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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
I think we've got to be really careful about changing the verbiage because now what we're doing is we're kind of vilifying everybody who might have been the product of DEI. Like, oh, you're there because you didn't earn it. And so words do matter, but, you know, the words that we've even the words that Sherm came up with, I'm like, seriously? I mean, we're HR people. Can we do a little better than this?
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Well, it's hard to believe it, but we're at the end of the first quarter of twenty twenty five. And for her trif ecta appearance on Good Morning HR, I'm joined by my friend Terri Swain to discuss a few notable news items from the past month.
Mike Coffey:Terri is the founder and chief truth seeker with Decipher, cleverly spelled d e c I p h r. A Fort Worth based human resources consulting firm specializing in equal employment opportunity investigations. Can we say that word anymore? Employee relations, and interim HR leadership. Teri has over a quarter century of HR consulting experience under her belt.
Mike Coffey:In fact, I think she and I were both talking to clients in 1999 about y two k, and we all survived it. Prior to her consulting role, she paid her dues in the corporate world including a leadership stint with a fortune 200 company. Terri began her career in HR on the other side of the desk as an investigator for the EEOC. Welcome back to good morning HR, Terri.
Terri Swain:Thanks, Mike.
Mike Coffey:So it's been a month. It's been a quarter. It's been a year. Seems like three years. So but last year, really, in in full full mode, employers started reeling employees back to the office.
Mike Coffey:This whole RTO thing, it got really serious and I've got a lot of reasons why it, you know, in my head about why it didn't work for some employers where it seems to have worked fine for others. But SHRM, one of their big focuses in the last year has been incivility in the workplace. It was an election year and they've continued to focus on some of these incivility issues. And they did a survey and said that employees at companies, who have an RTO mandate reported 63% more acts of workplace incivility compared to those without an RTO mandate. I think this is like a no brainer.
Mike Coffey:Right? If you're if people got used to working at home and they don't wanna work and they don't wanna go into the office, either they're gonna be cranky and be incivil or maybe they would just it would have been the same level of incivility if these people have been working together and brushing up against each other all day long every day anyway. Because some people are just, you know, it's easier just to get along when you can just, you know, put their picture up on on the Zoom screen and you don't have to actually be in the same room with them. But what was your take on on on the Sherm?
Terri Swain:Well, I think a few things. I think one, I mean, think about this, like my daughter works in Houston. She lives in The Woodlands. Her her business moved from downtown to further south because it was cheaper. Right?
Terri Swain:We don't have people back at the office. Now they're bringing her back to work. Now she has a two and a half hour commute Oh. And back. Oh.
Terri Swain:In it yeah. Each way. Each way.
Mike Coffey:Two and a half. She's driving for five hours a day.
Terri Swain:She's driving yes. So think about that. I mean, when you Fort
Mike Coffey:Worth down to Rockwall or It down there North of Austin.
Terri Swain:Sherman. Yeah. Yeah. That's nuts. So I think, you know, you you have to add that.
Terri Swain:Like, commuting is to me, commuting is like the most unproductive, first of all. So you're sitting in traffic, and then you're unproductive. You could be at home at your computer, so you're you're grouchy when you get to work. Right? And I think the other thing, though, is and I think it was Chipotle did a study, which is really interesting that during the pandemic when you had a whole year when people weren't in restaurants, people lost a year of leadership skills.
Terri Swain:And think about that. So I think that, you know, when we're at home, we jump on here. I can be polite, put my nice clothes on. I get off the phone call. I put my comfy clothes back on.
Terri Swain:I write my report. I'm productive, but I don't have to deal with people. So I think we're losing we're losing really good communication skills, you know, when you bring everybody back to work. And I'm not a proponent for bringing everybody back to work because I don't I think it's not a one size fits all. You kinda gotta look at your business, look at your customers, look at your stakeholders, and see what you need.
Terri Swain:But I see that incivility, that uptick, because I think and we're not, you know, some of the newer generations don't know how to speak to each other face to face as well as they do. They're better at
Mike Coffey:Right.
