Summary
Costco’s board rejected a shareholder proposal to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, arguing they foster respect, innovation, and cultural alignment with customers and employees.
Shareholders claimed DEI could lead to lawsuits citing “illegal discrimination” against white, Asian, male, or straight employees, referencing legal cases like Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Costco countered that its DEI efforts comply with the law and enhance its culture, rejecting claims of legal risk.
The proposal will be voted on at Costco’s January 23 shareholder meeting.
Depends on how it’s presented. If it’s tied to strict quotas in terms of hiring then that can cause a lot of issues as well.
True it would be awkward to be in the situation where you have a white male candidate who exceeds the qualifications, and a black female candidate who barely meets them… Doubly so if DEI people are pressuring you to deliver, but unfortunately your company is in a position where it absolutely needs someone who can give them a homerun.
Now I’m not saying white male candidates are always more qualified than black female candidates. I know someone will take this comment that way. What I’m saying is, talent doesn’t care what color you are before it decides to bestow itself upon you, unfortunately DEI Hiring practices do.
Sometimes it’s also just a matter of available local demographics.
The last position I helped interview for (my own as I was changing jobs) I saw the most diverse but frankly least qualified - or even interested - range of candidates ever. It’s also for - last I checked - one of the top employers in the area for wages/benefits, and fairly diverse in employee base already.
We had applicants who:
It was very heavy with people who fairly recently immigrated or still overseas but just getting their papers.
Like, I get off you’re enthusiastic about a job. I’ve even recommended people based on an obvious ability to learn, work in a team, and case skillset when they didn’t have the specific job experience (that can be learned after all). Having an idea about the area and local wage-scale is also important (e.g. maybe don’t expect New York/Silicon Valley wages or expenses in Oklahoma) but candidates didn’t even seen to know the posted scale nor anything about the area.
The last set we had to repeat (non technical parts of) questions multiple times to be understood, was asked stuff about WRITTEN questions that was literally in the question, or had to deal accents do thick none of us could understand. It was rough.
This went on for months and we honestly we getting ready to pick the “best of the unqualified” and just hope it worked out before we finally went one more round and got somebody decent.
Now is DEI part of that? Hard to say but if you start filtering interviews with that in mind, or narrowing your already-small pool of qualified candidate/applicants to meet such it’s not going to come out well IMO.
I’d be more than happy to work with a qualified candidate of wherever ethnicity and gender. I really enjoy hanging out with people from different places or backgrounds (because - frankly - average-Joes are often kinda boring) but when it comes to work being able to do the job and communicate needs to be a top priority. You can have a workforce full of diverse backgrounds but if they can’t apply that to the work and work together it’s just as unhelpful as having an office full of unoriginal middle-aged/boomer white guys.