Slim pickings

Those of us carrying a pound or two more than is strictly necessary won’t like the news, but Swedish researchers have calculated that men who are obese aged 18 grow up to earn 16% less than people of ‘normal’ weight.

The research, reported in the journal Demography, looks pretty thorough. Worried that the findings might be skewed by samples of people from different social classes – working class people are more likely to be fat, and class might be the real reason they earn less – the stat-wizards developed a wheeze in which brothers were assessed against each other, thus removing a number of potentially distorting factors.

Researchers attribute the disparity to what’s called ‘non-cognitive factors’ – a verbal bucket for stuff such as motivation, grit, self-regulation and so on. Significantly, they don’t blame it on either health or discrimination.

Which is interesting. Obesity probably doesn’t appear on many organisational diversity spreadsheets, but given severe obesity has now been officially designated a disability, it probably should. And we’d bet our bottom dollar that you wouldn’t need to look too hard before you found an assessment somewhere in which, all other factors being equal, the job offer went to the slim fella.

On the subject of a 2013 Personnel Today survey, the website Weight Loss Resources offered this précis:

In particular, 93% of HR professionals would choose a ‘normal weight’ applicant over an obese applicant with the same experience and qualifications. Meanwhile, around a third of HR professionals believe obesity is a valid medical reason for not employing a person and 15% agree they would be less likely to promote an obese employee. Of even greater concern, is the fact that 10% thought they could dismiss an employee because of their size, something that is in clear contravention of employment law.

So the question is: even though the research attempts to absolve HR and organisations from ‘fattism’ bias, we still need to be on our toes when it comes to obesity discrimination. Besides being a potential area of legal challenge, it’s also an ethical obligation, given some sufferers are obese for reasons outside of their control.

Here’s a quick way to test the likelihood of your unconscious bias:

Are skinny people more likely to be mean?

Are fat people more likely to be jolly?

Are overweight people lazy?

Can tall people play basketball?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, you might want to think about checking any biases running through the back of your head the next time you run into somebody above ‘normal’ weight.

Even better, try Harvard’s ten minute IAT (Implicit Association Theory) online test. We did: it’s fun.

About the author

Andrew Baird

Andrew is the CEO of HRville. He is also Employer Brand Director of Blackbridge Communications, Editorial Director of Professionals in Law and an associate of The Smarty Train. Previously, he was the MD of TCS Advertising.