Terri Swain:Text and email, and I'm not saying that's good or bad, but it's different. Right? When you're back in the office, you might have to do some more face to face.
Mike Coffey:So be the younger generation. It may be that collision between, like, us Gen Xers and the younger ones and even our predecessors in the boomer generation who communicated very differently. And so when they were, you know, a lot of those folks, our generation and and the and the boomers who are still in the workforce, a lot of them kept coming into the office because that was their routine for thirty years before, you know, the COVID epidemic pandemic. But now you've got these younger people coming in the office. It's one thing when you're just trading emails and you once you, you know, once you look up what WTF means and look up what LOL means, you can kind of communicate with them in text.
Mike Coffey:But when you're and I just sounded like such a boomer when I said that. I know my my I'm glad my kids don't listen to this. But but rubbing up against somebody and realizing that, oh, you you know, you gotta make eye contact with people. You know, you can't talk overly casually with with people. Or, hey, these people did this generation does speak more casually or they speak their mind more, you know, they don't have a sense of, you know, what's politically correct in an office politics kind of sense about what you do and don't say to a supervisor to appear and they're having to figure that stuff out.
Mike Coffey:I know that my son who's, 25 was at UT during in mechanical engineering at, during the pandemic. And he was insistent when he got out of school after, you know, a year of of doing all of his school remote. He wanted to be in a workplace and he needed that mentoring. He recognized that. He when he was with a big aerospace contractor here in Fort Worth, he'll go unnamed.
Mike Coffey:And then he's now he's with a NASA contractor in Houston and doing really cool work, but he's working in both places, he worked with somebody who was a lot older and who he learned a lot from. But he also had parents who had that same background and he grew up and having, know, sawing seeing us run a company and and had an idea of what a business office would, you know, what a workplace is like. I think a lot of kids coming out of school don't have that and they're learning some of it the hard way.
Terri Swain:Right. And the flip side of that, people who are holding on to traditional values like we have to be in the work because we're a manufacturing organization and we make widgets and everybody has to be here. Well, the truth is, you know, if you're writing reports or you're doing IT, you can be remote. Mhmm. And so I think there's that clash too, but it doesn't surprise
Mike Coffey:me. And I've heard it called an equity issue in manufacturing sense that I've I've even heard HR people say, well, it seems like it's an equity issue if if some people can work have to come to office come to to the workplace to, you know, attach, you know, tab a to slot, you know, slot a and do, you know, something physical. It seems unfair that HR gets to work hybrid or the IT people or accounting or whoever get to work hybrid or fully remote. And I don't I don't see that as an equity issue. That's just some jobs require you to be there and some places some jobs don't.
Terri Swain:Well, and that's why I think we always have to step back as business owners and business leaders to say, what makes sense for our business? Because owning less real estate may make sense. Having your salespeople nearer to their customers than nearer to the people they're working with almost always makes sense. Right? So what makes sense?
Terri Swain:And I think sometimes we just try to fit this. Okay. RTO, you know, everybody's coming back to the office, so everybody's coming back to the office without thinking about, well, what makes sense? Because we're worried sometimes about fairness and equity and I don't know. To me, it's it's a pretty big business issue.
Terri Swain:You and I have probably worked from home most of our, you know, or hybrid.
Mike Coffey:Well, yeah. Well, you know, I was going into the I I need people. And so I until we went remote, I was in the office every day with my employees. I never dreamed we'd go remote. And then I knew they they were all so much more productive.
Mike Coffey:And like you mentioned the commute, I mean, I had an employee driving forty five minutes each way. And it was, you know, I'm thirty five, which is not a great drive. And so I was like, this is working for us. But when and I think one of the big problems the companies I see doing RTO are often either the really large organizations where knowledge transfer is really key, where that mentoring, you know, the accounting firms, the the big consulting firms. JPMorgan though, you know, Jamie Dimon's gotten a lot of grief, right, in the last few you know, he's been really frank and blunt about it, but he's seen behavior that he doesn't think is what JPMorgan needs to be about.
