Commissioner Vij explains delayed workforce survey and racial equity plan goals
Vij says the 2022 workforce survey was not completed due to COVID and federal climate concerns, but the racial equity plan commits to addressing the mid-career to leadership pipeline and board governance.
Yeah.
This was not completed because of the COVID delay.
It's something that we have been talking about, but to be candid, given the climate from the federal government, that kind of data collection feels even harder than it did when we first did it in 2019.
Even then, data safety was a big concern, and we took a lot of precautions to have it done by a third party where we didn't get the data, and now it's like...
Even scarier for folks to self-identify.
So we're kind of thinking through how we do that in a responsible way that keeps our cultural workforce safe.
We have data from places like museums moving forward or other folks that have been doing this research and a broader, not just New York level, and what they're finding is exactly what you're saying.
And what I also know anecdotally is that, yes, that pipeline from mid-career into leadership really needs attention.
And it's something that we've committed to working on in our racial equity plan that was just recently released.
Can you talk about what that will look like?
Because I think that...
I hear all of like, yes, the federal government is watching all those things, but that still doesn't mean that a diverse city like New York shouldn't have that reflective in their workforce.
And so I know you just mentioned the racial equity plan.
What have you identified that you're going to be working on to address that?
Yeah, and I absolutely agree.
It is so essential.
And honestly, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for diversity programs in arts and culture.
We have named that we will be looking into this particular kind of training for workers from that mid-level career into senior leadership and board governance.
And that's something that a lot of cultural organizations do in small scale.
We're looking into, like, can we support that to grow those programs?
Are there new programs that might need to be created?
We know from starting the CUNY Cultural Corps and having it be permanent how incredibly impactful that's been to allow a pipeline into these jobs.
So we're looking to think through what we do to that scale for that mid-level worker into those leadership.