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VMware
Tracking and rewarding progressSodexo
Building a business case for changeAirbnb
Designing a fairer review processP&G
Getting men involvedMozilla
Creating an inclusive cultureHilton
Offering opportunities for women to connect with other womenL’Oréal
Creating networks for underrepresented groupsAllstate
Helping employees balance work and lifeWomen are doing their part. Now companies need to do their part, too.
For the last four years, companies have reported that they are highly committed to gender diversity. But that commitment has not translated into meaningful progress. Women continue to be vastly underrepresented at every level. For women of color, it’s even worse. Only about one in five senior leaders is a woman, and one in twenty-five is a woman of color. Progress isn’t just slow—it’s stalled. And we know why.
Women in the Workplace 2018 is the largest comprehensive study of the state of women in corporate America. Since 2015, LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company have published this report annually to give companies and employees the information they need to advance women and improve gender diversity within their organizations. McKinsey & Company also conducted similar research in 2012.
This year, 279 companies employing more than 13 million people shared their pipeline data and completed a survey of their HR practices. In addition, more than 64,000 employees were surveyed on their workplace experiences, and we interviewed women of different races and ethnicities and LGBTQ women for additional insights. Since 2015, 462 companies employing almost 20 million people have participated in the study. Download the pdf version.
VMware
Tracking and rewarding progressSodexo
Building a business case for changeAirbnb
Designing a fairer review processP&G
Getting men involvedMozilla
Creating an inclusive cultureHilton
Offering opportunities for women to connect with other womenL’Oréal
Creating networks for underrepresented groupsAllstate
Helping employees balance work and life
Corporate America has made almost no progress in improving women’s representation—and it’s not because of attrition. The main driver is hiring and promotions.
Since 2015, the first year of this study, corporate America has made almost no progress in improving women’s representation. Women are underrepresented at every level, and women of color are the most underrepresented group of all, lagging behind white men, men of color, and white women.5
For the fourth year in a row, attrition does not explain the underrepresentation of women. Women and men are leaving their companies at similar rates, and they have similar intentions to remain in the workforce. More than half of all employees plan to stay at their companies for 5 or more years, and among those who intend to leave, 81% say they plan to stay in the workforce. It’s also worth noting that very few women and men say they plan to leave to focus on family.
The 2 biggest drivers of representation are hiring and promotions, and companies are disadvantaging women in these areas from the beginning. Although women earn more bachelor’s degrees than men, and have for decades, they are less likely to be hired into entry-level jobs.6 At the first critical step up to manager, the disparity widens further. Women are less likely to be hired into manager-level jobs, and they are far less likely to be promoted into them—for every one hundred men promoted to manager, seventy-nine women are. Largely because of these gender gaps, men end up holding 62% of manager positions, while women hold only 38%.
This early inequality has a profound impact on the talent pipeline. Starting at the manager level, there are significantly fewer women to promote from within and significantly fewer women at the right experience level to hire in from the outside. So even though hiring and promotion rates improve at more senior levels, women can never catch up—we’re suffering from a “hollow middle.” This should serve as a wake-up call: until companies close the early gaps in hiring and promotions, women will remain underrepresented.
If companies continue to hire and promote women to manager at current rates, the number of women in management will increase by just 1 percentage point over the next 10ten years. But if companies start hiring and promoting women and men to manager at equal rates, we should get close to parity in management—48% women versus 52% men—over the same 10 years.
Women, especially women of color, receive less support from managers than men do and have less access to senior leaders than men do. This is a disadvantage because manager support and access are tied to positive outcomes.
On a few critical fronts, managers provide less support to women than men, including providing the resources they need to succeed and helping them navigate organizational politics. These imbalances, though small on their own, add up. Women are also less likely than men to socialize with their manager outside of work. Yet employees who do that are more likely to be happy with their job—and more likely to expect to stay at their company.
Women of color generally receive less support from managers than white women—and Black women receive the least support. Black women are far less likely to get help navigating organizational politics and balancing work and personal lives, and managers are less likely to promote their accomplishments. The same dynamic holds true for access to managers: only about a third of Black women socialize with their manager outside of work, compared to about half of white women.