Mike Coffey:And he went on that rant that and I'll leave a a link to it in the show notes, but he went on a rant that was caught on video complaining about people on Zoom talking about their coworkers negatively on the Zoom chat and then, you know, of course, whatever. We all we've all seen those happen where it gets put out to the whole everybody on the call sees the the chat And, you know, but I think it's a lot of it's mentoring and stuff. But there's also the other side though where, and I said this in 2020, the employers who have good management performance, who have good leadership, who have metrics for their employees' productivity and quality, and have a guide for here's what we're gonna get done this month, this week, you know, today to hit our goals. And everybody's and everybody's at close to full utilization, they're not gonna have a problem with remote work like those companies that manage by walking around, you know, hurry up, look busy, the boss is coming, that kind of thing. They're the ones who are gonna have a big struggle.
Mike Coffey:And that's what I saw during COVID and I think it's continues. When I hear somebody who's just saying my people aren't as productive, but they can't they're not saying it's it's a culture thing and they're not getting work done as far as, you know, their, you know, mentorship and and make in developing talent, which is I think is key. It's just they don't have good managers. You know, they don't have a they haven't trained, you know, they haven't trained their managers. So, I think that's the the flip side of it.
Mike Coffey:But then, that's this has also spawned this whole thing of overemployment and I I did a webinar last week called alt control this do you say alt control delete or do you say control alt delete? Which one do you say?
Terri Swain:Alt control delete.
Mike Coffey:You say alt control. See, think that's generational because the youngs, including my one of my sons said, you're saying that wrong. It's control alt delete. And they say the control first and it doesn't even sound right on my. So, put in the listeners, put in the notes.
Mike Coffey:Do you say alt control delete? We'll see and put your age and we'll we'll we'll see if there's a correlation between alt control delete and control alt delete. But anyway, anyway, I did a webinar last week. That's what we were talking about. About, remote worker fraud and one of the things that's happening a lot are, especially in tech in tech roles, but even administrative clerical roles where people can work remote, they're doing taking two or three jobs at the same time concurrently.
Mike Coffey:And there's a whole subreddit called, you know, slash unemployment, overemployment I mean, and it's all about people doing that and how to get away with it, how to hide one job from the other jobs and all of that. And the only way that's possible is poor leadership. You know, supervisors not paying attention to how how utilized is this employee. And I disagree. Well, go ahead and say what you were gonna say.
Terri Swain:Well, I was gonna ask you though, and this was a question that I had. At a background check, can you figure out if somebody is pulling from they're paying Social Security to multiple places?
Mike Coffey:No. You can't see that as an employer, but what you might see is Equifax has this product called the work number and a lot of employers, especially larger employers, don't want all those phone calls for employment verifications coming into Uh-huh. You know. And so they they give they they set up APIs generally directly to Equifax and dump all their real time employment history and all their history and all their real time data, as far as who's hired, what the hire date, term date and all that was. And often you call those employers, you call out General Motors or Lockheed or somebody and you want to verify employment, they're not gonna do it.
Mike Coffey:They're gonna send you to a work number or or a similar verification company. And then you get in there and you can see all of somebody's employment history. It just comes up when you run it. And so that's one way to do it. But even there, they're a consumer reporting agency just like my background screening company.
Mike Coffey:And so in order to hide that, they can that consumer, that individual can come to to Equifax and say freeze my report just like you can freeze your credit report. Oh. And so an employer can't get it. Now, an employer can go to them and say, hey, your your employment history is locked. We need you to unlock it.
Mike Coffey:And the employee can refuse or they they can kind of apparently, according to what I'm reading is a lot of employers just say, oh well, okay, and they move on. And they don't, they hire the person. They don't insist that they open that up. Because you know, the person say, oh, is that a victim of identity fraud and that doesn't really matter for the work number, but they they they they just basically BS the employers. But it goes back to just poor management, right?
Mike Coffey:If, again, if I'm paying attention, if now there are people who say, well, if I'm getting the job done that they're asking me to do in forty and I'm getting it done in six hours instead of forty, then then what's the problem? And I'm like, no. Even if you're exempt, you're paid to be utilized fully by the company, not just to get this, you know, well, I'm exempt, so I'll I'll only have to work enough to get the job done. Well, that's not how that works. And it's not what the FLSA says, you know.
