Friday, April 08, 2022

Belonging Task Force

 

 This morning I got a corporate-wide e-mail.

Now my guess is that this is intended to be some sort of "diversity/equity/inclusion" group, and that's fine. Frankly, entirely too many of us geologic/engineering types are straight white dudes.

But the branding?!? "Belonging Task Force"? Seriously? Am I the only one old enough to immediately channel Tom Lehrer's "Folk Song Army"?

"Oh we are the Folk Song Army
Guitars are the weapons we bring!
To the fight against poverty, war, and injustice;
Ready! Aim! Sing!"

But that wasn't my immediate thought; instead it was "Why is this a thing when the first question that comes to my mind when I think about my corporate culture is "What the fuck is your malfunction?"

Stuff like this makes me wonder if the people in the C-suites really have any clue what's happening out on the shop floor.

4 comments:

Jim Jackaman said...

Bonkers!

Matthew Saroff said...

You need to understand that this has nothing to do with diversity and inclusion, it has to do with diversity and inclusion THEATER.

It is not intended to create change, it is intended to create a legal defense to bad behavior.

FDChief said...

Jim: It's kind of the standard goofy coming from my corporate, so I didn't think "bonkers" so much as "okay, what is it THIS time..?"

Matthew: For a lot of outfits I'd agree. For this one? I think it really is genuine; the people who run this ship seem to really have their hearts in the right place about trying to make our shop a less old-white-guy (says the old white guy...) joint.

It's that we have some genuine people/staffing issues that need to be addressed, too, which are not being dealt with. So it's like they're worried about the icing and not that the cake looks more like matzoh.

Matthew Saroff said...

They may have their hearts in the right place, but their heads are not.

D&IE training does not work. What does work is aggressively monitoring the work place, and punishing people who do bad things.