Women are more likely than men to report they never have substantive interactions with senior leaders about their work. They are also more likely to say they never have informal interactions with senior leaders, such as casual conversations or lunch meetings. Because senior leaders are often the ones to create opportunities and open doors, this lack of access puts women at a disadvantage.
Compared to white women, more women of color say they never interact, formally or informally, with senior leaders. In particular, Black women get the least access to senior leaders.
Like women overall, lesbian women are more likely than men to say they never get formal or informal access to senior leaders.
Everyday sexism and racism—known as microaggressions—can be subtle or explicit. Whether intentional or unintentional, microaggressions signal disrespect and have negative impacts on women and companies.
Everyday sexism and racism—also known as microaggressions—can take many forms. Some can be subtle, like when a person mistakenly assumes a coworker is more junior than they really are. Some are more explicit, like when a person says something demeaning to a coworker. Whether intentional or unintentional, microaggressions signal disrespect. They also reflect inequality—while anyone can be on the receiving end of disrespectful behavior, microaggressions are more often directed at those with less power, such as women, people of color, and LGBTQ people.
For 64% of women, microaggressions are a workplace reality. Most commonly, women have to provide more evidence of their competence than men and they have their judgment questioned in their area of expertise. They are also twice as likely as men to have been mistaken for someone in a more junior position. Black women, in particular, deal with a greater variety of microaggressions and are more likely than other women to have their judgment questioned in their area of expertise and be asked to provide additional evidence of their competence.
Lesbian women experience further slights: 71% have dealt with microaggressions. The nature of these encounters is often different for them: lesbian women are far more likely than other women to hear demeaning remarks in the workplace about themselves or others like them. They are also far more likely to feel like they cannot talk about their personal lives at work.
These negative experiences add up. As their name suggests, microaggressions can seem small when dealt with one by one. But when repeated over time, they can have a major impact: women who experience microaggressions view their workplaces as less fair and are three times more likely to regularly think about leaving their job than women who don’t.
Microaggressions aren’t only a problem for women. About half of men have experienced microaggressions, and the problem is worse for men of color and gay men. Black men, like Black women, are more likely to have their judgment questioned and be asked to provide more evidence of their qualifications. Gay men, like lesbian women, are far more likely to hear demeaning remarks about themselves or others like them and to feel discouraged from talking about their personal lives at work.
Sexual harassment continues to pervade the workplace. 35% percent of women in corporate America experience sexual harassment at some point in their careers.
Sexual harassment continues to pervade the workplace. 35% of women in corporate America experience sexual harassment at some point in their careers, from hearing sexist jokes to being touched in an inappropriately sexual way.10
For some women the experience is far more common. 55% of women in senior leadership, 48% of lesbian women, and 45% of women in technical fields report they’ve been sexually harassed. A common thread connects these groups: research has found that women who do not conform to traditional feminine expectations—in this case, by holding authority, not being heterosexual, and working in fields dominated by men—are more often the targets of sexual harassment.11
98% of companies have policies that make it clear that sexual harassment is not tolerated, but many employees think their company is falling short putting policies into practice. Just 62% of employees say that in the past year their company has reaffirmed that sexual harassment won’t be tolerated, and a similar number say that they’ve received training or guidance on the topic. Moreover, only 60% of employees think a sexual harassment claim would be fairly investigated and addressed by their company—and just 32% believe it would be addressed quickly.
There are also stark differences in how women and men view their company’s efforts to create a safe and respectful work environment. Only 32% of women think that disrespectful behavior toward women is often quickly addressed by their companies, compared to 50% of men. Women are far less confident that reporting sexual harassment will lead to a fair investigation. And they are twice as likely as men to say that it would be risky or pointless to report an incident.
These numbers indicate the urgent need for companies to underscore that bad behavior is unacceptable and will not go overlooked. Leaders at all levels need to set the tone by publicly stating that sexual harassment won’t be tolerated and by modeling inclusive behavior. HR teams should receive detailed training so they know how to fully and compassionately investigate claims of harassment, even if they involve senior leaders. And companies would benefit from putting an audit process in place to ensure that investigations are thorough and sanctions are appropriate.
It is important to note that the prevalence of sexual harassment reported in this research may be lower than what some working women experience. This survey focuses on full-time employees in the corporate sector versus the full economy, and given the nature of sexual harassment, it is often underreported.