Mike Coffey:You know, you have to pay them regardless if they get a job done in four hours. And so, I think that just goes back to making, you know, employers paying attention, having metrics for their employees performance and that's the only way you would be able to do that. I can't I can't imagine somebody working none of my team, I mean, you know, and and we we count on about 80% utilization in all our budgeting. I want I want my employees not to kill themselves. But you couldn't do a full time job at the same time you're working for me.
Mike Coffey:Don't think you could pull it off.
Terri Swain:Alright. But I think a lot of jobs you could because for your right, people aren't paying attention. You get the report done on time or you're fast. I mean, like when I was an EEOC investigator, I was probably I could probably run circles around a lot of people. My was twice size.
Mike Coffey:EOC investigators. You're probably the smartest one I've ever had. But
Terri Swain:you know what I'm saying, like Right. I could probably do two to three times the production that was expected. Sure. So I think about that. If I'm at home, I'm gonna produce like all my other people.
Terri Swain:I'm gonna have this side gig over here.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. And that's what's basically happening. And I mean, we've always had employees and I did it when I was in the corporate world. I did consulting on the outside part time. I never did it during the day.
Mike Coffey:If I, you know, I even, you know, took vacation and traveled some for, you know, to to help with some client stuff. But never would I even think about, you know Of course, I was in an office all day too. And so, you know, but Mhmm. And I I'm double employed now. I own this company and I work here and I teach yoga four or five times a week and sometimes I teach at 04:30 in the afternoon.
Mike Coffey:So I guess it happens
Terri Swain:studio know you're doing this.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. Know. They're gonna yeah. Believe me. The fact that I'm not starving to death, they know that I'm not that I'm doing something besides teaching yoga.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning HR is brought to you by Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. As we've said last week, I held a webinar called Alt, Control, protecting yourself from remote employee fraud. We discussed the ways employers who haven't fully returned to office have been the victims of fraud by foreign governments, identity thieves, and intentionally underutilized employees. You can catch the recording of the webinar and get recertification credit for watching it by clicking on the education tab at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of good morning HR has been preapproved for three quarters of an hour of recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information visit goodmorninghr.com and click on research credits. Then select episode 193 and enter the keyword decipher. That's d e c I p h r. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:And now back to my conversation with Terry Swain. So we were talking about the EEOC. So president Trump and day one of his, administration issued a bunch of executive orders and there's a lot of talk about illegal DEI. And a lot of people have switched that including sometimes his own spokespeople to say DEI is illegal. But is DEI illegal, Terry?
Mike Coffey:No.
Terri Swain:No. No. No. Now doing it wrong Yeah. Could be.
Terri Swain:Exactly. I mean, doing it wrong could be, but DEI is not illegal and it's just getting such a such a bad rap when you look at the three words, diversity, equity, inclusion. Who can be against that? Right?
Mike Coffey:Yes. But the flip side of that is some companies did do it really dumb and and completely illegally. And the worst, you know, anytime the worst example is going to, you know, result in an overcorrection. Overcorrection. And there were a lot of bad examples.
Mike Coffey:You know, things like, you know, some of the training that went on.
Terri Swain:I don't know if there was a lot, but there was the
Mike Coffey:ones that were There was enough I know people who went who sat through those sessions. Yes. It wasn't just something something crazy happened in New York City. I mean, here in Fort Worth, there was and I don't think it was the company's bad intent. I don't think it was anybody's bad intent.
Mike Coffey:But, I think a lot of people who were I must say this in a way that is trying to be diplomatic and it's not my strong suit, who were really enamored by the social justice justice aspect of DEI and didn't make a strong business case for the the the DEI programs they were promoting. I
Terri Swain:think that the reason is that there has been such a misunderstanding about diversity, equity, and inclusion, affirmative action, and, you know, compliance. Cause, for example, people would call me all the time and say, hey, do you do DEI training? No. I've I mean, I could, but it's never been my lane. My lane's compliance.
