Wal-Mart Releases Diversity Information: But Is There Enough Information There?
One employment discrimination lawsuit that we have followed quite carefully in this blawg is Dukes v. Wal-Mart, with entries ranging from an analysis of the judge’s decision to grant class certification to a posting regarding an apparent attempt at settling the Dukes v. Wal-Mart sex discrimination class action case out of court.
Now, we note that Wal-Mart just recently produced a website containing information on diversity at the company, focusing on the year 2005.
There is a lot of material presented in this website, much of which doesn’t interest me much (e.g., Wal-Mart’s charitable donations).
However, there is some very interesting material to point out and to provide some comment on. For example:
Interesting information, of course, and Wal-Mart notes that it does better in terms of percentages of women in certain job categories, but fails to point out it does less well in terms of other job categories (service workers). Moreover, the data do not indicate whether women are promoted as quickly as men in various jobs.
- This report also “reviews” goal results of various kinds (e.g., diversity placement goals), and indicates how successful the company has been in terms of achieving these goal results (e.g., in most cases, the company met the goals).
But the report does not provides information as to what the goals were. So, it is difficult to really know whether the goals achieved deserve much credit or were so easy that anyone could have achieved them.
- The report also notes that state of the art hiring and promotional programs have been put in place.
But there is too little detail to know what those programs really are like.
In terms of what is NOT reported, I found nothing on this website on pay discrimination issues, which is one major focus of the Dukes v. Wal-Mart case.
Finally, this report provides some percentages of women, minorities, and other diverse groups for different recruitment programs. For example, the report notes that for females in the Diversity Career Fair Recruiting program, the percentage was about 41% — but it is not clear what that percentage indicates — is it the percentage of interviewees who were women? Furthermore, no comparison is offered (i.e., what percentage were men). Thus, this data is also difficult to interpret.
A long time ago (late 2004), I reviewed an HR task force report produced by Coca-Cola and posted a short review. The information presented there was, in my opinion, much more meaningful and useful. Perhaps Wal-Mart can model future diversity reports on that model.
Go take a look now at this website if you wish to learn more about diversity at Wal-Mart. An interesting comparison may be the plaintiffs’ expert reports from the Duke v. Wal-Mart sex discrimination class action case.
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Michael, if 41% are women, wouldn’t 59% be men?
The Coca-Cola report is so detailed because it is being produced under court order.
Wal-Mart is now trying to walk the line between producing self-serving diversity PR and providing data that could be used against it. If it loses or settles, and the Coke model is followed, it will probably start providing more data.