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Mastercard’s former CPO has lifted the lid on the firm’s hiring practices and company culture, revealing that the payments technology company screens candidates based on a ‘decency quotient.’
Michael Fraccaro left his post as Mastercard’s top HR executive earlier this month, but will remain an advisory ‘fellow’ until the end of 2025.
He spoke to TIME about his perspectives on shifting workplace trends and how he has seen them shape Mastercard’s people practices, from the impact of AI on HR operations, jobs, and learning & development, to balancing legal compliance with cultural values.
Why does Mastercard hire based on ‘decency’?
Fraccaro emphasized the importance of company culture to the business, internally known as the ‘Mastercard Way.’ Three principles – ‘creating value,’ ‘growing together,’ ‘moving fast’ – underpin the approach.
Since the beginning of 2023, following a 2022 overhaul of the company’s ‘shared ethos,’ Mastercard staff have had their performance ratings and rewards tied to cultural alignment.
“We embed it in our performance management system,” Mastercard’s former CPO said. “People’s year-end performance is [based] on their objectives, on their ‘what,’ and on their ‘how.’"
Existing employees aren’t the only group expected to demonstrate cultural alignment, however, with Fraccaro revealing that Mastercard screens prospective candidates for their levels of basic decency.
“When we recruit people, we look at their IQ, their EQ, but more importantly, their DQ, their decency quotient. That’s a core element of the culture,” he explained.
Interviewees are not asked outright whether or not they are decent people, Fraccaro clarified: “It’s more around, ‘Tell me how you think about your community.’ Quite often the question might be, ‘Tell me something about you that’s not on your LinkedIn profile.’”
“We hear stories of people saying, ‘I’m volunteering at my local volunteer fire brigade’ or ‘I’m doing something at the Red Cross or my local school.’ Or it could be, ‘I help my little brother or sister with their homework,” he continued. “There’s an aspect of humanity that we want to hear come through the discussions in the interviews.”
Outgoing Mastercard talks AI, DEI, and legal compliance
Mastercard’s former CPO also addressed key challenges currently facing the HR function, and how they have shaped the company’s approach to people management.
Top of the list, unsurprisingly, was the impact of technology and AI disruption.
“HR has an opportunity to reinvent itself in terms of its operations, the scale, the way jobs are done,” he asserted. “HR also plays a role in how it will help the organization transform itself. So there’s one around transforming the function, and the other one is around how you navigate and transform the workforce itself—the kinds of jobs that will need to be reskilled or upskilled, what new jobs will be created, how you leverage data and AI to take friction out of particular processes.”
But Fraccaro also noted that HR professionals must juggle tech-enabled business transformation with legal compliance and a shifting regulatory landscape, all while remaining “true to the culture of their organization.”
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Mastercard has worked carefully to ensure that when company policies change course due to external pressures such as new regulations, employers are brought along for the journey, the former CPO suggested.
“For example, pay transparency is a big thing in Europe and many other parts of the world—we need to make sure that we comply with that law, but this isn’t just about complying,” Fraccaro said. “It’s also a change management effort. We need to make sure that elements around how we describe differences in pay structures because of people’s jobs or particular skills that people have—that element of transparency is a core part of the culture.”
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) was the other, highly relevant example provided.
“We have to make sure that we do the right thing by complying with the law and the executive orders, but we also stay true to what’s core to our business and core to our culture, and do both equally,” Fraccaro explained.
Numerous high-profile organisations in the US have scrapped diversity hiring targets and dismantled (or rebranded) DEI departments in recent months, including Google, Meta, Disney, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Ford, Goldman Sachs, and Harley-Davidson.
Some employers – including Meta and Google – have indicated that decisions to eliminate diversity programmes were made to more closely align with a shifting political and regulatory landscape surrounding DEI in the US, after the Trump administration moved quickly to shut down DEI programs across federal government, declared them “illegal and immoral,” and advocated for private employers to follow suit.
Mastercard has not publicly addressed any changes to its DEI policy and continues to communicate the importance of inclusion to its workforce, but has faced shareholder pressure from the National Legal and Policy Centre (NLPC) to scrap DEI and ESG targets from its executive compensation criteria.
Proactiveness – a key skill for new generations at work?
The ‘Mastercard Fellow’ wrapped up his interview by issuing a rallying cry to new generations entering the workforce.
“Don’t wait for things to happen, go out there and grab them,” Fraccaro asserted. “In every organization, there are projects that are waiting to be started, there are things that need to be done. As long as it aligns with the mission and the strategy of your manager or your company, showing a level of proactiveness is a really good attribute to have.”
Agility, a thirst for learning, networking, relationship-building, and communication skills were among the “fundamentals” he recommended.
“Technology and AI, yes, you need that,” Fraccaro concluded. “But the real differentiator is going to be how do you tell your story? That’s a really key skill that we need to continue to celebrate for people.”
