News Analysis
One step forward two steps back ... or is it the other way around? A look at the workplace stories below show today's employers, leaders and workers face some challenging hurdles ranging from treating each other with respect, standing by values, overcoming prejudices, keeping promises and more. Moments of uncertainty can become a stumbling block or a steppingstone — the choice is yours.
Finishing School for All
Some say Gen Z doesn’t know how to behave in the workplace — whether they’re working from the office, the kitchen table or poolside in Tahiti. But their critics need to hop on a few conference calls with Global 1000 CEOs to see the example their elders are setting. Consider Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary’s well-publicized rant directed at Boeing, “But aircraft you built two years ago, which all you had to do is put petrol in them and fucking fly them to Dublin, really, I don’t understand why you are taking two or three month delays on that.”
O’Leary’s use of the f-word may seem like an anomaly, but it’s not. According to financial and corporate research platform Sentieo, during the recent bull market the use of profanities in transcripts of quarterly earnings calls, investor conferences and shareholder meetings surged to a five-year peak, with 166 of them containing explicit language. In the initial quarter of 2022, the count of transcripts with expletives reached 50, showing an increase from the prior year's 42 instances.
It’s not only swearing that’s causing problems. Corporate ghosting, texting after hours, calling without texting first, failing to make eye contact when speaking with someone in person, rushing in and out of meetings versus making small talk before and after, and more.
The solution? According to a survey conducted by Resume Builder, more than 60% of companies will offer etiquette classes for employees to address problems such as these.
Diversity in Question
On July 13 the attorney generals of 13 states wrote a letter to Fortune 100 CEOs notifying them that they are prohibited from discriminating against employees on the basis of race, regardless of whether it is labeled as "diversity, equity and inclusion" or otherwise. “Treating people differently because of the color of their skin, even for benign purposes, is unlawful and wrong. Companies that engage in racial discrimination should and will face serious legal consequences.”
The letter, inspired by the Supreme Court's decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions, is meant to serve as a warning to employers like Airbnb, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, Intel, Lyft, Microsoft, Netflix, PayPal, Snapchat, TikTok, Uber and others that explicitly race-based practices in recruitment, hiring and promotion is both illegal and wrong. “It is not even theoretically possible to ‘help’ a certain racial group without causing harm to members of other racial groups. It should be obvious that every racial classification helps, in a narrow sense, some races and hurts others,” wrote the signees.
The letter comes at a time when employers who talked up the importance of diversity in 2020-2022 may now be “diversity-ditching.” Not only that, but layoffs in the last 18 months have impacted HR and DE&I staff hard, limiting their ability to accomplish their goals, according to Bloomberg. Moreover, a May report by Kelly Services found nearly half of responding executives categorized their diversity strategy as only "paying lip service" to supporting underrepresented groups. Add in the uncertainty the Supreme Court's decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions has created for companies trying to hire and promote diverse workers. This is made more difficult by the supposed growing divide between white men and others as to the importance of diversity in the workplace, and the removal of race as a factor in college admissions which could threaten to change the pipeline of diverse graduates that are available for hire.
Weight Discrimination in the Workplace
While some of us have witnessed weight discrimination in society, according to a policy brief on weight bias prepared by the University of Connecticut’s Ruud Center for Policy and Obesity, science has documented clear, consistent evidence that people with high body weight face discrimination in, among other things, employment. “Modern society has adopted negative beliefs that obese individuals are lazy, irresponsible, and lack self-discipline even though genetic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors play a role in the development of obesity,” wrote Melody Fulton and Vijay N. Srinivasan.
Individuals with elevated body weight also receive more unfavorable evaluations during the hiring process than workers possessing equivalent credentials, according to a 2021 National Institutes of Health (NIH) publication by Sarah-Jane F Stewart and Jane Ogden. Moreover, an academic paper, Investigating the Validity of Stereotypes About Overweight Employees: The Relationship Between Body Weight and Normal Personality Traits by Mark V. Roehling, Patricia V. Roehling and L Maureen Odland found that “overweight job applicants and employees are stereotypically viewed as being less conscientious, less agreeable, less emotionally stable, and less extraverted than their ‘normal-weight’ counterparts,” despite the lack of data to support the theory.
To counter such prejudices, on May 26, New York City Mayor Eric Adams signed into law a ban on weight and height discrimination in the city. “We all deserve the same access to employment, housing and public accommodations, regardless of our appearance,” he said during the ceremony. A similar law exists in Urbana, Illinois; Madison, Wisconsin; Binghamton, New York; San Francisco; Santa Cruz, California; and Washington, D.C. Only two states, Michigan and Washington have such laws in place, while they are being considered in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
Recruit and Delay
Some top business consulting and law firms who hired the best and brightest of the class of 2023 are postponing new associate start dates until late 2023 or even after the first quarter of 2024. Earlier this month Deloitte joined the ranks of Accenture, Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group and others blaming the delays on an unexpected slowdown in business. Law firms including Cooley LLP, Fenwick & West and Perkins Coie are among those that are asking some incoming first year associates to stand-by or temporarily change the type of law they plan to specialize in.
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Some firms asking new hires to wait until 2024 are offering them compensation for waiting. Cooley LLP, for example, proposed a one-year postponement of the start dates for certain incoming first-year associates, presenting them a stipend of $100,000 as part of the arrangement. Bain & Company invited MBA recruits who were willing to delay their start dates until April 2024 to accept $40,000 for donating their time to a nonprofit organization in the interim. Other choices included $30,000 to participate in an educational program or to learn a new language or $20,000 to go on safari.
Sweet as some of these offers may sound, they may not be enough to cover student loan repayments, rent and cost of living expenses. Time will tell whether the offers prove worthwhile (for either party) over the long haul.
