The Ethics of Snowflakes

About a week ago there was a story on the Blaze newsletter site about a company that claims to have developed a pre-screening tool they call a “Snowflake Test,” which appears to be more of a survey about the applicant’s political and philosophical leanings than it is about any particular job skills or abilities. Since the company is taking a position that defies liberal beliefs on a number of dimensions, they are using the common convention of deriding everyone who does not agree with them (and who will not, therefore, be able to pass the “test”) as Snowflakes, or occasionally Precious Snowflakes. If, as the company alleges in the article, their key customers are also opposed to liberal/progressive positions this may be an effective means of recruiting people who will be well suited to interacting with such clients. What is less clear is the ethics of using such a survey. I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look…

To begin with, we should probably note that many companies make use of some form of pre-interview screening. In some cases this will regard job skills, but in others the company will be trying to get a feel for how honest the applicant is, how detail-oriented they are, or how careful they are with financial matters, just to name a few. The idea is usually to avoid wasting either the interviewer’s time or that of the applicant, since if the screening tool can identify some factor that would make the candidate unsuitable for the job there is no need to go through with the interview itself. In some cases the screening may convince the applicant that the company or the position is not a good fit, which will also save everyone’s time. This is the first example I can remember seeing that specifically addresses the applicant’s political and social beliefs, however...

Now, we should probably acknowledge that none of the questions that have surfaced so far have asked anything about an applicant’s age, race, gender, physical ability, physical conditions, marital status, religious affiliations, political affiliations, club affiliations, service organizations supported, charities supported, or any other factor that would be officially considered discriminatory under Federal or State laws. Assuming that none of these survey questions are actually illegal – and the lack of lawsuits suggests that this may be the case – then the company is entirely within its rights to use such a survey, and no one really has any standing to complain about them. People who do not have highly positive feelings about the United States are not a protected class, for example, and neither are people who are strongly opposed to gun control. And while a company-wide bias against people with those opinions might lead to a hostile work environment, it’s difficult to see how avoiding such confrontations hurts anyone…

Without a great deal of internal information I can’t tell you if the company would be more effective with a greater diversity of ideas and philosophies than it is with its current roster. Everything we know about strategy formulation suggests that a groupthink mentality – everyone in the company following the same lines of thought without dissent – limits the effectiveness of the firm and may eventually result in its being too rigid to adapt to changing conditions. One could argue that the company’s leadership owes it to all of the various stakeholders to be as effective as possible, but one could also argue that attempting to hire people who will be compatible with the prevailing company culture would be better for both the company and the new hires. All of which leads me to the question:

All else being equal, and assuming that no laws are broken in either case, does the company’s desire for a cohesive corporate culture, based on shared values and opinions held by the employees, outweigh the company’s responsibility to hire the best and most capable employees regardless of their political, social, economic, or personal convictions? 

It's worth thinking about...