I think the title speaks for itself. 3M has always been a company that lives at the extremes of the pendulum. I am a believer in D&I and equality for all, but not at the expense of others. Thoughts?
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The most common forms of discrimination occur against race, gender, and age. However, the Minnesota Human Rights Act makes it illegal to discriminate against people in the workplace based on any of the following characteristics:
Race, Ethnicity, or Color
Religion
National Origin
Gender
Marital Status
Familial Status
Se-ual Orientation
Age
Disability
Political Affiliation
Mental Illness
Pregnancy
Even with the Minnesota Human Rights Act in place, workplace discrimination still occurs today. Supervisors, business owners, and coworkers can demonstrate harmful, discriminatory behaviors. Unfair bias can show up in obvious ways, like using racial or gendered slurs. However, discrimination can often happen discreetly. Discrimination can look like any of these examples:
Racially offensive images are posted in the workplace.
Women are denied interviews for positions traditionally held by men.
A woman is fired if she becomes pregnant.
Employees of a particular national origin are denied benefits that all other employees receive.
Minority groups are not considered for promotions.
Disabled employees are denied accommodation.
Chronically ill employees are denied sick leave.
Leprechaun guy,
I'm retired but remember those days of being interviewed by all white guys. Mine was mid 1980s. Times have changed and so had 3M.
I have no issues working with a diverse team, and I don't blame diversity for the hard times 3M is experiencing. Turbans or hijabs, the real problem has been a GE style of people treatment since James Mcnerney took the helm in December 2000. Even though he's been gone a while, he did get the GE way of "managing" fully ingrained. I feel for Buckley as he might have been able to steer a different course but never got accepted because he was an outsider and looked like a 50s version of Gilligan.
Inge may have had good metrics, but the choice of Mike has proven to be a fatal error. Monish? We should have learned to avoid GE rejects.
Although your final day at 3M may have been traumatic, you can rest assured you took perhaps one of the last lifeboats off the sinking ship. Get that pension lump summed. Unless 3M wins its hail mary in court, future pensioners could be going into PBGC, where 30 plus year employees will lose about 50 percent of a generous fund.
Sad to see a real great innovation company go into the tank. Poor Desi, even with the Imation debacle, cared more for employees in his little pinky than Mike and Monish combined.
Considering my 3M experience, I feel more like a Tasmanian Devil than a Leprechaun. Just sayin’.
2022 - The most prevalent type of discrimination charge is retaliation, totaling 37,632, or 55.80% of the cases in the U.S., according to the latest employment discrimination statistics. Additional types of employment discrimination charges and their respective case numbers and percentages:
Disability: 24,324 or 36.10% of cases
Race: 22,064 or 32.70% of cases
S-x: 21,398 or 31.70% of cases
Age:14,183 or 21.00% of cases
National Origin: 6,377 or 9.5% of cases
Color: 3,562 or 5.3% of cases
Religion: 2,404 or 3.6% of cases
Equal Pay Act: 980 or 1.5% of cases
All I could think of reading your post was this line from Billy Madison.
Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely id--tic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now d-mber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
https://youtu.be/LQCU36pkH7c
Reverse discrimination is pure fiction.
To Post ID: @2sdg+1jfauM18
Your comments are distasteful, but not surprising. You should apologize to the person you insulted. Shame on you.
Here is the funny thing about 3M's DEI efforts.
Almost all efforts in this area are led by white male and sometimes white women. In a few cases, as a symbolic gesture, they have minorities.
Almost all policies in 3M these days are so farcical that they are beyond absurd.
To white male boomer 2jzt+1jfauM18.
I hear you and hold a space for you in my heart.
The only talent a 3M leader requires is being a self-servicing narcissist.
It is quickly identified and developed immediately.
You never mentioned the other side of the table.
Your comments are not authentic, genuine, or heart felt.
The microaggression in your comment's shines through.
You, my friend, have had an excellent teacher!
The ONLY reason you supported any DEI initiative was that it was a quota on your performance review. If you wanted to keep the paycheck coming and maintain your position in the succession plan, you had no choice. Bad hire performance was simply peanut butter spread over the winners - leading to divorce, not knowing kids, poor work-life balance, and burnout. If DEI were a nice to have and not measured, there would be a lot more employee loyalty and engagement.
