"Coming Right with People"

By Marshall Loeb

They are worried about a lot more than just production and profits. The temper of the times has moved them: they see the rattletrap slums as they are driven in from the suburbs; they hear their young managers, products of the 60s, speak of dreams unfulfilled; they listen to their wives and daughters tell The men at the top in business-- a bit self-conscious that theirs is a white, male domain-- are trying to respond. Most are struggling with ways to hire, their train and capital and promote more intellect to women, revive the blacks and cities. Almost Hispanics. all are Some are attempting, trying in to use one way or another, to improve society.

Coy Eklund 62 president of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, calls this "the spirit of coming right with people." He does what he can, whether by sitting on the boards of a fistful of black, Puerto Rican, Indian and women's organizations or by compiling a dictionary of the Chippewa language (he grew up near a Chippewa reservation in Minnesota). Eklund views the world with the perpetual optimism of the insurance salesman, and one of his happiest days came a few Thursdays ago, when he named 47 new corporate officers. Thirteen are women-and that goes far beyond tokenism. In all, the Equitable has 28 women officers, assistant vice presidents or higher, and four women directors. Ten blacks and Hispanics are also officers.

Eklund dislikes such terms as "quotas" and "reverse discrimination." Instead, he speaks of "goals" and "accelerated development". He sets the the hiring and promotion goals and passes the word down from the top that managers had better mee them, "because it's part of their own performance evaluation.

"You have to force yourself to consider some minority and women candidates for every promotion that's coming up," says Eklund. "Then pick only people who are qualified, but don't make a major issue of who is best qualified. There has never been a promotion program in any company where the best qualified person got the job in every instance." The same is true, he adds, of hiring. Of the agents to be hired by the Equitable this year, 18% will be women, 12% blacks, 6% Hispanics. People down the line attest that this system is drawing in all sorts of talent that previously had been passed by.

From his high, sometimes lonely perch, the The Equitable's Coy Eklund Equitable's chief has a unique means of keeping in touch. He has set up three panels of employees--for women, minorites and middle managers--and he meets with each for a long afternoon six times a year answering questions and listening to proposals.

At one meeting a young black advises Eklund that the company should be recruiting more people at black colleges. But, asks Eklund, isn't it enough that the Equitable is hiring blacks at integrated universities? No, responds the young man, "because kids coming out of black colleges don't have as much entree the corporate structure."

Then a black woman asks what the company's policy is on investment in depressed neighborhoods. Eklund replies that the company invests where its money will be safe, profitable and socially beneficial: "Those are the three tests. That's not enough, the woman insists: "People today are more concerned about the little guy. We should put more of our money into 'turning' neighborhoods, those that are socially declining."

Later expanding on his philosophy, Eklund points to all the millions that his company has invested in the central cities in Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Detroit and Atlanta. Yes, it has made a profit, but not always top profit. It has started the country's largest "minority small-business investment company, and Eklund knows that that will not pay off big.

"To cater only to the maximization of profits is to invite corporate doom," he says "In this country, we've developed corporate enterprise by reason of the will of the people. The only way that we will continue to have the support of the people who enfranchised us is to perform in ways that are socially desirable. If we do not, somebody will blow the whistle on the corporate enterprise system."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.