Online-Only Employment Application Processes Systematically Discriminate Against Poor

The use of online employment application processes as the sole means to apply for jobs systemically discriminates against persons of lower socioeconomic status, many of who are protected classes under equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws. The discrimination arises from the limited Internet access for many of those persons.

EEO laws prohibit discrimination against protected persons in regard to recruiting, the work environment, or any other term, condition, or privilege of employment.  Not only do the laws prohibit intentional discrimination, they also prohibit neutral policies that disproportionately affect protected persons and that are not related to the job and the needs of the business (e.g., requiring job applicants submit their application online through a web-based interface)..

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance released its list of the Top 25 Worst Connected U.S. Cities for Poor Households (households with incomes below $35,000) in September 2015. More than 50% of poor households in Birmingham, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Greensboro, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, New Orleans, St. Louis, Toledo, and Washington, D.C. have no Internet access. 

Top 25 Worst-Connected Cities Poor Households ACS 2014 from Angela Siefer

Detroit

A New York Times article from May 2015 notes that "Detroit has the worst rate of Internet access of any big American city, with four in 10 of its 689,000 residents lacking broadband." Many of the persons without broadband access - whether at their residences or on smartphones - rely on public libraries for Internet access

In Hope Village, a 100-block area of Detroit, half of the 5,700 residents live in poverty. Many are not getting basic digital literacy skills or access to educational resources for entry-level jobs, much less the growing number of jobs that require more tech skills and vocational certificates.

Julie Rice, a Hope Village resident for the last seven years, has found having limited web access a major obstacle in her search for full-time employment after losing her retailing management job more than two years ago. With a part-time job at a furniture store paying $10.88 an hour, Ms. Rice cannot afford a service to connect to the web, which can cost more than $70 a month. 

So Ms. Rice has made Hope Village’s public library, Parkman, her career center. She regularly comes on the five days the library is open to search retailing openings, arrange interviews and take employment tests. The library typically extends her time online over the one-hour session limit. Even so, during a recent online exam for a store manager job at Ann Taylor, she ran out of time and was locked out of the test.

Every day it becomes harder to find opportunities in Detroit without using the web. Sean Person, a Hope Village resident, has gone to stores more than a dozen times and asked to fill out paper applications, only to be told to apply online. Most listings on Michigan’s biggest private and public jobs site require email, uploads of resumes, and online assessments. 

Zappos

At Zapppos, the company has created "Zappos Insiders." According to the company:

Zappos Insiders are simply people who might want to work for Zappos someday… now, tomorrow or sometime down the road. It’s like a special membership for people who want to stay in touch with us, learn more about our fun, zany culture, know what’s happening at our company, get special insider perspectives and receive team-specific updates from the areas you’re most interested in. There is no better way to stay in-the-know and for us to get to know each other than by becoming an Insider.

What are the benefits?  

• Be the first to know about job opportunities in your desired job family

• Stay in-the-know about the latest news and happenings here at Zappos

• Chat with the Zappos recruiting team during our bi-weekly Tweetchats

• Gain exclusive access to online & in person events with current Zappos employees

People who do not have broadband access at home or on their phones are unable to obtain the benefits of being a Zappos Insider - they are the last to know about job opportunities, they are unable to stay in-the-know about the latest Zappos news, they cannot chat with Zappos recruiting teams during their bi-weekly Tweetchats, and  they are denied exclusive access to online events with current Zapppos employees.

Zappos' website has the following line:

Poke. Like. Share. Join the Conversation @InsideZappos

The only way to poke, like, share or join the conversation is with a broadband connection. Poor persons, and others with limited broadband connectivity seemingly need not apply.

As Aristotle wrote, “There is nothing so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.” It is for this reason that employment laws like Title VII prohibit facially neutral policies (e.g.,  enrolling in Zappos Insider, necessitating broadband internet access, and using social media platforms with varying degrees of accessibility ) that disproportionately affect protected persons and that are not related to the job and the needs of the business.

Zappos' Insider may be a club that is "open" to everyone, but persons with lower socioeconomic status, disproportionately Blacks, Hispanics, persons with mental illness, and women will have a harder time being admitted and will be limited in their ability to use all the club has to offer.