Not only that, but you also had an office to hide in as a safe place, not an open workspace where you actually had to deal with language barriers, odors (food, hygiene, etc.), behavioral issues, manners/etiquette gaps, forced acceptance, unfair workloads, eroding opportunity, and just learning to get along - biased towards DEI benefit/terms.
Wonder why nobody wants to come back to the office?
It’s like being the third person in an open relationship.
43 year guy, nice summary of what you've seen and experienced.
Retired white guy here and can say that 3M has been a melting ground of great people of all races and creeds and personal experience.
The feeling these days, and it seems more common with the boomer crowd, is that the company has gotten away from the innovation and 15 percent rule culture to trying to please everyone with the latest fad. We absolutely need diversity and ensuring everyone feels included. I think the term EQUITY is what is causing a lot of confusion. As I'm retired, I don't have the insight to know what is really going on inside the company, but we all believe in equal opportunity. Does equity mean someone gets 4 or 5 strikes before they strike out, while others get 3?
What I can sense is if one has conservative leanings, they are not welcome in some corners of corporate America because that implies they support 45 and Jan 6th. I support neither but am proud that my 1st presidential vote was for Reagan. I have talked with colleagues and retirees from other companies and the feeling is mutual. Trump was an absolute disgrace to the office in how he behaved, even if I supported some of his policies.
3M is no different than other companies in the EQUITY arena. My question is there some sort of cognitive dissonance where a company says it is inclusive but that only applies if your politics align to today's corporate world.
The successful companies are the ones where everyone feels at home, all viewpoints are accepted with some boundaries, but the main focus is on business success. I don't see 3M having the same business prowess it had 20 years ago. For whatever reason, the loss of innovation and customer focus is real. The stock slide started before the earplugs issue and the company does not seem to have the leaders to turn it around, either at the top or at the business vp level.
@2nbp+1jfauM18 Why isn't Jackson qualified?
Just when i thought we had it good……Finally someone more worthless than segment marketing. The woke crew at the center of the company who do nothing and dont even have to make powerpoints to cash big checks. My next stop at this company is to get me some social justice!!
Director of social justice?? Thought we sold adhesives and tape??? What is an almost bankrupt sandpaper company doing employing and overpaying a bunch of woke id--ts to have conference calls and sing kumbaya together. We have money for this cr-p? Get to work id--ts
Old White Male (Boomer), $0.02 Worth
In my 43 working years, I hired dozens and dozens of people from a variety of backgrounds, who represented every race, color, creed, et al, known to mankind. I also worked for a similarly diverse group of people. In all honesty, my work relationships did more to enrich my life than they will ever know.
I have lived outside the US, and forged deep friendships with people thousands of miles away.
I am not a saint, just an old sinner. It saddens me to think that when someone sees me, they assume I am a racist old man who rejects diversity, supports 45, and yells “Get off my golf course.” I am none of these things.
I do want to see younger and more diverse people in ALL positions of all companies, public and private. We need more women at the head of the table, too.
I am not your adversary, but an ally. In the 4th quarter of my life, I can say I did my best to share the credit and give back.
Me and those that look like me are not all haters.
Good luck.
Previous Guy in medical was older white man who was good leader in many different divisions (CSD and HIS both pretty big, important divisions and he was decent), but lacked deep industry knowledge of Medical. Not sure why he was put in there if that is something they wanted.
Bich Le had led medical industry experience and was diverse. Let's just say previous guy was 'encouraged' to retire and replaced with diverse candidate.
Maybe evidence of not great choices more than DEI being the culprit...plus notoriously hard for Sr outsiders in 3M.
Nobody wants to do the grind nowadays to get a promotion, let alone keep a professional job.
The commutes, the travel, appeasing leadership, immature coworkers, long hours, work on weekends, paid less than market value, no development, no raises/promotions, team building wasting time etc.
Too circumvent the typical 3M career experience, EID initiatives were invented. Not only that, they get a career path and protections from layoffs or termination.
Men, be less so EID initiatives can be more.
I think that the issue should be liked the dimmer switch someone mentioned.
Full disclaimer: white, straight, baby boomer, male, retired. In case you are wondering my perspective.
