Walmart is, I think, the latest major corporation to roll back Diversity, Equity and inclusion initiatives. Many think this is largely a reflection of a shift to the right in the political landscape.
Other companies to either be thought leaders or crumple under the pressure of public pressure are Harley Davidson, Lowes, Ford motor Company and John Deere.
Of course, corporate speak demands that it gets replaced. Enter stage left the concept of hiring based on merit.
Walmart is, I think, the latest major corporation to roll back Diversity, Equity and inclusion initiatives. Many think this is largely a reflection of a shift to the right in the political landscape.
Other companies to either be thought leaders or crumple under the pressure of public pressure are Harley Davidson, Lowes, Ford motor Company and John Deere.
Of course, corporate speak demands that it gets replaced. Enter stage left the concept of hiring based on merit.
In fact, it now has an acronym, MEI, coined by the co-founder and CEO of Scale AI, standing for hiring on merit, excellence and intelligence. When he posted this on X Elon Musk, the poster child for equity, lauded him inside 30 minutes of the post appearing.
What I want to know is when did companies not hire on merit, excellence and intelligence?
(“Let’s hire Bob, he’s notoriously mediocre and stupid”).
Neither has Wang provided any insights on how he’s going to do it, if you’re going to come out big like this then you better have an innovative recruiting process.
Granted, hiring to a DEI framework has always been flawed (I can speak to hiring as that is the world that I live in). Companies sacrifice everything at the altar of diversity in the selection phase and that’s just too late. The secret is to search diverse groups so that non diverse communities don’t make it to selection to be selected out. In essence, at that point you don’t know what you don’t know.
Here’s the challenge, perfectly explained in this article, it’s like running a 100m race and basing your hiring decision on the outcome, ie who gets to the finish line fastest. With DEI initiatives being quashed, many under represented groups are now 15 metres the other side of the line while others only have to run 90 metres.
There’s just no allowance for many systemic barriers.
And before anybody thinks I’m going all woo-woo, think about my old baseball analogy, do you really want 9 pitchers on the field?
But let’s not worry about analogies or this apparent change in hiring practices where we’re going to hire based on merit because we didn’t before, let’s look at some numbers:
- Diverse teams are 32% more productive (https://nbs.net/how-diversity-increases-productivity/)
- Companies with high levels of racial and ethnic diversity 35% more likely to report above-average financial returns. (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/why-diversity-matters)
- Diverse executive teams are 25% more likely to generate higher than average profits. (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/why-diversity-matters)
- Diverse companies are 70% more likely to capture new markets (https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-diversity-can-drive-innovation)
- Diverse companies have 68.3% better employee retention (https://imdiversity.com/diversity-news/inclusiveness-and-diversity-critical-to-attracting-and-retaining-top-talent/)
- Diverse companies have 101% better employee engagement (https://imdiversity.com/diversity-news/inclusiveness-and-diversity-critical-to-attracting-and-retaining-top-talent/)
- 73.2% more likely to attract top talent (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/attracting-and-retaining-the-right-talent)
- Diverse companies have 2.5X higher cash flow per employee (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/08/09/2494604/0/en/Diversity-and-Inclusion-D-I-Global-Market-Report-2022-Diverse-Companies-Earn-2-5-Times-Higher-Cash-Flow-Per-Employee-and-Inclusive-Teams-Are-More-Productive-by-Over-35.html)
- The most gender diverse companies outperform the least gender diverse companies by 48%. (https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-diversity-equity-and-inclusion)
- 8% of the top sales teams are diverse (https://learning.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/business/en-us/amp/sales-solutions/pdf/forrester-diversity-report-2021.pdf)
What do you think? DEI or MEI, what works best for you?
Gareth Callaway
PRESIDENT
