Not to disregard your concerns, but I wonder to what extent the board members elected towards the end of last year could influence the choice of meeting location.
Even if they couldn’t have been involved in the initial decision, they could have been using their voices calling it wrong, but instead there is silence.
This reminds me, the CAS sent out an email asking for feedback from volunteers about their experience. I had ignored it at the time, but now I can respond with something…
I doubt they had any influence at all. But they could have pressed the CAS to make a public, prospective statement about maintaining accessibility of in-person meetings to all members. That would include some number and variety of meetings in places that are safe for trans people to attend.
FL isn’t just trans people — there are multiple non profits that have recommended people not trans people. FL is mildly safe for cishet white men, and that’s it.
There should be meetings safe for Black members, and Arab members, and female members, and gay members, as well. Conveniently, a lot of the risky places are the same, so there are sites that should be safe for most everyone.
I find that some of the workplaces I’ve been in have promoted minorities based on how non-threatening they are, preferring those who are very quiet, more white-appearing, less popular with other departments, etc. If places select employees based on that instead of other items, there will probably be consequences they don’t like.
In my experience we’re far slower to place a “DE&I analyst” on a performance plan, and far slower to fire them. There’s a bit of this unspoken thing I’ve experienced where if you’re a diversity candidate (i.e. black or hispanic) then your bar of performance is lower.
Never seen this. Maybe your place sucks at hiring minorities. Or maybe your place sucks at including them once they are hired. Or both.
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Agreed. In over a decade at several different companies, have constantly seen people of color being held to significantly higher standards with a much higher bar to clear to get the same level promotion. Minorities are without a doubt the first to be blamed/put on performance plans/fired relative to their Caucasian coworkers who get away with a lot more.
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I tend to scoff at mandatory training and culture videos at work, but there were a few I watched on DEI that really opened my eyes.
One example was about how a particular company spent a bunch of money on a car safety product that ultimately failed because the product was only designed with the average male body in mind. Unsurprisingly, the engineering team was comprised entirely of men. If there had been even one female “diversity” hire on the team, that costly oversight likely would have been avoided. Even if that female engineer had been (by what some would consider to be “objective” criteria) the least qualified engineer on the team, her perspective would have had objective and measurable value.
Obviously it’s just one example, but the point is that diversity should be a goal in and of itself. There are a lot of studies that show that companies with diverse workforces benefit from the varied perspectives, demonstrate more innovation, and are able to recruit better candidates. Traditional metrics used to measure performance often do not reflect this intrinsic value of diversity, and are therefore flawed even if they claim to be objective and race/gender/whatever-blind.
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I’m sure you’ve already stopped and seriously considered the “Maybe” above. But in the small chance you haven’t, spend 5-10 minutes (or maybe a half hour?) seriously considering the “Maybe”.
In any case, if I knew where you worked, and I was black or Hispanic, 1) do you think I would want to work with someone who had preconceived notions about how I was hired? 2) Do you think you would be able to hide those notions and not let that affect your actions (keeping people informed, being as helpful as you typically are, etc., etc.)? (Spoiler: I wouldn’t. Spoiler 2: If you would be, you’d be an extremely rare exception)
And it’s very insidious, because our work is not simple and comparable; all that stuff has been automated away by now. So there’s many times no way to set people exactly the same task and measure them. That’s what’s good about the exams; they get us closer to race-blind measures. But that stops at FCAS and doesn’t include soft skills, so it’s not perfect.
You’re doing a lot of projecting, I haven’t claimed the bar to hire a black or hispanic person is lower or that I have preconceived notions of their abilities. I don’t think being black/white/etc. inherently impacts your ability to be an actuary. That said, in my experience, I’ve witnessed multiple examples of a much slower performance plan, etc. process than is typical, which was defended as being for DE&I reasons.
As opposed to the ones where the person is not a member of a minority, and the reasons given are because they seem like a good person who’s trying (aka they somehow identify with them.)… People notice what they want to notice
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Yep, classic principle agent problem. Growth for growths sake does not benefit members, but it does benefit staff. The CAS should be focused on enhancing the value of a CAS credential in the marketplace. There are multiple avenues of doing that, but I don’t see pure growth as one of them.
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This is an issue on the SOA side as well.
I just voted:
Larsen, Chou, Aquino, Walsh.
Struppeck’s general position against board transparency is certainly a bold one. Can’t say I respect it though.
No, but i know Tom Struppeck, and have enormous respect for him. He’s a very decent, sensible guy. Very smart and hard working. I voted for him despite that position.
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