Terri Swain:So the fact that you think, because I do compliance, I do DEI, or the fact that you think I can't do DEI because I do compliance, when they're all interwoven, always I always push back and I'm like, have you ever done basic creating respectful work environment training? You know, no. Then you are not at DEI. Right. DEI is Frito, Pepsi, AT and T.
Terri Swain:They're so far down the pike of understanding. So I think when you say people get enamored with the social justice, I think because they don't know. They don't take the time. They read an article and they just say, I need to go get me some of those. And I've seen that with CEO.
Terri Swain:Hey, call. We need a DEI trainer. And that's how I get the calls and I'm like, yeah, well, here's who I would go. And then there's a million of them out there. Mhmm.
Terri Swain:So how do you know who's good?
Mike Coffey:Yeah. And that's the downside is there there are some wacky and I've I've I'll say it. I've had I've had at least one on the podcast who I thought was just wackadoodle as far as the approach of what the DEI training was supposed to accomplish. And if there's not a business case tied to it and it's not a compliance issue
Terri Swain:Right.
Mike Coffey:Then you're doing it wrong.
Terri Swain:And training should be the last thing you do. Because you look at your systems and processes and your business case and are we trying to reach our consumers? Are we trying to reach our employees? Are we trying to reach our vendors? Yes.
Terri Swain:All of the above. How are we gonna integrate this? Do we have good data? And that's the thing, like, I had a client once, very well meaning, European owned, that said, our goal this year is gonna be to hire 50% females. Hire and promote 50% females.
Terri Swain:They were an engineering company. I'm like, there's no way you can meet this goal. And that would be illegally discriminated against because when you looked at the type of engineering they had, the availability for females was 11%. So 90% of the companies are engineering. So marketing is gonna be a % female.
Terri Swain:HR is gonna be a % female. Sales is gonna be a % female because how are you get, like you can't that's illegal DEI. Right? That is you don't you have a good idea. Right?
Terri Swain:Because half the world's women. Right? Shouldn't half our company be women? No. Because we didn't sit back and think about who so so I think sometimes it's well intentioned, but it's not thought about holistically.
Terri Swain:It's not thought about, you know, how it all fits in your business.
Mike Coffey:But from a compliance standpoint, even if 50% of the available workforce was women in in that field, let's say it was 50% of the engineers available for women, which is probably the direction we're going if you look at the enrollment and graduation rates right now.
Terri Swain:Yay.
Mike Coffey:It it to set yeah. Yeah. Go girl. But the idea that you're gonna set a quota, that our workforce is gonna have a hard number and we're gonna manage managers to that number, that's illegal too. Right?
Terri Swain:Well, right. Well
Mike Coffey:If it's affecting who gets selected for interviews and hiring.
Terri Swain:Okay. Yes and no. 50% would never be a quota. It would be a goal. Yeah.
Terri Swain:Because you would know that that is your now if you made it a quota and said, we're gonna do 50%, then it's a problem. But it should always be a goal because you should always always I mean, and I've been doing this for, you know, eons. Always hire the most qualified person. Now, if you have two equally qualified people and you have a goal, you should go with your goal thing, but you should never hire a less qualified person.
Mike Coffey:Are there ever two people who are a % equally qualified? No. And so
Terri Swain:They're not.
Mike Coffey:So I I think if gender ever comes into it, you've you've you've got a bigger issue. But even before all of this started going crazy, I I did a I had a presentation and I've got the webinar recorded on the website called mitigating risk in the employment selection process and it talked about all the science that said most of the DEI training doesn't work. And here's what you gotta do. The whole point of diversity equity as inclusion is drawing from the deepest applicant pool available. So making sure you're mitigating any biases in your recruiting process and how you're advertising jobs.
Mike Coffey:Getting as many qualified candidates regardless of whatever demographics do not have anything to do with the job and getting those candidates in, mitigating your manager's own bias, which we all have. Right? I mean, we've all got some and, mitigating that in the selection process and then making people feel included when they're in the workplace. Make this a place that this person wants to work regardless if they're a a conservative Southern Baptist white minister or a transgender, you know, young millennial make this a place where people want to work, where we we we're civil to each other, where we respect people's differences and we get the damn job done. That's the reason we come to work every day.
