Living in the COVID-19 World ... and Beyond #55: Beginning to Fight for Diversity

The current push back against diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts has stimulated me to remember when and how I got involved with these concerns.

In 1989, I was an HR Manager at General Electric Aircraft Engines in Lynn, MA responsible for the Engineering Departments.   A book was published, I don’t remember its exact title, that described the demographic patterns in the United States and its impact on the workforce. The data made it clear that the workforce would be much more diverse in the future.   This book, and broader societal awareness about racism, sexism, and employment discrimination, was causing companies like GE to launch efforts to improve diversity.  

I jumped at the chance to make a difference at GE regarding diversity.   I formed one of the first Diversity Committees within GE.   It was a diagonal slice of people from across the Engineering Departments.   We first did a lot of education and discussion amongst ourselves – learning about our own backgrounds and attitudes towards diversity, understanding the demographics, and developing ideas of what we could do to make an impact about diversity in our organization.

Meanwhile, there were big developments happening in international relations.   The “Cold War” ended, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union dissipated, and the news described the upcoming “Peace Dividend” – reduced spending for the military worldwide and in the United States.   This was great news for the world, and it had a direct impact on my business because we designed and manufactured engines for the US and many other militaries.   It became clear that we would need to lay off engineers from the Departments that I supported.

There is a process that large companies use when there needs to be a reduction in force.   The senior managers force rank employees, and the lowest ranked people would be the folks to be laid off.   The senior managers in the departments that I supported were all white men, mostly in their 50’s while I was 34 years old at the time.    When the managers did the ranking, they highly valued experience.   This was an understandable priority.  However, the implication was that the least experienced employees would be the ones to lose their jobs … and, because of efforts we had made in hiring, those newer engineers tended to have many more females and people of color than the more experienced workforce.    

I facilitated a meeting of the senior managers of the engineering departments at which we were to finalize the list of approximately one hundred people (out of our two-thousand-person engineering workforce) that would be laid off.     As the discussions ensued, I tried to convince the department leaders that experience was not the only priority and that we needed to also consider other factors, such as potential for advancement and diversity.   The senior managers were stuck on experience as the only criteria.   There is a legal concept related to equal employment opportunity called adverse impact.   Adverse impact states when you do an organized layoff of employees, that action cannot adversely impact one group of employees more than another.   In other words, an organization is not allowed to be discriminatory in its layoff actions or else it will be subject to fines.    I explained to the department leaders that they were liable to be guilty of adverse impact in this reduction in force and kept trying to convince them to change their criteria and who was on the layoff list.   And I failed to convince anyone to change their thinking.

I grew increasingly frustrated with the senior managers and the action they were planning.   I did not think it was good for the company and I thought it was unfair and likely to be deemed adverse impact by a government enforcement agency.   But the senior managers kept talking to each other, reaffirming to each other that they were doing the right thing, and essentially ignoring me.     

What happened next was not planned.  It just happened.  I screamed at them at the top of my voice.  I screamed that they were doing the wrong thing.   I had never raised my voice in a meeting with them before, and I did not just raise my voice, I screamed at them at the top of my lungs.  I screamed out several sentences that was a combination of logic and frustration.

Yikes!   What had I done?   I had just screamed at a bunch of department leaders who were mostly twenty years senior to me.   I felt embarrassed and walked out of the room after I stopped screaming.   I remember that I went into the men’s room just to calm myself and regain my composure.   And then I walked back into the conference room in which we had been meeting.

 The tone and content of the discussion had changed while I was gone.   The senior managers were identifying younger, diverse employees to keep and some older, more experienced white male employees to put on the lay off list.   No one referred to my screaming, but it was clear that it had made an impact.  

It was unfortunate that we had to lay off one hundred or so engineers … and we ended up doing so in a thoughtful and equitable manner that I believe was in the best interests of the company and the workforce in the long term.  

This was one of the first significant incidents of fighting for diversity.   What are your experiences of fighting for diversity, equity, and inclusion?