When it comes to sexual harassment, there is an information gap. 1 in 5 employees wants more information on their company’s harassment policies, including what to do if they’re harassed and how their company handles claims—and women are 50% more likely to want this information. It’s also worth noting that, regardless of gender, employees who have been sexually harassed are twice as likely to want additional information as those who haven’t been harassed.
Being “the only one” is still common for women--and it’s not a good experience. Over 80 percent are on the receiving end of microaggressions, compared to 64 percent of women as a whole.
Being “the only one” is still a common experience for women. 1 in 5 women says they are often the only woman or one of the only women in the room at work—in other words, they are “Onlys.”12 This is twice as common for senior-level women and women in technical roles: around 40% of them are Onlys.
Women who are Onlys are having a significantly worse experience than women who work with other women. Over 80% are on the receiving end of microaggressions, compared to 64% of women as a whole. They are more likely to have their abilities challenged, to be subjected to unprofessional and demeaning remarks, and to feel like they cannot talk about their personal lives at work. Most notably, women Onlys are almost twice as likely to have been sexually harassed at some point in their careers.
Far fewer men are Onlys—just 7% say that they are often the only or one of the only men in the room—and regardless of their race and ethnicity, they face less scrutiny than women Onlys. By and large, white men who are Onlys have a better experience than any other group of Onlys, likely because they are broadly well represented in their company and are a high-status group in society.
Women Onlys have a more difficult time. Because there are so few, they stand out in a crowd of men. This heightened visibility can make the biases faced by women Onlys especially pronounced. While they are just one person, they often become a stand-in for all women—their individual successes or failures become a litmus test for what all women are capable of doing. With everyone’s eyes on them, women Onlys can be heavily scrutinized and held to higher standards. As a result, they most often feel pressure to perform, on guard, and left out. In contrast, when asked how it feels to be the sole man in the room, men Onlys most frequently say they feel included.
Being an Only also impacts the way women view their workplace. Compared to other women, women Onlys are less likely to think that the best opportunities go to the most deserving employees, promotions are fair and objective, and ideas are judged by their quality rather than who raised them. Not surprisingly, given the negative experiences and feelings associated with being the odd woman out, women Onlys are also 1.5x more likely to think about leaving their job.
Being an Only is a far too common experience for people of color and gay people. They face more extreme biases and have a more negative experience than people like them who are not Onlys.
45% of women of color and 37% of men of color are often the only or one of the only people of their race or ethnicity in the room. When this is the case, women and men of color are more likely to feel excluded and scrutinized—and this is especially pronounced for women of color who are Onlys. In particular, Black women are having a difficult experience. They are significantly more likely than other Onlys to feel closely watched and to think that their actions reflect positively or negatively on other people like them.
76% of lesbian women and 70% of gay men are often the only or one of the only people of their sexual orientation in the room. When gay people are Onlys, they are twice as likely as other groups of Onlys to say they can’t talk about themselves or their life outside of work. And like other Onlys, they also feel on guard, closely watched, and under pressure to perform.
Women are less likely than men to see their company as fair. Almost half of men think women are “well represented” in leadership when 1 in 10 leaders is a woman.
Women are 3x more likely than men to think that their gender has played a role in their missing out on a raise, promotion, or other chance to get ahead. They are also more likely to think their gender will make it harder for them going forward.
Compared to white women, women of color are slightly more likely to think their gender will make it harder for them to advance. Asian women, in particular, are much more likely to feel disadvantaged.
Lesbian women are more likely than women overall to think that their gender makes it harder for them to advance.
Race and sexuality also affect how women see their opportunities to advance. Nearly a third of women of color—and almost half of Black women—think their race has played a role in missed opportunities and will make it harder for them to advance. Over a quarter of lesbian women feel the same way about their sexuality.
Women are less likely than men to think that promotions are based on fair and objective criteria, that the best opportunities go to the most deserving employees, and that ideas are judged by their quality, as opposed to who raised them.
Women are also significantly less likely than men to think women are well represented in senior leadership.
In general, women of color are less likely than white women to say their company is meritocratic, and Black women are the most skeptical.
Compared to other women of color, Asian women are less likely to think women are well represented in senior leadership.
Like women overall, lesbian women are less likely than men to say their company is meritocratic. Lesbian women are the least likely to believe that women are well represented in senior leadership.
