time comes around.

I think this is all a bit backwards and trying too hard. With something like 15-20% of university graduates being female, a 50% minimum hiring rate is asking for trouble IMO.

What are peoples thoughts on this?

 

[moltenmetal]

JNieman: sounds great, but the devil's in the details. You don't fix an injustice with another injustice. Discrimination on bases which have no effect on performance, of which sex is only one, is wrong, whether it's done to correct a perceived systematic injustice or not. If you were to remove bias in hiring completely, it would take many years to correct the imbalance, and then after that long period of time you would achieve only the balance between the dominant and minority groups only equal to that in the candidate pool, not society at large. Want it sooner? Sorry, the only way to make that happen is either a) another systematic injustice, or b) making existing employment contestable, i.e. everybody has to re-apply for their job every few years. Maybe we should have a workplace which works on principle b)- in theory it would help trim a lot of deadwood- but in reality it would probably result in a more rapid reinforcement of whatever is wrong in the organization, with the good staff heading for higher ground where they don't have to fear for their positions.

 

[cranky108]

If you can't meet the employment quotas, just hire consultants who don't have those restraints.
The HR types will never know there plan has failed.

On the other hand, if you keep changing things every few years, it does tend to shake out the dead wood.

 

[JohnRBaker]

The year I finished engineering school (1971) there was a soft employment market for entry level positions and many of my classmates decides to opt for graduate school while waiting for things to improve. I was lucky (and I needed it since I was married with two new babies and school loans to pay) in that I had a firm offer from a company where I had worked summers.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make was that during our last term, one of our professors, who had extensive industrial experience, after hearing one of his students lamenting about the poor job market, pointed out that is was healthy for sectors like engineering and manufacturing to go though periodic soft-times as it gives management the opportunity to clean-out the 'deadwood' that accumulated in any organization when times were good and people were hired and retained without a serious consideration to their contribution. He reminded people, that unless a company actually went out of business, that the best people would not be let go and those who stayed would reap the benefits when business picked-up again and they started to fill-out the staff that the people that had stuck with them would be getting the promotions. And I have to say that in my 49 year professional career this was proven true several times over. In fact, when I was being promoted to my first management position and I was attending training classes back at corporate, we were told how we should take advantage of the times when we might have to let people go to use it to protect the more productive and experienced workers and to think of these cycles as normal and actually a healthy situation.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
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[moltenmetal]

Slow times are definitely a great way to prune the deadwood without feeling so bad about it. Personally if the deadwood is truly deadwood, and management aren't asleep and are doing their jobs properly, pruning during good times had better not be a problem either- one bad employee can sap the productivity of at least ten of their peers! But making all positions contestible on a periodic basis is an entirely different proposition, especially if one of the criteria for retention is some kind of sex, race etc. quota system. If you want some magic level of measured "inclusiveness" and aren't willing to wait a couple generations to achieve it, you have to generate redundancy artificially in order to get there- merely waiting for a new and improved, somehow bias-free (i.e. not done by humans I guess) selection process to fix the issue will require you to wait at least a couple generations.

 

[GregLocock]

I think the pruning argument is pretty poor.

The problem is that when the axe gets wielded it isn't just poor performers who leave, you'll also see the ornery ones getting zapped, and anyone with a clue who has just been contemplating a different job will get out as well. My guess is you end up with a more compliant, but more average, workforce.

Surely the answer in all these cases is to improve your hiring practices, and think about retention (and anti-retention) policies, not wait for economic conditions to force your hand.

... and as for Forced Ranking, hah! I know of one engineering company silly enough to carry on using it, I wonder how many do.

http://fortune.com/2013/11/18/microsoft-ge-and-the-futility-of-ranking-employees/

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[IRstuff]

I think one of managers called it "rack and stack," and his implementation was almost guaranteed to cause the older, more experienced, workers to leave, which was of the form, "What have you done for me lately?"

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[JohnRBaker]

...and anyone with a clue who has just been contemplating a different job will get out as well.

I have to admit that you are correct on that score and I know that personally.

Back in 1980, after having worked 14 years for my first company, I decided to look for something better and while during the time that I was out looking around and going for interviews, there were no cut-backs taking place. I found an opportunity that I really liked and was contemplating the offer that had been made to me when I came into work and suddenly, it was 'Black Friday'. There was a lay-off under way that affected most all the departments and while I was NOT on the 'hit list', this caused me to make-up my mind right there and then. So when I got called into my bosses office where he started to explain how I was key to their plans and how my contribution was valued but after about five minutes of this, I interrupted him and told him that I had another job offer and that I had decided to take it. Well this left him totally flabbergasted and he immediately ran out to talk to his boss about what had just happened, leaving me sitting alone in his office. Later I was called into see the president of the company where they tried to explain once again how I was going to play a key role in the "big changes that were coming". And when I was asked why I decided to give my notice that day, I said that once I realized what was happening it forced my decision and that perhaps I could save someone's job.

And before you ask, I stuck to my guns, left Michigan, moved to SoCal and retired from that new 'job' a year-ago January.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[GregLocock]

Well I can't top that, but I did 'survive' three rounds of headcount reductions in 2 years of 15% per round. I had actually applied for the voluntary phase of each round (the terms were pretty good), and the last time I was told "we really mean it, you apply, you go". So I applied,yet again, and they offered me a job far more suited to my preferences instead. So I stayed. Four years later I actually got the job I wanted, and have been there ever since - sixteen years and counting.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[verymadmac]

I think I have seen figures where for everyone person made redundant, a company can expect 3 more to leave over the next 12 months, typically these are better staff.