See also Zappos Insider: The Death of Job Postings and the Rise of the Borg and Zappos: The Future of Hiring and Hiring Discrimination.

Knack

According to Knack, it is a game-based, science-driven, data-powered talent-matching platform.

Knack "games" like Wasabi Waiter, Dash Dash, Bomba Blitz and Meta Maze purportedly analyze every millisecond of player behavior, measuring conscientiousness, emotion recognition, and other attributes that, according to the company, academic studies show correlate with job performance. The games then score each player’s likelihood of becoming an outstanding employee.

Knack's assessments are based on games developed by the company that may be "played" on computers and mobile devices. According to the company:

Knack uses its breakthrough, scalable technology to provide disadvantaged and marginalized people around the world with an empowering gateway to social and economic mobility. Helping people tap into their true potential will increase their well-being, break persistent cycles of poverty, and make them hopeful about the future.

And yet Knack's fundamental structure - online games played by persons with broadband Internet connections over computers and mobile devices - further disadvantages those on the other side of the digital divide: those who do not have ready access to broadband, those who must rely on public libraries for limited Internet access.

See also Knack Testing Illegal Under ADA?

Zappos Insider: The Death of Job Postings and the Rise of the Borg

As set out in a prior post, Zappos has launched a new careers site and removed all job postings. Instead of applying for jobs, persons interested in working at Zappos will need to enroll in a social network run by the company, called Zappos Insiders. The social network will allow them to network with current employees by digital Q&As, contests and other means in hopes that Zappos will tap them when jobs come open.

"Zappos Insiders will have unique access to content, Google Hangouts, and discussions with recruiters and hiring teams. Since the call-to-action is to become an Insider versus applying for a specific opening, we will capture more people with a variety of skill sets that we can pipeline for current or future openings," said Michael Bailen, Zappos’ head of talent acquisition.

The idea, in part, is that recruiters will monitor the interactions, and alert promising applicants as job positions become available. "Our recruiters are focusing on proactive sourcing…so that we know EXACTLY who we want to interview once a position becomes available," Stacy Donovan Zapar, Zappos' Social Recruiting and Employer Branding Strategist, wrote in a posting  (Big News: The Day the Posting Died) explaining Zappos Insiders.

We are the Borg. You will be assimilated.

For those not Star Trek fans, Borgs are beings that are part organic and part artificial. They assimilate almost everyone they come in contact with into the Borg - a mass consciousness - and those persons become efficient drones who do not even remember their old life. A quote from one of the episodes:

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”

Assimilation by the Borg and the Zappos Insider program seem to have some potentially troubling similarities (though one might suggest that a Zappos Borg might be able to really "Deliver WOW Through Service" - Zappos' first core value ...). Zappos' gathering of personal information/borg assimilation process starts with a person's becoming a member of Zappos Insider. For example, a person may sign up to be a Zappos Insider by linking to their FaceBook or LinkedIn accounts. If signing in using a LinkedIn account, you are asked to allow Zappos the following accesses:

• Your full profile
• Your email address
• Your connections
• Your contact info
• Invitations and messages
• Company pages

If signing in using a Facebook account, you are asked to allow Zappos the following access:

• Your public profile
• Your friend list
• Your email address
• Your News Feed
• Your friends' likes

Once a person becomes an Insider, the information collection/borg assimilation process continues as Zappos tracks and records Insiders' interactions with the company - from discussions with recruiters and hiring teams, to Google Hangout participation, conversations with Zappos "ambassadors," to digital Q&As, to contests, etc. 

Borg Assimilation: All Good, Right?

On March 12, 2014, a panel of experts addressed the EEOC at a meeting held at EEOC headquarters in Washington and discussed the growing use of social media and how it impacts the laws the EEOC enforces. In her testimony at the meeting, one of the experts, Lynne Bernabei, Esq. stated:

Surveys of hiring managers show that they are increasingly using social media to screen job candidates, and that employers may make a determination on an employee's suitability for a job opening based on the content of his or her social networking website. However, social media websites also display "non-job-relevant information that could be used inappropriately for evaluating applicants, resulting in biased hiring decisions," and "the potential for legal liability is great, considering the dearth of research regarding whether [social network-] derived information validly predicts job performance." ... Marital status, family and childcare obligations, home location (and therefore length of commute), and even sports team affiliation may directly or indirectly affect an employer's willingness to hire a given candidate-and all of this information is easily accessible on Facebook.