Women are asking for more. In fact, women are negotiating for raises and promotions as often as men, but they do not always get the same outcomes.
Women are negotiating for raises and promotions as often as men, but they do not always get the same outcomes.
Women are asking for promotions and raises at about the same rates as men. However, women early in their careers are less likely to get promoted, and on average women are paid less than men in similar roles.13
Although white women are asking for promotions as often as men do, they are slightly less interested in being promoted to the next level.
Women of color are far more likely than white women to say they want to advance to the next level—and Black and Asian women are even more interested in advancing than men.
Despite their higher aspirations, Latinas and Black women ask for promotions and raises at about the same rates as white women, but they get worse results. On average, they receive fewer promotions and are paid less for comparable work.14
Compared to white women, Asian women are more likely to ask for promotions and raises, and they get mixed results. On average, they are less likely to be promoted but are paid more for comparable work.15
Compared to women overall, lesbian women are similarly interested in advancing and ask for promotions and raises at about the same rates. However, studies of lesbian women’s pay point to varying outcomes. In some studies, lesbians earn significantly more than heterosexual women; in others, they earn significantly less.16
Fewer women than men want to be top execs, and women want to for different reasons. Women are more interested in being role models while men want to impact the bottom line.
Women are less interested in being a top executive than men, and women and men see the benefits differently.
Compared to men of the same race and ethnicity, women are less likely to aspire to be a top executive.
Women and men who want to be senior leaders see the benefits differently. Women are more interested in being role models than men are, while men are more motivated by the opportunity to impact the success of their company.
Women of color are much more interested in becoming a top executive than white women are.
Black women with leadership ambitions are particularly interested in paving the way for others and having a positive impact on company culture.
Lesbian women are about as interested in being a top executive as women overall.
Like Black women, lesbian women with leadership ambitions are very interested in being role models and shaping company culture.
Experts agree that setting goals, tracking and reporting on progress, and rewarding success can increase diversity
Experts agree that setting goals, tracking and reporting on progress, and rewarding success are key to driving organizational change. When it comes to gender diversity, more companies need to put these practices in place.
Only 38% of companies set targets for gender representation, even though setting goals is the first step toward achieving any business priority. Only 12% share a majority of gender diversity metrics with their employees, even though transparency is a helpful way to signal a company’s commitment to change. Only 42% hold senior leaders accountable for making progress toward gender parity, and even fewer hold managers and directors accountable. It’s hard to imagine a groundswell of change when leaders aren’t formally expected to drive it.
Companies are falling shorter when it comes to women of color. Fewer than half track representation by gender and race combined—and just 10% set representation targets for women of color. Setting goals, tracking progress, sharing results, and holding employees to account are basic business practices. While some diversity strategies are more complicated to implement than others, these are relatively clear-cut steps that companies can— and should—take.
VMware wanted to make diversity metrics easy for senior leaders to access and to hold them accountable for improving the metrics.
VMware’s CEO gave each vice president a yearly goal of improving the global representation of women. To develop strategic action plans, VPs were given access to a diversity dashboard with real-time HR metrics. The dashboard tracks representation, hiring, promotions, and retention, showing areas of progress in green and areas of decline in red. This tool helped leaders to easily see improvement areas, strategize, and track progress toward meeting their representation targets.
Each senior leader’s progress is recorded on a scorecard and reviewed at regular intervals with the CEO’s executive staff. To meet their business goals, senior leaders now have to meet representation targets and demonstrate inclusive behavior.
Since announcing these goals and unveiling the dashboard in August 2017, VMware has made significant progress. Their global hiring rate for women is 5.6 percentage points higher than their baseline representation, and for the past twelve months, the company has met gender representation targets across all geographic regions.
Hiring and promotions are the two biggest levers for changing the representation of women at every level. But companies aren’t hiring and promoting women and men at equal rates.
Hiring and promotions are the two biggest levers for changing the representation of women across the pipeline. Yet companies are not hiring and promoting women and men at equal rates, especially at the entry and manager levels.
Part of the problem is that very few companies have end-to-end processes in place to ensure fair practices. Fewer than 1 in 3 companies sets diversity targets for hiring and promotions, even though setting goals is critical to achieving them. Fewer than 1 in 4 companies uses tools to reduce bias when reviewing résumés, even though reviewers often fail to give equal consideration to women, people of color, and other underrepresented groups. Fewer than half of companies require diverse slates of candidates for external hiring and only a quarter require them for internal promotions, even though they lead to more diverse hires and promotions.
