How not to deal with human resources
.. aka staff, I have just a very great example amongst my friends. She is working for a bigger company for six years by now. For most of the last year her manager was sick (cancer) so she filled the role, without any pay rise, organizing everything as he would be there. And she was the "to go to" for every contact from other departments. It looks as the manager is loosing his battle, sadly. Now the HR people hired someone to replace him. At no stage she was asked. In this company it looks as women are treated like cleaners. While they are running a lot of the business, management and money is reserved for a boys club, it seems. I wonder whether she has any chance to launch a complaint. Regards Peter
On 08/06/2012, at 10:29, Peter Ross <Peter.Ross@bogen.in-berlin.de> wrote:
.. aka staff, I have just a very great example amongst my friends.
She is working for a bigger company for six years by now. For most of the last year her manager was sick (cancer) so she filled the role, without any pay rise, organizing everything as he would be there. And she was the "to go to" for every contact from other departments.
It looks as the manager is loosing his battle, sadly.
Now the HR people hired someone to replace him.
At no stage she was asked.
In this company it looks as women are treated like cleaners. While they are running a lot of the business, management and money is reserved for a boys club, it seems.
I wonder whether she has any chance to launch a complaint.
Regards Peter _______________________________________________ luv-talk mailing list luv-talk@lists.luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-talk
I think Hanlon's razor applies here: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Edward Savage <epssyis@gmail.com> wrote:
I think Hanlon's razor applies here:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Another possible explanation: implicit bias which operates at the unconscious level. There is evidence from social psychology (but I don't have references ready to hand) which indicates that there are people who claim, when asked, to be unprejudiced, but who nevertheless behave in a prejudiced manner in their actual decision-making.
Jason White wrote:
There is evidence from social psychology (but I don't have references ready to hand) which indicates that there are people who claim, when asked, to be unprejudiced, but who nevertheless behave in a prejudiced manner in their actual decision-making.
Someone told me a story once about a study of (I guess) a large organization's hiring procedures, trying to build an expert system that could automate the first rounds of hiring. Given prospective hires' resumes, and the list of those who had actually been hired, they asked the computer what the highest correlated factor was. It turned out to be skin colour. So they said "whoops, that wasn't the result we wanted" and they removed the photos from the corpus and asked the computer again, and it said "length of surname" -- presumably because honkies are more likely to be called Smith than Ramsoonajar.
Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
Jason White wrote:
There is evidence from social psychology (but I don't have references ready to hand) which indicates that there are people who claim, when asked, to be unprejudiced, but who nevertheless behave in a prejudiced manner in their actual decision-making.
Someone told me a story once about a study of (I guess) a large organization's hiring procedures, trying to build an expert system that could automate the first rounds of hiring. Given prospective hires' resumes, and the list of those who had actually been hired, they asked the computer what the highest correlated factor was. It turned out to be skin colour.
That's a very revealing anecdote. this kind of analysis is one of the means used to identify prejudice at work, but of course there are other lines of evidence, both experimental and survey-based. A good general introduction is Kristin J. Anderson, Benign Bigotry: the Psychology of Subtle Prejudcie. (I think the title is supposed to be ironic, because one of the author's conclusions is that it's not benign at all and that it is, in fact, a widespread cause of social injustice.
On Fri, 8 Jun 2012, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Jason White wrote: Someone told me a story once about a study of (I guess) a large organization's hiring procedures, trying to build an expert system that could automate the first rounds of hiring. Given prospective hires' resumes, and the list of those who had actually been hired, they asked the computer what the highest correlated factor was. It turned out to be skin colour. So they said "whoops, that wasn't the result we wanted" and they removed the photos from the corpus and asked the computer again, and it said "length of surname" -- presumably because honkies are more likely to be called Smith than Ramsoonajar.
I completely forgot to mention that she is Chinese as well. I did not think of it. Female & Chinese -> You can forget to have a career in Melbourne? The other thing I see again and again is the inaptitude of HR and management in bigger companies to promote and value their own staff. In the company in question, unhappy staff finally left. They returned as consulants because the company found out that they left a knowledge gap. Now they are costing probably a few times of the salary they refused to increase over years. Regards Peter
Peter Ross <Peter.Ross@bogen.in-berlin.de> wrote:
I completely forgot to mention that she is Chinese as well. I did not think of it.
