Nutrition & Foodservice Edge Magazine - March/April 2024 - 36

BUILDING
A
ORGANIZATION
WITH DEI
Better
BY KENNETH HANSON, CPM, CDM, CFPP
I WANT TO SHARE HOW
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND
INCLUSION (DEI) impacted my
career, specifically during my time
in correctional food service, and
also discuss an area of recruitment
that could assist you in hiring and
retaining a more diverse workforce.
Ask yourself: Is diversity, equity, and
inclusion new? Can it help with my
foodservice staffing?
In 2011 when I was going through
the Certified Public Manager (CPM)
program at Drake University, I was
paired with several people from my
cohort to tackle the subject of diversity
recruitment in public safety. It was not
called " diversity, equity, and inclusion "
(DEI) back then, but that is what it
was. Cohorts are groups of five or six
students, and each group must address
some aspect of government that it
hopes can be made better.
My group included me, from
corrections, a couple of people
from the Department of Criminal
Investigation, someone from the Des
Moines Fire Department, a local police
force lieutenant, as well as the public
information officer for the Iowa State
Patrol. All of our workplaces lacked
diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity,
and race. We studied how other
agencies across the United States
tried to recruit women and people of
color into public safety. Some of the
agencies were more successful than
others. The successful agencies were
those that were not afraid to change
the status quo.
We looked at fire departments and
police agencies. Both utilize testing-
physical and written-to generate lists
of qualified applicants. Departments
then ranked the applicants based on
test scores. When hiring, the agency
started with the top candidate and
worked its way down the list. Some
things in this system were designed
to benefit white men. The physical
testing often did not account for the
differences in strength between men
and women. The written testing often
did not account for language abilities.
36 NUTRITION & FOODSERVICE EDGE | MARCH-APRIL 2024
Many agencies also awarded extra
points for having a family member
working for the agency. This was
especially true in fire departments in
large cities. It was common to hire sons
and grandsons of current firemen.
Obviously, this disenfranchised
women and people of color. Many
agencies did not alter these nepotism
practices until after lawsuits were filed
to change the system.
On the written exam, candidates whose
first language was not English usually
did not score as well, even though they
could speak more languages than the
top-scoring candidate. Police agencies
know that community engagement
leads to safer communities. When
citizens get to know their police
officers, those citizens are more likely
to share information and trust that
police agency. Immigrants, especially,
often do not trust police because of
the culture they were brought up
in where the police may have been
corrupted. Many public safety agencies
tried to recruit officers who could
Nutrition & Foodservice Edge Magazine - March/April 2024

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