Very few companies train employees to recognize and push back against bias in hiring and promotions. Just 19% of companies require unconscious bias training for employees involved in hiring. A mere 4% require training for employees involved in performance reviews. And only about a third remind employees to take steps to avoid bias at the outset of both processes. Unconscious bias can have a big impact on who’s hired and promoted—and who’s not—and it’s critical that companies take concrete steps to counter it.
Finally, it’s important to track outcomes. Otherwise, it’s impossible for a company to know if it’s treating candidates fairly. Many companies track outcomes in hiring to check for gender bias, which is a good start. But far fewer track the compounding effect of gender and racial bias, which disadvantages women of color. And companies are far less likely to track bias in performance reviews—for example, to see if women’s communication styles are criticized more often than men’s—yet performance reviews play a major role in who gets promoted and who doesn’t.
Until companies hire and promote women at the same rates as men, we won’t see progress in the representation of women in corporate America. Ensuring that these processes are fair is vital to that goal.
Sodexo was struggling to get managers worldwide to buy into diversity initiatives. The company realized that they needed to build a business case for more women in leadership.
Sodexo looked at how business units with different proportions of women and men in management performed on a range of key financial and nonfinancial metrics, including client retention, employee engagement, and workplace safety. After studying the performance of more than 50,000 managers, they discovered that business units with a higher concentration of women in management (i.e., 40-60% women) perform better. Their operating margins, client retention, and employee retention are all nearly 10% higher, and their employee engagement rate is 14% higher.
Sodexo used these proof points to build a business case for getting more women in management and set a goal that 40% of senior leaders will be women by 2025. To help meet this goal, 10% of annual bonuses for senior leaders is now contingent on making progress against it.
Airbnb wanted to make sure women and men were progressing through their employee pipeline at similar rates, so they made changes to their performance evaluation process to block bias.
Working with Stanford University’s VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab, Airbnb updated and standardized the criteria used in evaluations and added a 5-point rating scale to the questions on their review form. The new criteria and rating scale require managers, direct reports, and peers to slow down and think critically about their assessments, which can lead to fairer outcomes. The review form also has limited open-ended questions, which reduces the chance for gender-biased language to be used in the review process. Lastly, because studies show that women tend to underrate their own performance and men tend to overrate theirs, Airbnb stopped asking employees to rate themselves.
To ensure that the new assessment form is used effectively, Airbnb introduced an animated video and tip cards that educate managers on unconscious bias, and they equipped leaders with talking points to underscore the importance of fairness in performance evaluations. These tools have been used in calibration sessions with nearly 700 managers, and the company offers all employees training on reducing bias in reviews.
Two years after updating their review process, interviews with managers point to an increase in awareness about the ways bias impacts performance assessments. Airbnb continues to track and analyze the ratings and promotion rates of employees to make sure there are no unexplained gender differences. They’re also tracking changes in employee perceptions about fairness in the performance review process. Based on these initial indications, the new performance review evaluation system appears to be having a positive impact.
Senior leaders and managers are critical to driving organizational change. But companies are not giving managers and leaders clear marching orders when it comes to improving gender diversity.
Senior leaders and managers are critical to driving organizational change. But companies are not giving managers and leaders clear marching orders when it comes to improving gender diversity.
Senior leaders set the agenda in organizations; they signal what’s important.
The problem is...
Only about 1 in 3 employees reports that senior leaders...
Just 1 in 5 employees believes leaders are held accountable for results
And companies need to do more...
Managers make many of the day-to-day decisions that shape employees’ experiences and career progression.
The problem is...
And companies need to do more...
Until leaders at all levels understand the problem, are trained to help solve it, and are held accountable for making progress—in other words, until companies require that leaders treat gender diversity like any other business imperative—it will be hard to achieve lasting change.
Getting managers on board matters. When employees have a manager who regularly challenges bias, as opposed to one who rarely does, they are more likely to think that everyone has an equal chance to advance at work—and they are less likely to think their gender has played a role in their missing out on a raise or promotion. Women in particular feel this way: they are almost four times less likely to think their gender has held them back and almost twice as likely to think they enjoy the same opportunities as their peers.