Mike Coffey:That's what DEI that's what the message of DEI should have been and I think we got away from that after George Floyd was murdered. And I think a lot a lot of real anger about a lot of injustices came on, but asking employers to fix those injustices proactively rather than just saying we're going to fix our own systems and how we select people, maybe and mitigate the biases was a mistake. Let me have it.
Terri Swain:You know, I feel all kinds of ways about this because I think there's a lot of when you talk about I mean, I'm a believer in systems and processes and what you said, all about that. But I think if left to no diversity component, no thought about it, you're gonna get more of the same. So I
Mike Coffey:think Or measuring it's important. Yeah. And Yeah. And and asking what what in our system is allowing this thing to happen? Think that's a fair question.
Terri Swain:And and I think the other what concerns me right now in our current climate is that what seems to be under fire also are mentoring programs, internships that they have to be Open to Open
Mike Coffey:to everyone. That's interesting. So you think that would be okay?
Terri Swain:Well, because on its face, it sounds okay. Right? But I'm gonna give you a few examples. So I have a client who has a machinist. They hire a lot of machinists.
Terri Swain:Who are machinists? I mean, especially back in the nineties. Who are machinists?
Mike Coffey:Dudes.
Terri Swain:They're all male.
Mike Coffey:Yeah.
Terri Swain:Right. So they set up a program. They were in Houston. They set up a program with the Houston's public schools, and they said, we are going to set up an apprenticeship to teach machinists. So when they come out of high school, they can be machinists.
Terri Swain:And they specifically wanted that half of that class to be female. Okay? So that they could start changing the statistics because if you don't do something to change the pipeline, you know, so that was their goal. It wasn't like, oh, 50% have to be female, but in that case, that really changed who was becoming a machinist.
Mike Coffey:Mhmm.
Terri Swain:And it helped them pipeline people. And again, when it came time for these kids to finish their apprenticeship, we're if Teri's a sucky machinist, like, don't well, we don't want that girl. She can't do the job. But here, we're two people out of high school, and we're both pretty good. Like, I wanna bring Terri in because I wanna give her that opportunity.
Terri Swain:So I'm I have a little bit of angst about that whole thing because I think there's been programs like that so that we can change the statistics. Why are women 50% in engineering and graduating? It's because somewhere, they we changed the narrative. Right? And a lot of it start with corporate.
Terri Swain:I mean, people going on campuses and getting people interested and then giving them the internship. Hey, come and work for General Motors and see what we're all about or Toyota. And then you've had the internship, so you have the leg up. So I feel, you know, I've got that kind of feeling.
Mike Coffey:Well, and I think and and I'm I'm chair of the talent committee for the Fort Worth chamber, and one of the things that we're actively doing is looking to get people back into the trades. You know, college isn't right for every student and all. And I think that's really important. And I think making sure you're communicating to female students that, hey, this internship's available, and even making sure you've got hopefully, you can find your version, the 02/2025 version of Rosie the Riveter to put out there on, you know, as your as one of your visuals of what people really, you know, the kind of people are doing that. And there's this idea that the trades are all dirty and all of that and now a lot of them aren't.
Mike Coffey:They're in clean shops Yeah. And everything else. And and so, I think that's great. And I think what you you click you you know, you're saying, yeah, we want a 50% women, but but that's kind of an aspirational thing. We're not going to limit it down, but we want to make sure we're marketing enough to to and it may be it may just be because of other social differences and how how girls are raised by their parents and social expectations.
Mike Coffey:You may never get to 50% in a trade in in that kind of organization. But saying we would love to we want to make sure that every every kid who has opportunity regardless of their gender has an opportunity to do this program and it would, you know, in a we feel like in a perfect world it would reflect what the community looks like regardless if it's gender or race or whatever. That's a great aspiration. And and keep going back and asking yourself why aren't we getting those numbers? What is what in our system?
Mike Coffey:And it may not be our system though because Right. Again, could be all this other stuff out there that's not us. And this was all to start the discussion about the EEOC put out two guidances about what might constitute illegal DEI or how DEI might be unlawful. And it didn't say anything new. No.
