Gender neutral
Official photos, a change at the U.S. Army, why they did it, and 7 other things worth your time.
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The U.S. Army recently made a big change recently in how it promotes officers.
Up until now, every U.S. soldier who hoped to go before a promotion board had to include a photograph: standing at attention, service uniform with all the ribbons, careful not to smile.
As the official human resources page for the U.S. Army used to say (that’s foreshadowing):
Board members carefully screen each photograph for compliance with height and weight standards, proper wear of the uniform and military bearing.
DA photos add a human aspect to the selection process, and without a photograph the quality of any personnel file is greatly diminished.
Only it turns out that even if it was totally unconscious, promotion boards might have been doing something else: systematically discriminating against soldiers on the basis of their race or gender.
Starting in October 2018, the Army studied this by conducting two identical promotion boards: one that ran as it normally did, and one that did not include officer photos in the promotion packets.
Without the photos, they found:
members of promotion boards ranked soldiers more uniformly;
promotion decisions took less time; and
women and minorities were promoted at a higher rate.
“It's just that people, even if they don't think about it, they tend to want to be around people that look and think and act like them,” Army Chief of Staff General James McConville said, according to Military.com. “When you get to a higher level, you start to realize you want diversity because you want different perspectives.”
So, no more promotion board photos:
Effective 1 August 2020, the requirement for the ... photo is suspended. Data that identifies a Soldier's race, ethnicity, and gender ... will be redacted. These changes will ensure that selection boards are as fair and impartial as possible.
Now, it probably sounds more than a little bit odd to people outside of the military that the Army was still doing this.
Most large private companies would be at pains to avoid even the appearance of the possibility that bias could be sneaking into their hiring and promotion processes.
It's not a small issue either—since the Army has close to 1.3 million soldiers and civilian employees, if you count the National Guard and reserves.
Fun fact: Walmart is bigger—about 1.5 million U.S. employee. But beyond that, it's hard to imagine a bigger employer.
I'm going to assume that if you run a business, you don’t use photos or formal promotion boards. But are there other things that might be creeping into your processes, and unconsciously leading you or others to reveal biases?
Are there decisions you made long ago that lead you to discount people—even without meaning to—who could be contributing greatly to your team? (Ahem.)
Now seems like a pretty opportune time to ask the question.
7 other things worth your time
The Justice Department is expected to unveil an antitrust case against Google, possibly as soon as this week. One of the top remedies the government is rumored to be seeking: forcing the search and advertising giant to spin off its Chrome browser into a different company. (Politico)
Facebook says starting today, it will ban Holocaust denier content on its properties. This comes days after it banned QAnon conspiracy theory content. Interestingly, you can still buy a lot of QAnon themed products on Amazon and other market places; largely sold by companies based in China. (FB, Modern Retail)
Wait, are we doing this hoarding thing again? Half of all Americans say they’re planning to stockpile food and other necessities, in case we have another massive lockdown over the winter. (USA Today)
Related-ish: Faced with yet another surge in Covid-19, the UK is announcing a new “three tier” system of lockdowns across the country. (AP)
Do couples really begin to look alike over time? Or are people just attracted to others who resemble them to begin with? Researchers are tackling this crucial question; so far they think it’s the latter. (The Guardian)
If you’ve ever been to Grand Central Station in NYC, I’m going to bet you’ve set foot inside the 107-year-old oyster bar there. It reopened a couple of weeks ago—but abruptly closed again this week. Reason: Just not enough people traveling to justify staying open. (NY Daily News)
Chance are you’ve seen Idaho potato warehouse worker Nathan Apodaca’s viral video. If you haven’t, it’s below. Here’s the story of the chain of events that led from his 300,000-mile truck breaking down, to a 43-year-old Fleetwood Mac song topping the charts last week. (MPR News)
Photo: Official U.S. Army photo. I explored this military promotion issue on Inc.com. If you liked this post, and you’re not yet a subscriber, what are you waiting for? Please sign up for the daily Understandably.com email newsletter, with thousands and thousands of 5-star ratings from happy readers. You can also just send an email to signup@understandably.com. And now, you can also get it by text at (718) 866-1753.
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If they are going to eliminate photos, I would think they would also just put in first initial, last name, in order to further eliminate race, gender, ethnicity data. This does make a difference. I have a very good friend who is Latino, Ivy League grad. However, once he dropped his last name & had his first & middle name on his LinkedIn profile, he received MANY more views of his profile & more job opportunities emailed to him. Private companies still have tactics to continue hiring bias, ie: year of college graduation required on application, as a way to eliminate "older" candidates (this personally happened to me). It would be surprising that any company has achieved total recruiting & hiring neutrality and furthermore I don't think most are even trying.
Bill, great as usual, thank you. I’m a 21 year US Marine Corps combat vet. Getting a promo photo was just something we always did - you wore the uniform anyway - and a photo helped quantify height and weight standards that were strictly enforced. With equally qualified officers, a photo was just one additional way to potentially stand out. Promotion in the military can be a distant, cold, bureaucratic process. In contrast, promotion at a civilian job likely involves people in your department who know you - much more intimate and personal.
Perhaps we forget that serving in uniform is not working at Walmart - or other private companies. Service members take a solemn oath of office to protect and defend. Many jobs are in dangerous and violent combat arms roles. Being absolutely physically fit, without any extra body fat is critical - a promo photo would catch this where height / weight metrics may not. Also, visible tattoos and body piercings that detract from uniform standardization is becoming an issue. My branch, the Marine Corps, is much smaller than the others: every Marine is considered a rifleman; admin clerk or spec ops door kicker - everyone MUST be combat ready, extremely physically fit and proficient with certain weapons systems.
Perspective: government bureaucrats and social engineering leftists have always used the military (esp the Army) for their social experiments to incrementally bend their favorite race / gender issues; ie co-Ed training, minority quotas, sex change procedures and unqualified people placed in extreme combat roles. These bureaucrats don’t like the Marine Corps because we generally don’t buy in to the social experiments which can negatively affect combat readiness. My sense is, in the case of your report, that this is just one more effort by politically correct Pentagon dwellers to neuter the military.
If there is a statistical promotion bias as suggested, the problem then is to remove the bias through intense training from day 1 (easier said than done with the Army since basic boot camp is more like Boy Scout camp) and rigorous processes to eliminate those who discriminate.
My observation over 21 years serving with INCREDIBLE Marines of all shapes, sizes, colors, etc, is this; we were trained so hard up front, stripped of our street identity, given a new Marine issued identity and plunged into the fire of intense combat readiness - there was simply no room or propensity for discrimination.