Men think leaders are doing a better job promoting gender diversity than women do. Men are almost twice as likely as women to think managers challenge gender- biased language and behavior and almost 1.5x more likely to say that senior leaders offer guidance on how to advance women and improve gender diversity.
There’s a strong correlation between the degree of bias people experience and how committed they are to diversity. Lesbian women and women of color are the most committed, followed by gay men, men of color, and white women. White men are the least committed.
There is a strong correlation between the degree to which people experience bias and how personally committed they are to diversity. Lesbian women and women of color are the most personally committed to both gender and racial diversity, followed by gay men, men of color, and white women. White men are the least committed—and are also the least likely to say they experience bias. This commitment gap can be significant. Seventy-three percent of women of color are personally committed to racial diversity, but just 51% of white men are. The same trend holds true for gender diversity: women of color are highly committed to gender diversity, while white men are far less so. This lack of commitment can lead to a lack of engagement: only one in five women and one in three men say that the men in their company regularly participate in initiatives to improve gender diversity.
There are also signs of a backlash among men: 15% think their gender will make it harder for them to get ahead, even though their representation in the workplace far surpasses women’s. And white men—who are better represented than any other group—are more likely to think this than men of color. Companies can bring more men along by linking diversity to better business outcomes. When men think their company prioritizes gender diversity because it’s critical to the success of the business, they are more likely to prioritize it themselves.
P&G knew they needed the support of men—who hold many senior leadership positions—to reach their diversity and inclusion goals. The company enlisted men as diversity champions through the MARC (Men Advocating Real Change) program. Developed by Catalyst, MARC helps men understand and mitigate common biases that can disadvantage women, such as the cultural belief that men are a better match for leadership, and builds effective partnership across genders. P&G began hosting regular MARC Leaders workshops and kept participants engaged with follow-up surveys and newsletters. The company also arranged for senior leaders who participated to host their own events for employees who couldn’t attend the workshops.
More than 950 senior P&G leaders have completed a MARC Leaders workshop. P&G surveyed participants and found that after the average workshop, 96% of men acknowledge having more privileges than women, compared to just 70% before the workshops. Fully 100 percent of men who participated said that they now feel they have a personal stake in diversity and inclusion and will work on recognizing their bias and taking steps to counteract it.
When managers regularly challenge gender-biased language and behavior, women are significantly happier and more likely to stay.
Fostering an environment where all employees feel included and respected starts with making sure everyone feels safe. That means communicating that sexual harassment is not acceptable and reviewing and handling reports of harassment promptly and decisively. Too few employees believe that their company does both, despite the importance of getting these basics right.
Beyond that, there is a great deal companies can do to promote an inclusive, supportive, and civil culture. This would benefit everyone. Although women deal with more everyday slights and disrespectful behavior than men, 58% of all employees experience some type of microaggression, suggesting that incivility is too common at work.
Companies should develop clear guidelines for what collegial and respectful behavior looks like—as well as unacceptable and uncivil behavior. To be treated seriously, these guidelines must be supported by a clear reporting process and swift consequences for disrespectful behavior. Companies should also hold periodic refreshers to drive the guidelines home and make sure all employees understand them. Steps like these have an impact on employee satisfaction and retention. Both women and men who believe that disrespectful behavior toward women is often quickly addressed at their company are happier in their roles and less likely to think about leaving. Not surprisingly, this has a bigger positive impact on women: they are 44% less likely to think about leaving their company, compared to 17% of men.
For change to happen, managers need to step in early when they see problematic behavior and model the right behavior themselves. When managers regularly challenge gender-biased language and behavior, women are significantly happier and more likely to stay. Yet just over a quarter of employees say their managers typically do this, and less than half of managers say they’ve received the unconscious bias training needed to get this right.
The quality of the training also matters: it’s good to educate managers broadly on bias, but it’s even better to dig into specifics and cover more subtle or complex instances of bias. Training should address how microaggressions work, so managers know what to watch for on their team, and it should cover the concept of intersectionality, so they understand the overlapping and compounding biases that women and others from marginalized groups face. And although managers are critically important, all employees would benefit from this type of training.
