Does Your Word Matter?
Lance Haun
Focused on people, work, and tech and consulting with top work tech companies at the intersection of it all at TSC
Values Show Themselves in Challenging Times
When home improvement retailer Lowe’s rolled out its multi-year DEI initiative in 2019, it got a lot of positive press and a constant spot in the HRC Corporate Equality Index . They produced these great-looking reports to talk about how much progress they made as an organization.
Then in the present day, with the help of some pressure from conservative activists, they folded . They aren’t alone, either . Ford, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniel’s, John Deere, and Tractor Supply all cut or significantly rolled back their DEI programs. Some have cited legal issues or potential challenges but, to my knowledge, none of these companies were using affirmative action to meet their diversity goals.?
And look, I’m done arguing with people about the value of DEI. People want to pick at good ideas imperfectly executed? Fine. People want to say workforce diversity or being inclusive doesn’t matter? Well, you’re wrong. But that’s really beyond the scope of where I sit. If you want an honest education on the value of DEI, you can easily find it.?
What isn’t beyond my purview is the function of company values. If at the first sign of external pressure, you abandon important values centered on your people, then what do your values actually mean? A bunch of soft promises that can be rolled back the moment you encounter any friction whatsoever??
This isn’t just about DEI. We’ve seen “Great Places to Work” absolutely butcher layoffs in the most inhumane way possible. One of Enron’s values was “Integrity” as they took down not only themselves in a massive financial scandal but also accounting giant Arthur Andersen. Values are just meaningless wall decorations if you don’t actually try to live by them every day.
And it’s easy to live by your values when things are going well, and it’s hard to do so when things aren’t going well. If we are going to evaluate an organization's true values, we must look at how it acts when it is under duress. Do they bow to pressure, or do their values help guide them?
If a company does or doesn’t want to support DEI, that’s their prerogative as long as they follow the law. But a company that rides the wave of DEI good times and then gets off the moment that they get a little choppiness? All that indicates to me is that they are willing to say or do anything to appease the loudest voices. Their values don’t matter, and you have no reason to believe them about anything they say.
That may seem harsh, but none of the above-mentioned companies has offered a mea culpa for their 180. They just hope you won’t notice once this news cycle ends.?
Survey: Work Modes Research
Do you have a few minutes to help give some insights on how you’re working remotely, distributed, hybrid, or in-person today? We have a survey running right now that I’d love to get your participation in.?
When we get results, I’ll share them here.?
Quick hits from around the web
What else is happening??
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How Prevalent Are Ghost Jobs?
This week, there was more press about ghost jobs — jobs that don’t exist but are posted on a job board anyway. A disturbing stat drove much of the conversation: 81% of recruiters said they post ghost jobs .?
I’ve been involved in dozens of surveys that specifically target talent acquisition leaders, and this data doesn’t seem right. I’ve literally met thousands of recruiting leaders, and there’s simply no way four out of five are maliciously posting jobs that don’t exist.?
It doesn’t make sense because they get crushed with applications for actual jobs. There’s no incentive for them to create more work for themselves, and it's a bad experience for a candidate. Recruiters already work hard enough.?
A story last week also claimed that four in 10 companies posted “fake” job listings in 2024 . While that number is probably closer to the real one, I still think it’s wrong.?
The more benign explanation is that conflating a job that never existed but is posted anyway for, I guess, “reasons” with the technical issues of closing all of your job listings distributed across the web when you are done hiring is a less interesting story. The latter, I imagine, is somewhat common and also easily spotted.
A job that has been sitting on Indeed for 47 days and you can’t find it on the company’s career site? Yeah, that’s annoying but I wouldn’t consider that a ghost job. Recruiters should do better but if I get alerted to that as a TA leader, I am pulling it immediately (and figuring out how to ensure it gets done right).?
But jobs that don’t and have never existed? That’s somewhere in the low single-digit percents and that’s if you include scammers and identity thieves.??
I can’t stress this enough, though: No recruiter I know has the extra time to post fake jobs and just collect resumes from unsuspecting candidates. There are plenty of stories about what’s wrong in recruiting but let’s give the lazy storylines a break.
That's it for this week!??
Lance
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I've been a whirling dervish, work-a-holic, embodiment of business since I came flying out of the womb in the 70s (as Nixon was exiting stage left). Unapologetically creative raconteur and people champion. #muse ??
2 个月PREACH, LANCE!