Dive Brief:
- Beth Cobert, the acting Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director, recently issued a challenge to federal officials regarding today's forms of racial and gender-based discrimination, according to the Washington Post.
- Speaking at OPM’s diversity and inclusion summit at the Coast Guard headquarters, Cobert said one of the most challenging barriers to diversity and inclusion is unconscious bias, which is difficult to combat exactly because it is not the same as using racist language or blatantly denying someone a promotion based on ethnicity, the Post reports.
- She singled out what she called the ‘like me’ bias, which means leaders and managers typically look to hire or promote people who look like them. She also cited so-called blind hiring as a way to potentially offset that bias.
Dive Insight:
Cobert discussed how the Agriculture Department tried a blind application process for two recent Senior Executive Service (SES) classes by eliminating candidate names on paperwork reviewed by selection panels. According to the Post, Cobert called the results “groundbreaking,” noting that from 2009 to December of 2015, the percentage of women in the SES at USDA increased by 41%. That's a start, but there remains a long way to go, according to advocates quoted in the Post.
For example, Hispanics/Latinos were barely a blip on the SES (top civil service rank) radar at 4.4% in 2014. African Americans were at 11%, according to OPM data. And just about 80% of senior executives were white and nearly two-thirds were male.
Darlene H. Young, president of Blacks in Government, told the Post that OPM is “trying to do a good job” at increasing diversity and inclusion in the federal government, but she added, “I think there is some heavy lifting with that whole SES program.”
Cobert comments about unconscious bias apply here, as the Post reports she asked for greater use of data to identify barriers to diversity and patterns of retention and advancement. “We need to tackle the hard stuff," she said in her speech.