I would expect Chinese language competence to be considered favourably in a large and increasing range of organizations nowadays, for obvious social and economic reasons. To make the point in a very general way, if I were running a business that had significant relationships with counterparts in a particular country, then having employees (especially at management level) who understood the relevant language and cultural specificities would be a valuable asset (on purely self-interested grounds, leaving aside questions about the advantages of diversity).
Jason White wrote:
Peter Ross <Peter.Ross@bogen.in-berlin.de> wrote:
I completely forgot to mention that she is Chinese as well.
I would expect Chinese language competence to be considered favourably in a large and increasing range of organizations nowadays, for obvious social and economic reasons.
Just because she's ethnic Han or whatever doesn't mean she can speak fluent Mandarin or Cantonese. I bet there are a lot of Australians descended from Irish and Scottish immigrants who can't speak Gaelic. My gramma is from Burma and I sure as shit can't speak Burmese.
On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 13:49:32 +1000 (EST) Peter Ross <Peter.Ross@bogen.in-berlin.de> wrote:
On Fri, 8 Jun 2012, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Jason White wrote: Someone told me a story once about a study of (I guess) a large organization's hiring procedures, trying to build an expert system that could automate the first rounds of hiring. Given prospective hires' resumes, and the list of those who had actually been hired, they asked the computer what the highest correlated factor was. It turned out to be skin colour. So they said "whoops, that wasn't the result we wanted" and they removed the photos from the corpus and asked the computer again, and it said "length of surname" -- presumably because honkies are more likely to be called Smith than Ramsoonajar.
Depending on geographcal location, there are probably more Singh's, Kaur's, Wong's, Ng's, Oh's, Poh's than Richardson's, Robertson's, Donaldson's ... So that presumptions may not be correct. "Familiarity" with a surname is probably a better factor - but thats harder to measure. I once was in a temporary position (for about 3 weeks) where the staff member in charge and to whom I was accountable to could just not get the spelling of my surname right - on 3 separate occasions he had to write my name down he spelt it in 3 different ways, all wrong. It probably means if that person had to make a decision about employing me, I would be at some disadvantage? Cheers, Daniel Jitnah
On Fri, 8 Jun 2012, DanyJ wrote:
On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 13:49:32 +1000 (EST)
"Familiarity" with a surname is probably a better factor - but thats harder to measure.
I once was in a temporary position (for about 3 weeks) where the staff member in charge and to whom I was accountable to could just not get the spelling of my surname right - on 3 separate occasions he had to write my name down he spelt it in 3 different ways, all wrong.
It probably means if that person had to make a decision about employing me, I would be at some disadvantage?
I still meet a friend in a place we refer to as Blablabla - because we frequently forget the name of the town: Bulahdelah. But we do not travel around it just because we have problems to memorise the name;-) A challenge when hitchhiking: Getting to Mosonmagyarovar (Pronouncing it in a way a Hungarian understands it) Regards Peter
On Fri, 8 Jun 2012, DanyJ <dan062@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
I once was in a temporary position (for about 3 weeks) where the staff member in charge and to whom I was accountable to could just not get the spelling of my surname right - on 3 separate occasions he had to write my name down he spelt it in 3 different ways, all wrong.
I've had the same thing on many occasions with people who don't have a significant enough cultural difference to have an excuse. When I first started working for Shell in the Netherlands they managed to do a double spelling error on my name. Not bad considering that almost everyone in .nl (and EVERYONE in a major corporation) speaks English really well and that Dutch is probably the closest language to English in many ways (much closer than German or French and I'm not aware of any other competition in this regard). I blame dyslexia and sloth for such things. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Russell Coker wrote:
[...] Dutch is probably the closest language to English in many ways (much closer than German or French [...]