I've gotten to know a few people of color (POC) through my professional career and had some time to understand their journey. These people are in the 20s and 30s for the most part. They truly have had times feeling a bit different and not quite 100 percent included from the rest when they are the only POC on a larger team of function.
Some things that I agree with 3M
- Looking for opportunities either to hire or promote is ok provided there is clear cut expectations for these decisions (someone has to meet certain qualifications just to get a chance to be considered). Also, this needs to be very controlled and limited so that most hiring and promoting practices never lower the bar.
- 3M is a publicly traded company and whether people like it or not ESG metrics and goals are part of equation these days and won't change. Wall Street firms are using these criteria among others as to making investment decisions. 3M isn't alone in this. Go look up the companies they compete with for talent too like dupont, dow, etc. And see all of the companies have gone full in with ESG.
- Percentage wise, I've seen a pretty equal distribution of flops and even a few massive tire fires from leaders who've failed miserably. So I'm not sure this has been what has ki---d a wonderful company and its culture.
Where I strongly disagree with 3M
- Straight white guys over 50 have likely seen their last promotion, and guys like Mike only hurt our cause. I'm sure if i was still working and became transgender or even openly g-y, an opportunity would open up. Sarcastic of me, yes. But it's the reality I saw starting under inge. At least Buckley seemed less worried about things unless it was a direct financial decision.
- 3M should have some outreach with HBCU but not disproportionate to graduating class sizes. Cutting out good schools that are mostly white areas (iowa state, etc.) But have excellent history is very bad. Not sure if isu got dumped for recruiting but schools like that could be the lovers.
- I liked the explanation that diversity is being invited to the big dance and inclusion is being asked to dance by someone.. I'm ok with that part.. but the EQUITY is pure bs. Since when do we guarantee equal RESULTS instead of equal opportunity.
- Finally. FULL STOP and quit crowing over someone who happens to be a POC when they are promoted to replace an old white male. The Bich Le example is more recent but spectacular failure. This is what opens the door to criticism for reverse discrimination. Just tell us who was hired, let them share a personal story, then let them go lead.
One thing is for sure. Whenever 3M doesn't have any good financial or business news, we can always could on an internal or external feel good story on DEI or hey look at all of these new patents.
Responding to reverse discrimination (not racism) not being a thing. My comment comes from first hand experience regarding internal opportunities and the criteria being used to invest in leaders. No sour grapes, just the reality of multiple scenarios when I was more experienced and having an award winning track record only to lose out to someone who was less experienced, had a questionable track record but "checked a box" I didn't. Hate to see this happen. And "yes" I agree the company is desperately trying to come off as progressive on social media when it is far from it.
Clarification on the "pendulum" statement: intent was to articulate that the company has bad internal tendencies to go 100% "all in" on certain initiatives only to swing 180 degrees the other way when the priorities change. Almost like an on/off light switch versus a dimmer switch. My perspective comes from the business side. Hope this makes the statement clearer.
3M at the extreme of the pendulum as it swings.
That is so hilarious.
It's a tape and glue company.
It's stuck.
The whole reverse racism thing always makes me chuckle. I don’t really believe it’s a thing.
What I do know is that 3M seems to be overly emphasizing DEI for recruiting. They recently reduced target universities in half (70 something to 30 something). The C&E scoring for how they selected these universities is ~70% weighted by DEI metrics. They actually have Black and Hispanic demographics both on there at a 9 weighting (the highest) and then they also have Historically Black College/University (HBCU) and Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) on there each as a 9 weighting. Seems a bit redundant to me lol. There’s very few metrics that actually relate to are we getting competent hires from this university that aligns to 3M’s talent needs. They cut a lot of good schools that fed the corporate engineering and O2 program. We should be hiring the best candidates. I view all these DEI efforts that 3M does as important, but very much an extracurricular. If business is BOOMIN’ (shoutout AB) then by all means dump millions into your Social Justice VP, Environmental Justice, James Momon position, etc. But business is in fact not BOOMIN’ and hasn’t been for many years, yet we continue to dump buckets into these DEI efforts.
3M has an identity crisis. They want to come off as extremely woke and progressive on social media, but in reality it’s an old boomer Midwestern company ran by old white dudes.