MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 26, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Featured January 21, 2022 on AmericanThinker.com, independent broker dealer recruiter Jon Henschen’s “Equal Opportunity or Equal Outcome” shows how shifting the focus in the financial services industry has evolved on the topic of equality over the last five years. Five years ago, firms were encouraged to bring greater diversity and equality to the workplace. Over time the message became increasingly urgent and instead of encouraging, industry writers started to guilt firms to speed up the process of back-office employees and advisors hired reflecting greater diversity and equality. More recently the tone of articles has shifted to shaming firms that haven’t made enough “progress” in equality/diversity advances. The shaming has been primarily focused on broker/dealers that are small and midsized vs. larger broker/dealers that these anointed ones believe progressed at a fast enough pace to not be shamed.
Small and midsized broker/dealers tend to be proponents of equal opportunity where a group of candidates for a particular job opening is considered, with the decision-making process ultimately to hire the best-qualified candidate but not to taint that decision with bias against the candidate on the basis of age, race, gender, religion, sexuality, or nationality. Indeed, this has long been the norm in hiring practices. Firms tell us, “We are always looking for the best candidates in the marketplace, so if you find someone that is a standout, even if we don’t have an opening at the time, we’ll make room just so we can have the best.” Unfortunately, equal opportunity is being pushed aside by equity, which has numerous unintended consequences.
Henschen notes how instead of hiring the best, the focus switches to filling back-office job openings by color, chromosomes, and a host of new categories established by the academic ideology of intersectionality which is part of progressive theories making up Critical Race Theory. Intersectionality divides groups into two columns: those that are oppressors and privileged and those that are oppressed victims.
He also shows how intersectionality perpetuates victimhood as virtuous, with the workplace needing to have more of the victim categories represented and fewer of the privileged oppressors, with a heightened focus on fewer white males. People who see themselves as oppressed have no reason to get unoppressed and solve their problem. Their problem becomes their ticket that brings them a payoff or power. Equal opportunity seeks not to see people as segments of oppressor or oppressed categories but is rather focused on a person’s character, culture, and abilities. To quote Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Equity in hiring practices is all about judging skin color and a host of other outward categories while ignoring deeper truths like character. Small and midsized broker/dealers do most of their hiring via the operations manager and perhaps a small Human Resources department with a focus on equal opportunity and hiring the best unless otherwise driven by management. Large broker/dealers tend to have large HR departments that often times have agendas that are biased toward social equity and woke politics in general.
“Forced equality is unfair to the people you displace that may be better qualified. It is also unfair to the people you are trying to help since it stigmatizes them by creating an impression that they were put into a particular job position because they are a particular color, sex, or sexuality, and not for their ability. Filling chairs with a specific race for that sake of race is racist. Nurture workplace peace by not playing the identity politics game. American author Lionel Shriver states, “Identity politics is a rigid social structure that pits people against each other because the boxes are all in competition with each other. It’s an ugly way to think about the world and to behave toward other people.”
Forcing anything on anyone, be it equality or vaccines is tyranny. Economist and Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman left sage advice when he said, “The Society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.”
Jon Henschen is founder of http://www.henschenassoc.com, an independent recruiting firm focused on independent broker dealers and RIAs based in Marine on St. Croix, MN. With more than 30 years of industry experience, Jon is a staunch advocate for independent financial advisors, and is widely sought after by both advisors, broker dealers and RIAs for his expertise and insight on industry topics. He is frequently published and quoted in a variety of industry sources, including Wealth Management, ThinkAdvisor, Investment Advisor Magazine, Wealth Management Magazine, Financial Advisor IQ, Financial Advisor Magazine, Investment News and others.
Media Contact
Cristi Barkley, Henschen & Assoc., 757-846-4107, [email protected]
SOURCE Henschen & Assoc.