In response to a March 25, 2012 letter from Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Richard Blumenthal, the EEOC stated that covered employers - like Zappos - may not use personal information from social networks to make employment decisions on a prohibited basis, be it race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, or protected genetic information. 

For example, the letter explained, rejecting an applicant because he is Muslim, as disclosed through social media postings, would violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended (Title VII). Similarly, rejecting an individual with a family history of breast cancer, as shown in the caption to a photo of her completing the "Race for the Cure" in memory of her sister "who lost her battle with this horrible disease," would violate the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). Finally, screening out an applicant because her Facebook page has photos of her 50th birthday celebration, would violate the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA).

The EEOC's May 2012 response to Senators Schumer and Blumenthal also discussed another important topic: pre-employment inquiries about protected status. The laws enforced by the EEOC have differing approaches to this issue. Title VII and the ADEA do not explicitly prohibit questions about race, gender, national origin, religion, or age 40 or above, but if an EEOC investigation shows that an employer inquired about these matters (for example, by viewing Facebook or LinkedIn profiles and profile pictures), the EEOC will assume that the employer considered the information relevant to its employment decision and will scrutinize the facts closely. By contrast, GINA and Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) explicitly provide that making a pre-employment disability-related inquiry, or requesting or requiring genetic information, constitute independent statutory violations subject to certain conditions and exceptions

Anything Particularly Problematic?

Renée Jackson, Esq., a lawyer who led the Social Media & Technology in the Workplace team within the Labor and Employment practice group at Nixon Peabody LLP, was one of the experts testifying at the March 12, 2014 EEOC meeting mentioned previously. Nixon Peabody LLP counsels employers and their clients range greatly-in size, location, and industry. 

A portion of Ms. Jackson's testimony is set out below, the portions of her testimony that may prove challenging for Zappos and the Zappos Insider program are highlighted in red. Advice from Ms. Jackson that may be particularly problematic for Zappos Insider are bolded:

I advise employers wishing to supplement traditional hiring practices with social media to consider the following options for compliance:

• Use social media as part of a larger recruitment plan, including both traditional and new media, in-person networking events, job fairs, and referrals.
• Have a third-party consumer reporting agency or a designated individual within the company (who does not make hiring decisions) conduct the social media background check and filter out any protected class information.
• When using social media information during the hiring process, confirm that the information obtained was actually created by or relates to the applicant (as opposed to someone else with the same name), and disregard any information that cannot be confirmed as accurate.
• Only review publicly available information about an applicant. Do not request usernames/passwords or otherwise try to gain access to non-public or password-protected social media.
• If possible, screen all applicants in a uniform and consistent manner. Have human resources conduct the search at the same stage of the hiring process for each candidate (before the offer of employment, for example), rather than have hiring managers randomly conducting searches on their own.
• Avoid recruiting solely from social media or limiting applicants to applying only through social media or only with their social media profile.
• Avoid making hiring decisions based on an applicant's lack of a social media presence, unless a social media presence is required for the position (e.g., employer is hiring a social media manager for the company).
• Make sure those responsible for hiring know the applicable protected classes (federal, state, and local). Train all supervisors and HR professionals on how to lawfully use social media during recruiting and hiring. Support all hiring decisions with legitimate, non-discriminatory reason(s) and documentation.

Ms. Jackson closed her testimony noting, “Employers must understand that the technology will always outpace the law and, as a result, employment policies and practices must be constantly revisited and updated accordingly. On the flip side, however, many of the employment law concepts that employers are already familiar with can be applied and should not be forgotten just because the spaces are new.”

Michael Bailen, who heads talent acquisition for Zappos, told the Wall Street Journal that he is surprised that Zappos appears to be the first to drop job listings. “We’re hoping a lot of other companies jump on board,” he said. For reasons set out in this and two prior posts (Zappos Hiring: Culturally Fit? Legally Defensible? and Zappos: The Future of Hiring and Hiring Discrimnation), Zappos may find other employers unwilling to adopt this practice. 