Mike Coffey:It was just No. Oh, there's title seven out there. And and No. And so it's I've never seen I mean, I've been reading EEOC guidances because, I mean, I've worked on the employment side and the employee selection side my most of my career. And I've never seen guidances that said so that said nothing new.
Mike Coffey:They're usually some groundbreaking, you know, new interpretation that I disagree with often, but but here it's just like, you've title Don't you
Terri Swain:think that's adding fuel to the DEI fire where now people are afraid of it? Yeah. So we're going like a flip side. So now I have this internship that I'm trying to get female machinists in and I'm like, oh, I don't wanna do that because I'm gonna get, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna get this thing because now that's what we're looking at. And, you know, one of the first things the EEOC interim commissioner did was sent 20 letters to 20 high powered DC law firms saying, we think you have illegal DEI going on, so send us so that's to me the chilling effect of everything that's happening with this lingo.
Terri Swain:The law is the law. DEI is DEI. If you don't understand it, you're not gonna understand it with all the
Mike Coffey:Well, yeah. All the stuff in the press. Yeah.
Terri Swain:The press. You're not gonna understand it, but I do think people are getting afraid of it. Like, oh, that's something like you said, can we say EEO? Can we say DEI? Can we, you know, and and and so it's yeah.
Mike Coffey:But I think we need to I think it's time we have to rebrand it and because but well before president Trump was elected and it became such a hot button hot topic button, I do think it was the term was appropriated by by folks who weren't doing the kind of DEI that we're talking about. Who were promoting more of a social justice aspect of it. And I think it's just tainted now. It was tainted before and that's how it became a lightning rod issue. And I think now we've got to get and we've got to talk about it.
Mike Coffey:Not like, you know, the way I always try to talk about is mitigating their biases in in your employee selection, making sure everybody has an opportunity to get in and that you find a way to make them successful in the organization. Those kind of things. I think we're gonna have to do that just because I don't think DEI means so many different things to so many different people and if you ask five different, you know, practitioners of DEI, you're gonna get five different answers.
Terri Swain:Yeah. I mean, I agree with that, but what I hate is hearing this whole meritocracy. We're gonna get back to meritocracy because what that sounds like to anybody who is a black employee Or female pilot. Hispanic. Yeah.
Terri Swain:Or a female pilot or something is like, oh, you didn't you know, I've heard this DEI. You didn't earn it. You didn't earn it. Where we know that the people nobody puts American Airlines does not my my sister-in-law is a a a captain with American Airlines. Nobody puts a pilot in the air
Mike Coffey:Right.
Terri Swain:Who doesn't know what they're doing. I mean, so I think we've got to be really careful about changing the verbiage because now what we're doing is we're kind of vilifying everybody who might have been the product of DEI. Like, oh, you're there because you didn't earn it. And so words do matter, but, know, the words that we've even the words that Sherm came up with. Mhmm.
Terri Swain:I'm like, seriously? I mean, we're HR people. Can we do a little better than this?
Mike Coffey:Yeah. Well, and maybe because it's become a political hot hot button. That's another reason to rebrand it. And and and stake out clearly right upfront exactly what we're talking about. And so if you're a company, you're gonna write the equivalent of your DEI statement now.
Mike Coffey:You know, be explicit about what it really means that, you know, like I said, you know, it's not just, you know, rainbows and unicorns because that doesn't tell anybody anything. But we're gonna become the best company to do whatever it is we do serving the customers we serve because we're gonna draw from the deepest pool of talent available. We're gonna select from that the very best people we can find who will work for what we're willing to pay and who, you know, and we're gonna make them we're gonna try and keep them employees fully engaged, fully productive as long as we can by making this a place that they wanna work and they feel accepted and and appreciated. So I think that's gonna be the route we go. But let's talk about the new administration a little bit deeper.
