Joseph B. Hill received an offer to move to Houston to work at Memorial Hermann Health System as its chief DEI officer.
Aaron M. Sprecher via AP
The hospital system said its incoming diversity, equity, and inclusion officer was “too sensitive about race issues,” as one reason it rescinded the offer.
By Curtis Bunn
Joseph B. Hill received an offer to move to Houston to work at Memorial Hermann Health System as its chief DEI officer and was four days from starting a new position as vice president, chief equity, diversity, and inclusion officer at Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston when he received an email that changed the trajectory of his career.
The two-sentence note from Memorial Hermann’s human resources vice president, Lori Knowles, which was obtained by NBC News, read, “We regret to inform you that we are rescinding the offer of employment dated July 21, 2021. ... We appreciate your interest in the position and wish you much success going forward.”
“It was a shock, to say the least,” Hill said. “I was floored.” He was dumbfounded further when his lawyer, Mark Oberti of Houston, was told two weeks later over the phone the reasons Memorial Hermann invalidated its offer: that Hill “was not a good fit,” although he went through more than a dozen interviews over six weeks before he was offered the job. Oberti was also told by the company’s lawyer that it was uncomfortable with Hill inquiring about hiring staff to build his team; that Hill wanted a larger relocation budget; that he rented and charged a luxury car to the company; and that he was overall “too sensitive about race issues.”
“The reasons they listed were just as shocking as rescinding the offer,” Hill said. He felt that way because, he said, much of what Memorial Hermann indicated was “false and nonsensical,” but also because “they didn’t even contact me to discuss their so-called issues.”
Executives at Memorial Hermann declined to comment but issued a statement that read, in part: “We continue to make great strides in enhancing equity, diversity, and inclusion within our system, but we know there is always more that can be done — which is why we are recruiting for a Chief EDI Officer.” Hill’s case draws into focus concerns some experienced Black DEI officers expressed about the overall commitment by employers to making internal changes. After the social justice movement following the murder of George Floyd, many business leaders announced plans to address the diversity imbalance in the workforce by hiring DEI personnel.
However, the pledge to do so has gone unfulfilled on the director level, according to a report examining diversity in 2,868 American workplaces. The report indicated the percentage of Black DEI directors barely increased: from 11.3 percent in 2020 and 11.5 percent for 2021.
More concerning to specialists in the diversity space is that the efforts are not sincere and the hiring practices are “misguided,” they say. Chris Metzler, former associate dean for human resources and diversity studies at Georgetown University, created DEI certification programs at Cornell University and Georgetown, which many professionals in that discipline consider the gold standard. For all the efforts to make organizations diverse and comfortable for all employees, Metzler called much of it “disingenuous.”
“Many organizations are not interested in real change,” Metzler, the president, and CEO of FHW and Associates, a global consulting firm, said. “They are looking at diversity as a numbers game. Many executives ask me privately, ‘How many Black people do I have to have?’
“Over last two years, very little has changed,” he said, “even with all these companies saying last year, ‘We are 100 percent in on diversity.’ And one key reason it hasn’t changed is cases like this one, where an experienced diversity officer is giving you outstanding information to help your organization, and suddenly he’s ‘no longer a fit.’ Until the commitment is genuine to make the change, nothing will change. And right now the commitment is not genuine.”
Hill’s case underscores an urgency for companies to take inclusion efforts seriously, Hobby said. “Those who are doing the hiring have forgotten that DEI officers are hired to be a conscience, to be a guide, to be a mentor to the organization, to help it transition from a not very inclusive organization to an inclusive organization,” Hobby said. “Now, they have engaged in more window dressing as a way of socially keeping up with the Joneses, more so than focusing on providing, in the cases of hospitals, better quality health care for minority patients and a better working environment for all minority employees.”