Believe it or not, it would appear that corporate America is wising up to the fact that rushing out and hiring a bunch of “Chief Diversity Officers” (CDO) in the wake of George Floyd’s death wasn’t the smartest business move. Either that or corporate liberals feel that they don’t have to virtue signal their support for the “Black Lives Matter” mob anymore.
A new report from The Wall Street Journal reveals that in 2018, “less than half the companies in the S&P 500 employed someone” in the CDO role, but by 2022 — in the wake of the BLM movement — nearly 75% of S&P 500 companies had that role. Since then, companies have experienced a 40% turnover, and job seekers are reportedly “skittish” about taking on a role that focuses squarely on diversity. Jason Hanold, chief executive of Hanold Associates Executive Search, told The Journal that job searches for the CDO role have plummeted.
“They’re telling us, the only way I want to go into another role with DEI is if it includes something else,” Hanold said of job seekers.
One former executive at one of Boston’s largest employers admitted to The Journal that those who were hired as a CDO or a similar position were sometimes under-qualified candidates. They were put in the slot due to their ethnicity.
“These were knee-jerk reactions,” said Dani Monroe, the former CDO of Mass General Brigham, a Boston-based hospital system.
In other words, corporate America knelt to the mob in 2020 that was burning down cities, demanding reparations, and chanting “Silence is compliance!” and rushed to placate them. We know they did because data shows that billions were given to BLM and related causes in recent years.
The CDO positions that were created, it stands to reason, were simply corporate window dressing in order to appease woke employees and future job seekers — not to mention protect ESG rankings. CDO jobs acted as a corporate sign of solidarity and nothing more.
Funnily enough, The Journal observed, “People are more resistant to company-backed efforts to advance diversity when they are worried about their own jobs, whether because of impending layoffs or disruptions from AI, says David Kenny, chief executive of Nielsen, the media-ratings company.”
The Journal also noted that “[e]fforts to restructure compensation to make it more equitable created a backlash,” amongst companies that claim to want to increase diversity.
And that right there is a tale as old as time. Liberals claim they want one thing — such as reducing poverty, particularly amongst minorities — yet don’t actually want to personally sacrifice to make that happen. They want illegal aliens, but not in their towns. They oppose school choice, yet send their kids to private schools. They want to ban guns, yet have private security.
In this case, it is far easier to slap BLM in their Twitter bio, create a CDO position that has no real authority, malign opponents as racist, and then quietly move on to the next social issue du jour. None of that requires any real self-denial or effort, but it sure makes them feel good.
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