 

[CheckerHater]

Could we finish this discussion with the words of known woman activist, feminist Gloria Steinem: “There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.”

I guess it's going both ways, isn't it?

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert"
Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the future

 

[controlnovice]

I think I have seen figures where for everyone person made redundant, a company can expect 3 more to leave over the next 12 months, typically these are better staff.

Yes - The ones that companies keep are generally the better staff, not the 'dead weight'...then they get all the extra load from those that were let go, get fed up, and leave.

______________________________________________________________________________
This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

This is a pretty solid book, Women in Engineering: Gender, Power, Workplace Culture. I bought it on a whim due to it being cheap, $2.75 shipped. It includes analysis and a number of interviews of women that worked as engineers in the 70's and 80's. The women in the book come from two types of companies - bureaucratic vs high tech . Several women in the book stated that they choose to stay bored to death in their bureaucratic jobs due to its promotional policies and not having to deal with a dude work environment. It's a good book that doesn't feel too academic.

This thread being about quotas, if you are trying to less dude up a work environment I don't know how you do that without hiring more women. When was the last time you heard someone shut down someone that was on a sexist rant when there were no women present?

 

[cranky108]

Having women in the work place does tend to shut down the sports talk, which is great as I don't care much for sports.

It also cuts down on the usage of four letter words.

 

[KENAT]

"When was the last time you heard someone shut down someone that was on a sexist rant when there were no women present?"

A year and a half or so ago when one of the junior engineers was saying he wouldn't let his daughter ever become a mechanic or something like that. In fairness wasn't entirely clear if it was sexist or some other bias against that kind of work, either way most of us guys there jumped on him for it.

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[Panther140]

BigInch (Petroleum) 19 Jan 17 15:50 When attitudes like this still exist, the quota system may be the only effective way to fix it. If you don't want quotas, change your attitudes. Instead of making pointless statements about if you agree or not, recognize that there is a problem and let's hear some ideas about how to fix it.

1- Fix what?

2- What attitudes?

3- What exactly is the problem?

4- I know exactly how to fix it. Hire the most qualified applicants based purely on a candidate's merit as it relates to the job position. Do not make policies that turn a position-filling process into a sex/race/religion/politically based process.

A person's gender has absolutely nothing to do with their ability to fill a role unless they work in the adult entertainment industry. Hiring policies based on demographic are inherently discriminatory regardless of how well intentioned the policymaker claims to be. Are hospitals crying out for more male nurses? Are people trying to contradict career patterns of people in attempts to artificially increase the demand for male nurses?

Why is it that when a career is dominated by males, the narrative is that women not only NEED to get into it, there is also the assumption that they need external help in order to break into it.. But when a field is dominated by women, the popular narrative does not indicate that it is a high aspiration for men.

Why do you people think that female engineers need assistance to get into the field? Look at this damn thread, for example. The prevailing narrative is that women in engineering is totally acceptable. Vast majority of people have absolutely no objection to females being in engineering, including myself. There is no conspiracy against hiring women into engineering roles. In fact, I've never came in contact with a female engineer who is disrespected or treated differently than a male engineer in the same role.

This policy takes credit away from female engineers and will brand them as charity-hires. I do not understand how you can believe that women are incapable of getting into the industry unassisted, and simultaneously claim to believe that they are capable. Its a condescending policy, whether intended to be malicious or not.

"Formal education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." ~ Joseph Stalin

 

[cranky108]

I can say I like quotas over good-ol'-boy hiring that exists in some places. There is something about groupthink that can go really wrong, and make really good people leave.

And just maybe that is the thinking behind the quotas.

 

[Panther140]

cranky108 (Electrical) 23 Feb 17 19:05

I can say I like quotas over good-ol'-boy hiring that exists in some places. There is something about groupthink that can go really wrong, and make really good people leave.

And just maybe that is the thinking behind the quotas.

Are you suggesting that group-think is gender-specific? That idea would align with the definition of sexism quite well.

"Formal education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." ~ Joseph Stalin

 

[moltenmetal]

Having a mix of sexes is a great way to fix all sorts of problems which happen when you segregate them. Exaggerated stereotypical behavior happens in both sexes when there are too few of the other sex around.

Mandating a balance of the sexes is quite another matter entirely.

 

[IRstuff]

"4- I know exactly how to fix it. Hire the most qualified applicants based purely on a candidate's merit as it relates to the job position. Do not make policies that turn a position-filling process into a sex/race/religion/politically based process. "

Your "fix" fails to address the discrimination that goes all way back to grade school, so the "most qualified" tend to be male, and white, because of the inherent biases in the entire chain from grade school to job that preselect white males to be "most qualified." Time and again, it's been shown that teachers favor boys in engineering/STEM, and in some cases, they go out of their way to discourage girls. Continuing this system just further solidifies the discrimination that's built into our society. To think otherwise is to perpetuate an unfair system. The fact that there are so few women being hired simply reinforces the worldview that women have no place in engineering and minimizes the visible role models that girls and women can rely on.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[MartinLe]

How often in this thread did someone type "Just hire the best!", only for someone to reply why it's not that easy, only for someone else to type "Hire the most qualified!"
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