It’s also helpful to take a step back and think about how company and team norms might disadvantage certain employees. Work events centered on outdoor activities can leave out employees with different abilities; an expectation that employees are on call nights and weekends can make life harder for working parents; and outings to sporting events can exclude some women.
Finally, companies need to actively encourage and value diversity. That means signaling that diversity is a top priority with action and accountability, seeking out different voices and perspectives, and fostering an inclusive culture where employees can respectfully talk about tricky topics, and where they are expected to actively help in building a better workplace for everyone. And of course, talking the talk on diversity only goes so far unless companies also walk the walk by building diverse teams.
There is a strong correlation between the degree to which people experience bias and how personally committed they are to diversity. Lesbian women and women of color are the most personally committed to both gender and racial diversity, followed by gay men, men of color, and white women. White men are the least committed—and are also the least likely to say they experience bias. This commitment gap can be significant. 73% of women of color are personally committed to racial diversity, but just 51% of white men are. The same trend holds true for gender diversity: women of color are highly committed to gender diversity, while white men are far less so. This lack of commitment can lead to a lack of engagement: only one in five women and one in three men say that the men in their company regularly participate in initiatives to improve gender diversity.
There are also signs of a backlash among men: 15% think their gender will make it harder for them to get ahead, even though their representation in the workplace far surpasses women’s. And white men—who are better represented than any other group—are more likely to think this than men of color. Companies can bring more men along by linking diversity to better business outcomes. When men think their company prioritizes gender diversity because it’s critical to the success of the business, they are more likely to prioritize it themselves.
In 2016, Mozilla learned through focus groups that women were having challenging workplace experiences. They also learned from an employee survey that women were much more concerned than men about workplace harassment and bullying. The survey results suggested that Mozilla could help improve women’s experiences by rewriting their Community Participation Guidelines, the company’s code of conduct.
Mozilla wanted to understand what was missing from this document, so they convened additional focus groups of women. The groups recommended that the guidelines clearly describe who is protected under the code of conduct, including people of different races, ages, and genders. They also recommended providing examples of good and bad behaviors and explaining when and how to use the guidelines, how to report incidents of harassment or bullying, and what to expect after reporting.
Mozilla edited their code of conduct accordingly and ran an internal education campaign to make sure that employees knew about the changes and took them seriously.
After publicizing the changed code of conduct, Mozilla’s next engagement survey showed that women felt better about the company’s inclusiveness and stance on harassment. Fourteen percent more women believed that harassment and bullying are not tolerated by Mozilla, 15 percent more women felt safe reporting harassment and bullying, and 10% more women believed that people treat one another with respect at Mozilla.
Being the only woman at work is a worse experience, and women in this situation are more likely to leave.
Companies should take steps to reduce the number of women who are the only one in the room—and who feel isolated and under pressure as a result.
Many businesses need to change the way they think about adding women to their organization—which means moving beyond the mindset of “one and done” and pushing to add women until they reach true parity. A recent analysis found that S&P 1,500 companies are significantly more likely to have just two women on their board of directors than would be expected by chance, which suggests that companies may stop focusing on gender diversity once they reach a threshold of two women.20 This “check the box” mentality is the wrong approach.
In addition to increasing the representation of women, companies should be thoughtful about how they move them through their organization. One approach is to hire and promote women in cohorts; another is to cluster women on teams. As opposed to staffing one woman on a number of teams, companies should consider putting groups of two to three women on teams together. And of course, it’s important to think twice before clustering women in functions traditionally dominated by women, like human resources and communications. This can reinforce gender stereotypes. Instead, it’s better to look for opportunities to staff groups of women in a variety of functions across the organization.
It’s also important that companies create opportunities for women Onlys to connect with other women. HR teams should make sure that their organization offers networking groups so women can find support and community. Likewise, managers should think through the day-to- day interactions of their teams and create opportunities for women to work together.
Building an inclusive and respectful workplace pays dividends when it comes to women Onlys. Across races and ethnicities, women Onlys have higher ambitions to be a top executive than other women. But they are also more likely to think about leaving their company. By making these driven employees’ experiences more fulfilling and less isolating, companies are more likely to retain them. That would be a win for everyone.
Hilton established employee affinity groups called Team Member Resource Groups (TMRGs) to create communities for underrepresented groups, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people, veterans, and people of different abilities. There are now more than fifty TMRG chapters with 7,400 members around the world.
