Over the past 2 years I have been getting asked if my company was a "diverse company". This is a secret code used by purchasing departments to find out if you are owned by either a minority, woman or disabled person or group. As soon as I hear that I pretty much know that I am screwed. When you ask these purchasing departments why that matters they tell me that it is due to the government and in order for them to get business from the gov they have to exceed certain quotas of "diversity spend". They then tell me that I can partner up with a “diverse supplier” in order to get there business.
Basically there is a whole business segment of minority/woman/handicapped businesses that act as shell companies that take a percentage of your profits in order to work with either the government or one of the companies competing to get government contracts. When you dig a little deeper you find that even some of the “diverse” companies that are out there aren’t all that diverse. Many of the woman owned companies simply have a spouse as the “majority owner”. The people that own these companies aren’t even good at covering it up. I had lunch with a guy last week and he said that his wife was the majority owner of the company strictly so he could claim he was woman owned. He said that his wife hasn’t done more than 1 hour of work in the 6 years they have been open.
Unbelievable.