Zappos: The Future of Hiring and Hiring Discrimination?

Zappos has launched a new careers site and removed all job postings. Instead of applying for jobs, persons interested in working at Zappos will need to enroll in a social network run by the company, called Zappos Insiders. The social network will allow them to network with current employees by digital Q&As, contests and other means in hopes that Zappos will tap them when jobs come open.

"Zappos Insiders will have unique access to content, Google Hangouts, and discussions with recruiters and hiring teams. Since the call-to-action is to become an Insider versus applying for a specific opening, we will capture more people with a variety of skill sets that we can pipeline for current or future openings," said Michael Bailen, Zappos’ head of talent acquisition.

The idea is that recruiters will monitor the interactions, and alert promising applicants as job positions become available. "Our recruiters are focusing on proactive sourcing…so that we know EXACTLY who we want to interview once a position becomes available," Stacy Donovan Zapar, Zappos' Social Recruiting and Employer Branding Strategist, wrote in a posting explaining Zappos Insiders.

Ideally, the Zappos Insider strategy will result in an engaged, talented applicant pool from which the company can seamlessly fill positions. More importantly, at a company where cultural fit is 50 percent of the hiring equation, encouraging candidates and current employees to interact organically allows the company to gauge whether someone is a good fit before the hiring process officially begins, theoretically saving both time and money.

Zappos’ Bailen said he is surprised that Zappos appears to be the first to drop job listings. "We're hoping a lot of other companies jump on board," he said, but there are compelling reasons why Zappos may find itself alone.

Bias and Discrimination

In a comment to Donovan Zapar’s posting explaining the Zappos Insider initiative, Steve Kuzner asked:

Ultimately, the [Zappos Insider] policy makes the hiring process less transparent for job seekers, who will no longer even know there is an open position until they are deemed worthy to apply for it. While well-intentioned, such opacity provides a shield under which bias, conscious or not, can potentially flourish.

Donovan Zapar responded, in part, by acknowledging that there are laws prohibiting an employer from basing hiring decisions on the race, religion, national origin, gender, pregnancy, disability, genetic identity, or age of applicants (Protected Persons). That response is correct, as far as it goes, but it fails to address the broad scope of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), its progeny (Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA), etc.), their implementing regulations, and court decisions over the past fifty years.

In addition to prohibiting discrimination in hiring, employment laws prohibit discrimination against Protected Persons in regard to recruiting, the work environment, or any other term, condition, or privilege of employment.  Not only do the laws prohibit intentional discrimination, they also prohibit neutral policies that disproportionately affect Protected Persons and that are not related to the job and the needs of the business.

Job requirements must be uniformly and consistently applied to all persons. Even if a job requirement is applied consistently, if it is not important for job performance or business needs, the requirement may be found unlawful if it excludes Protected Persons significantly more than others. Examples of potentially unlawful practices include: (1) soliciting applications only from sources in which all or most potential workers are of the same race or color; (2) requiring applicants to have a certain educational background that is not important for job performance or business needs; and, (3) testing applicants for knowledge, skills or abilities that are not important for job performance or business needs.

[Dis]Connection

Donovan Zapa wrote in her post:

In preparation for this day, we've built a brand new "Inside Zappos" social recruiting presence over the past couple of months on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest …. We've used these social channels to share our company culture, our people, our campus, our events, the way we do business and also to get to know the people who might like to work for us someday.

Similarly, in response to the question, “How can I stand out from the pack and stay front-and-center in the Zappos Recruiters’ minds?” on the Zappos' Insider site, the company lists six ways to stand out, including: using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Google Hangouts; participating in TweetChats; following Zappos’ employees on various social media platforms; and, reaching out to Zappos’  “team ambassadors.” For the most part, all of the foregoing activities require broadband internet access and devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.) that run on those access networks.  A number of Protected Classes will be challenged by both the broadband access and social media participation requirements:

• As noted  by a PewResearch Internet Project Research report, African Americans have long been less likely than whites to have high speed broadband access at home, and that continues to be the case. Today, African Americans trail whites by seven percentage points when it comes to overall internet use (87% of whites and 80% of blacks are internet users), and by twelve percentage points when it comes to home broadband adoption (74% of whites and 62% of blacks have some sort of broadband connection at home).  
• The gap between whites and blacks when it comes to traditional measures of internet and broadband adoption is pronounced. Specifically, older African Americans, as well as those who have not attended college, are significantly less likely to go online or to have broadband service at home compared to whites with a similar demographic profile.
• According to the PewResearch Internet Project, even among those persons who have broadband access, the percentage of those using social media sites varies significantly by age:

Age	Social Media Participation
18-29	90%
30-49	78%
50-64	65%

Social medial participation is not solely a function of age. "Social media is transforming how we engage with customers, employees, jobseekers and other stakeholders," said Kathy Martinez, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment Policy. "But when social media is inaccessible to people with disabilities, it excludes a sizeable segment of our population." Persons with disabilities (e.g., sight or hearing loss, paralysis), whether physical, mental, or developmental, face challenges accessing social media. Each of the social media platforms promoted by Zappos - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google Hangouts - have differing levels of support for those with disabilities (e.g., close captions or real live captions on image content that utilize sound/voice). 

Career transition and talent development consulting firm Lee Hecht Harrison asked hundreds of job seekers via an online poll, “How active are you on social networking sites?” Only forty-eight percent said they're active on a daily basis, with an additional nineteen percent saying they log on about two or three times per week. This leaves thirty-three percent who use social media sites one to three times a month, if at all. 

As Aristotle wrote, “There is nothing so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.” It is for this reason that employment laws like Title VII prohibit facially neutral policies (e.g.,  enrolling in Zappos Insider, necessitating broadband internet access, and using social media platforms with varying degrees of accessibility ) that disproportionately affect Protected Persons and that are not related to the job and the needs of the business. Zappos' Insider may be a club that is "open" to everyone, but African Americans, persons over forty, and persons with disabilities, among others, will have a harder time being admitted and will be limited in their ability to use all the club has to offer.

Donovan Zapa, in her posting announcing Zappos' Insider, wrote:

[O]ur recruiters are focusing on proactive sourcing, driving people to join our Insider program, having two-way conversations, meeting people, networking, chatting with Insiders, answering questions, engaging on social media, employer branding and proactive pipelining so that we know EXACTLY who we want to interview once a position becomes available. It's old-school recruiting, made new and fresh again. 

It is likely that "old school recruiting" was part of the reason that laws like Title VII, ADEA, ADA and GINA were enacted. Persons making hiring decisions knew exactly who they wanted to interview and that did not include persons of color, women, older Americans, persons with disabilities, and persons of certain faiths. While likely not the intent, Zappos' Insider platform makes discrimination against "those persons" new and fresh (and painful and illegal) again.

Zappos Hiring: Culturally Fit? Legally Defensible?

Zappos has two separate sets of interviews. The hiring manager and his or her team will interview for the standard fit within the team, relevant experience, technical ability and so on. And then the HR department does a separate set of interviews purely for culture fit. Zappos has questions for each and every one of their ten core values. "They [applicants] need the relevant skill set and experience and so on," CEO Tony Hsieh says. "But far more important is, are they going to be good for the culture? Is this someone we would choose to have dinner or drinks with, even if they weren't working for Zappos?"

One of Zappos' core values is, "Create fun and a little weirdness." So, during an interview, a candidate gets asked, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you?"  "If you're a 1, you're probably a little bit too strait-laced for us. If you're a 10, you might be too psychotic for us," says Hsieh.  Another potential deal-breaker is saying you don’t socialize with co-workers outside the office. That could undermine another of Zappos’ core values: “Build a positive team and family spirit.”

Michael Hyter, senior partner at Korn Ferry has states, “The word ‘‘fit’’ in the absence of that support factor [fair consideration for jobs for people who happen to be different] can easily be misinterpreted as ‘‘being like me,’’ instead of what the position requires. Many organizations make the mistake of assuming that those tasked with selecting new hires are equipped to do so fairly because they are nice people or good workers. But failure to ensure the selection process is based on standard criteria with trained interviewers can result in unintentional bias in the spirit of looking for someone who’s a perceived ‘‘good fit.’’