Languages are classified taxonomically, thus: Dutch: Indo-European > Germanic > West Germanic > Low Franconian > Dutch English: Indo-European > Germanic > West Germanic > Anglo-Frisian > Anglic > English German: Indo-European > Germanic > West Germanic > High German > German language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Germanic_languages At a glance it would seem English is closer to Scots than Dutch, at least according to Wikipedia. The Scots article indicates it falls into the "is this a dialect or a language" grey area.
On Fri, Jun 08, 2012 at 07:38:02PM +1000, Trent W. Buck wrote:
At a glance it would seem English is closer to Scots than Dutch, at least according to Wikipedia. The Scots article indicates it falls into the "is this a dialect or a language" grey area.
Yep, and even if you discount Scots for that reason, (West) Frisian is closer to English than Dutch is. -- Paul Dwerryhouse | PGP Key ID: 0x6B91B584
On Sat, 9 Jun 2012, Paul Dwerryhouse wrote:
On Fri, Jun 08, 2012 at 07:38:02PM +1000, Trent W. Buck wrote:
At a glance it would seem English is closer to Scots than Dutch, at least according to Wikipedia. The Scots article indicates it falls into the "is this a dialect or a language" grey area.
Yep, and even if you discount Scots for that reason, (West) Frisian is closer to English than Dutch is.
I was amused when flicking through scots.wikipedia pages to hear myself phonetically basically pronouncing out English with a heavy Scottish accent. Then again, I did one or twice read and hear Dutch sentences and basically understand the gist of what they were saying. -- Tim Connors
DanyJ wrote:
Someone told me a story once about a study of (I guess) a large organization's hiring procedures, trying to build an expert system that could automate the first rounds of hiring. Given prospective hires' resumes, and the list of those who had actually been hired, they asked the computer what the highest correlated factor was. It turned out to be skin colour. So they said "whoops, that wasn't the result we wanted" and they removed the photos from the corpus and asked the computer again, and it said "length of surname" -- presumably because honkies are more likely to be called Smith than Ramsoonajar.
Depending on geographcal location, there are probably more Singh's, Kaur's, Wong's, Ng's, Oh's, Poh's than Richardson's, Robertson's, Donaldson's ... So that presumptions may not be correct.
I daresay other parts of that anecdote are even less accurate :-)
On Fri, 8 Jun 2012, Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:
Edward Savage <epssyis@gmail.com> wrote:
I think Hanlon's razor applies here:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
There is a lot of actual malice however. One story I heard concerns a woman who got a pay rise. When the rumor went around the office a man went to his manager and demanded a pay rise because he "couldn't be paid less than a woman". He got the pay rise he wanted. I don't think that anecdote is in any way unusual and the only uncommon thing about that incident would be how fast the rumor spread.
Another possible explanation: implicit bias which operates at the unconscious level.
There is evidence from social psychology (but I don't have references ready to hand) which indicates that there are people who claim, when asked, to be unprejudiced, but who nevertheless behave in a prejudiced manner in their actual decision-making.
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/04/23/unconscious-bias-against- short-men/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ The above URLs should be useful to people who are interested in such things. I recommend adding Sociological Images to your feed list, it's got a lot of interesting articles which are generally short. Note that while the blog is about images, most of the pictorial posts have more than enough explanation for you to understand what it's about without seeing the picture and most of the videos are interviews which should work well if you can't see people's faces. People who can't see the images have to trust that the description matches. Also the comments are generally of a high quality. Sometimes the discussion about the article has more value than the article itself (IMHO). -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On Fri, Jun 08, 2012 at 11:39:33AM +1000, Edward Savage wrote:
I think Hanlon's razor applies here:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
i think part of Peter's point is that sexist discrimination doesn't actually require active malice, it's just default stupidity. that's one of the main problems with prejudice - the fact that people internalise it and it becomes an unconscious set of assumptions, attitudes, and habitual behaviours. craig ps: malice and stupidity aren't opposites or mutually exclusive. in fact, they often complement and reinforce each other. -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
participants (9)
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Craig Sanders -
DanyJ -
Edward Savage -
Jason White -
Paul Dwerryhouse -
Peter Ross -
Russell Coker -
Tim Connors -
Trent W. Buck