TMRGs provide a support system for members and a safe space for dialogue on issues they’re experiencing at work. They also promote the professional growth of their members through mentorship and networking opportunities, career development sessions, and leadership panels. TMRGs are sponsored by senior leaders, who use feedback from the groups to help make Hilton’s culture and work environment more inclusive.
Insights from TMRGs have led to expanded benefits like parental leave and flexible work arrangements and contributed to a 5% reduction in employee turnover in the United States since 2016. Hilton has also used TMRG recommendations to update its employee travel program and to shape the design and layout of the company’s new hotel brands.
L’Oréal USA launched Think Tanks, employee resource groups that promote a more inclusive workplace for underrepresented groups, including women, people of color, people with disabilities, veterans, and the LGBTQ community. Think Tanks have helped L’Oréal identify policies and programs to better support their diverse workforce, including new disability benefits and health-care coverage for infertility treatment and gender reassignment surgery. Input from Think Tank members has also helped L’Oréal USA marketing campaigns resonate with a more diverse audience.
Different Think Tanks have different missions. For instance, the “L’Oréal for Women” Think Tank developed a road map to support the advancement of women into senior positions. Two key initiatives were a leadership certification program at Harvard University and an annual offsite for senior leaders that focused on promoting equality and fighting bias.
Since the program started in 2012, L’Oréal USA believes Think Tanks have contributed to a 40 percent increase in women in leadership and an 18 percent increase in people of color across the company. During the same time period, the number of employees who have disclosed a disability has quadrupled.
To increase the representation of women at all levels, companies need to find more ways to help employees fit work into their lives.
To increase the representation of women at all levels, companies need to find more ways to help employees balance work and family.
Managing the complexities of raising children and running a household while building a career is a juggling act for many workers. 41% of employees have children at home, and 17% of them do not benefit from the support of a partner in the house. Although balancing work and family is an issue both for women and men, it continues to weigh more heavily on women: across all races and ethnicities, women are far more likely than men to do most or all of the household work, in addition to their day jobs. Lesbian women are the exception: they split household work more evenly with their partners.
A majority of companies offer employees some flexibility to ease work-life friction, such as the ability to work part-time or telecommute. But fewer companies address the unique challenges faced by parents. Less than two-thirds of companies offer maternity leave beyond what’s required by law, and just over half offer fathers the same benefit. Far fewer companies have programs designed to ease employee transitions to and from extended leave, even though those periods can be particularly challenging for employees and their families. And ongoing support for parents—like subsidized or on-site child care—is still uncommon. Programs like these make a difference: it’s easier to focus on your job when you know that your children are well cared for.
Senior-level women often have more household responsibilities than senior-level men. They are twice as likely as men at their level to have a partner who works full-time, which means they are far less likely to have someone at home focused primarily on the household and the kids. And when women in leadership have partners, they are five times more likely than men in the same situation to do all or most of the household work. So perhaps not surprisingly, among senior-level employees who don’t want to be top executives, 42% of women say it’s because it would require too much of their families, compared to 35% of men.
Allstate has a long history of supporting working families. For more than twenty years, they have provided on-site child care at the company’s headquarters, including care for infants and preschoolers, full-day kindergarten, and vacation programs for children. For at least fifteen years, they have offered compressed and part-time schedules, job sharing, and flexible start times.
In 2006, they launched their first parent-focused employee resource group to provide peer support, help parents navigate the company’s work-life balance resources, and surface challenges faced by parents and caregivers to leadership. In addition, for the last several years, Allstate has offered employee discounts at child-care facilities across the country. And in 2018, they decided to take this support even further with the addition of telecommuting and remote work options.
Employees who take advantage of Allstate’s family-friendly policies feel overwhelmingly positive about the experience. In a 2018 survey, 96% of employees who used the company’s onsite child-care program reported that it helped them balance personal and professional demands. Another 95% said it made it easier for them to concentrate and be more productive on the job.
In 2017, 42% of Allstate employees made use of flexible work arrangements. Those who did were more likely to say they felt valued on the job, were satisfied with their work-life balance, and would recommend the company as a great place to work. Employees often cite the company’s flexible policies as one of the ways Allstate has exceeded their expectations.