Built-In Headwinds

As Natasha Tiku wrote in ValleyWag, "Taken at face value, "not a culture fit" sings: Nothing personal, you'd probably be happier somewhere else! But what prioritizing "fit" really allows a company to do is reject an applicant for not matching the pattern. For being an "other" in some way. For coming from a different background, looking different, acting different, having different interests, all of which should be considered an asset.

More than forty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Griggs v Duke Power Co. that "good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as “built-in headwinds” for minority groups and are unrelated to measuring job capability." The Court found that some of Duke’s hiring requirements, like a high school education or a certain I.Q. level, were irrelevant to some jobs and had the effect of excluding qualified black workers. The Court held that the law "proscribes not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation. The touchstone is business necessity. If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited."

As previously noted, failing to socialize with co-workers outside the office is a potential deal-breaker for Zappos. According to the company, that could undermine one of its core values: “Build a positive team and family spirit.”  This out-of-office socializing "deal-breaker" eliminates many persons from employment consideration, including single parents, children whose elderly parents need care, persons going to school part-time, and well-rounded persons who have interests outside the company - persons who engage in charitable activities, participate in civic functions or practice their faith.

A frequently-mentioned aspect of the Zappos culture involves the consumption of alcohol:

• According to Business Insider, "Zappos prides itself on a fun, quirky company culture where the CEO Tony Hsieh has been known to dole out shots of Grey Goose."
• A Zappos press release reads, "I had three vodka shots with Tony during my interview," says Rebecca Ratner, Zappos's head of human resources. "And I'm not atypical."
• As Ms. Ratner stated, "While we rack up some pretty big bills for happy hours and parties, we believe that every one of those dollars comes back to us threefold in employee engagement, which to us is really what success is all about."

The prominent role alcohol plays in Zappos' hiring for "cultural fit" would seem to present built-in headwinds for Mormons, Baptists, Muslims, recovering alcoholics, diabetics, and persons scarred - physically or mentally - by the acts and actions of alcoholics. As noted in Zappos: The Future of Hiring and Hiring Discrimination, many of the persons experiencing those headwinds are Protected Persons under federal and state employment discrimination laws.

During an interview at Zappos, a candidate gets asked, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you?" According to Zappos' CEO, "If you're a 10, you might be too psychotic for us." In a company that has "Create Fun and a Little Weirdness" as one of its core values, the word "weird" is associated with mental illness.

Historically, many employers asked applicants to provide information concerning their physical and/or mental condition. This information often was used to exclude and otherwise discriminate against individuals with disabilities -- particularly nonvisible disabilities, such as mental illness -- despite their ability to perform the job.The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits all disability-related inquiries pre-job offer.

The use of tests and other selection procedures, like Zappos' cultural fit interview, can violate the ADA if an employer intentionally uses them to discriminate based on disability or if they disproportionately exclude persons with disabilities, like persons with mental illness.

EEOC guidance notes that employers should ensure that employment tests and other selection procedures are properly validated for the positions and purposes for which they are used. The test or selection procedure must be job-related and its results appropriate for the employer’s purpose. If a selection procedure screens out a protected group (i.e., race, gender, age, disability), the employer should determine whether there is an equally effective alternative selection procedure that has less adverse impact and, if so, adopt the alternative procedure.

Core Values and Transparency

Zappos established ten core values to clearly define the Zappos Family culture, values that are to be reflected in everything they do and every interaction they have. When searching for potential employees, Zappos looks for people who both understand the need for these core values and are willing to embrace and embody them. The ten core values are explained by Zappos employees in the following video:

With the exception of the CEO, there appear to be no persons of color among the seven employees interviewed in the video. It may well be that the video is not a representative sampling of employee diversity at Zappos and, if so, the company, acting in accordance with the core value “Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication,” could publish information on its workforce diversity along the lines of Google's recent disclosure. As Google's Senior Vice President of People Operations wrote:

We've always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google. We now realize we were wrong, and that it’s time to be candid about the issues. Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts. 

The same spirit of openness that leads Zappos to supply information on sales to its suppliers through its extranet should lead it to provide its workforce diversity information to its employees, applicants, and the general public - Zappos' customers.