Mike Coffey:My my one of my my dirty vices is Reddit and which is a dumpster fire for a very, you know, just a collection, especially the employment related Reddits are about, you know, unemployed, unhappy people who think that the the man is keeping them down, keeping his foot on their neck all the time. But there was a post called not from from a redditor in Oregon, not hiring Trump supporters. And the guy says that basically, he's not gonna hire anybody who's a Trump supporter anymore. And he says, can't catch them all, but people are getting pretty cavalier about praising him on LinkedIn, so that'll be my guide I guess. The work my team does requires a level of critical thinking that makes gullibility an incredibly bad trait to have.
Mike Coffey:Additionally, I just don't want people on my team who hate a country that has given me everything. And he goes on, And then he said, I I think it's not protected by federal state law, but I'm not a % certain. Am I right? And as you can imagine, that blew up quickly and they quickly locked that one down from comments. What's your take on not hiring somebody based on their political affiliation?
Terri Swain:Okay. So I talk about this in training all the time. There's no federal I mean, if you're a private employer, there's political affiliation is not a protected category. Now if you're with school district or you're with the city or with your some kind of government, they're sometimes protected what you can and can't do. I don't think you could ever not hire somebody because of their political affiliation.
Terri Swain:You know? And I always caution people, you have to be careful even in the EEO realm of, you know, assuming, you know, that every Trump supporter is an old white male over the age 40 or whatever. Like, even though that's not what the statistics are showing in the exit But but, you have to be careful because during our you know, starting with god. Probably starting with Obama, maybe before that, the issues of race and gender and religion have come into the political sphere, and people are starting to see you know, to equate, You're a Trump supporter. You're a racist.
Terri Swain:You're a liberal. You're a feminist. You're a blah blah blah. So you've got issues of race and gender that come in there, but no, you cannot you know, you wouldn't wanna do that. That just makes no no sense.
Mike Coffey:And and even if it's a you know, even if you're doing it legally, it goes back to what I was saying earlier. Why would you carve out roughly half of the population from your employee base and make it that much more hard to recruit competent people who can actually get the job done? And and but you gotta go back to what Sharma's been talking about about civility training too, right? We've gotta teach people how to be, if not sweet and lovable, not, you know, not uncivil to each other in the workplace, how to respect differences and say, you know what, we're here to get this job done and I don't need to know what about your what you did this weekend. I don't need to know about what what your church social taught you or what your preacher said Sunday morning and I don't need to know, you know, about which parade you went to this weekend.
Mike Coffey:Let's, you know, to the extent that we can share that stuff and, you know, and be emotionally intelligent enough to know where, you know, we're at the wrong audience for this, they don't care, so let me just move on and not get my feels all up in it and not be offended or not think that they're you know discounting my faith or whatever it is. You know, so it goes it's on both sides. Let's just teach people to do that and move on. And then if you've got a performance issue and somebody's this it's disrupting the workplace, then you address those performance issues and how those people are relating to one another and but to say I'm not gonna I'm gonna, you know, not hire half the people because they made the a choice I didn't make, then it's like a good business decision, which is what all this is supposed to be about, is running a business that makes, you know, accomplishes a mission, whether it's a nonprofit or or for profit.
Terri Swain:Right. And let's face it, people change political ideals. Right?
Mike Coffey:Yeah.
Terri Swain:And, yeah. I saw my dad do that a time or two. Was like, what?
Mike Coffey:Yeah. Yeah. I mean and and I'm always angry. I'd never be able to hire anybody because, know, you know, I'm, you know, I'm the crazy small l libertarian who votes independent and looks for anybody but but an r or a d to vote for. And so if I did that, I'd I'd have an a company of two and we'd be arguing.
Mike Coffey:Well that's all the time we have. Thanks for joining me again Terry.
Terri Swain:Oh thanks. Good to see you. Bye.
Mike Coffey:And thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening and share this episode on your favorite social platform. It helps us reach more listeners. And we'd love to hear your thoughts including whether it is alt control delete or control alt delete at goodmorninghr.com. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer and thank you to him and Imperative's marketing coordinator Mary Ann Hernandez who keeps the trains running on time.
Mike Coffey:And I'm Mike Coffey as always. Don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally. I'll see you next week and until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up.