BIAS INTERRUPTERS TOOLKIT

Assignments

Incremental steps that improve diversity in your organization can yield large gains. Diverse work groups perform better and are more committed, innovative, and loyal.

It’s time to go beyond just talking about the problem of workplace bias. Bias Interrupters is an evidence-based model that provides solutions. By taking small steps, Bias Interrupters can yield big changes.

We’ve distilled the huge literature on bias into simple steps that help you and your company perform better.

THE CHALLENGE

Every workplace has high-profile assignments that are career-enhancing (“glamour work”) and low-profile assignments that are beneficial to the organization but not the individual’s career. Research shows that women do more “office housework”¹ than men.This includes literal housework (ordering lunch), administrative work (scheduling a time to meet), emotion work (“she’s upset; comfort her”) and keeping-the-trains-running work. Too often diversity work is treated as undervalued office housework. Among women at the manager level and above, Black women, LGBTQ+ women, and women with disabilities are up to twice as likely as women overall to spend a substantial amount of time promoting DEI.² The common practice of assigning large loads of diversity advocacy to these groups further jeopardizes their advancement as they will have to literally work more hours than majority men if they want to get ahead.

In industry after industry, women and professionals of color report less access to desirable assignments than white men do.³ In our study of lawyers:⁴

· Glamour work. More than 80% of white men, but only 53% of women of color, 59% of white women, and 63% of men of color, reported the same access to desirable assignments as their colleagues.

· Office housework. Almost 50% of white women and 43% of women of color reported that at work they more often play administrative roles such as taking notes for a meeting compared to their colleagues. Only 26% of white men and 20% of men of color reported this.

Research also shows that LGBTQIA+ employees report less access to opportunities to take on a leadership role and to develop their skills, which in turn impacts their intent to stay at their jobs.⁵

Diversity at the top can only occur when diverse employees at all levels of the organization have access to assignments that let them take risks and develop new skills. If the glamour work and the office housework aren’t distributed evenly, you won’t be tapping into the full potential of your workforce. Most workplaces that use an informal “hey, you!” assignment system end up distributing assignments based on factors other than experience and talent. Managers that lead hybrid teams need to be particularly mindful to avoid proximity bias and to distribute career-enhancing assignments equally among their on-site and remote workers. If women, caregivers, and people of color are more likely to prefer remote work⁶ and to be overlooked for glamour work, they likely grow dissatisfied and search for opportunities elsewhere.⁷

To learn more about how assignments may be holding back your star players, read our Harvard Business Review article.

THE SOLUTION

Fair allocation of the glamour work and the office housework are two separate problems. Some organizations will want to solve the office housework problem before tackling the glamour work; others will want to address both problems simultaneously.

1) Identify and track your organization’s issue(s) regarding assignments.

Collecting Data

Tracking the allocation of opportunities in your organization is a four-step process:

1. Survey the pilot group to find out who is doing the “non-promotable” work like planning parties and taking notes at a meeting. See Work Allocation Pulse Survey.

2. Assignment typology. Develop a typology identifying the high- and low-profile opportunities at your company (or the pilot group). See the Assignment Typology Worksheet, which will help you start thinking about high-profile assignments. The goal is to identify the types of assignments that lead to promotion at your company. You will probably want to consult with some savvy managers to help you identify the type of opportunities that lead to promotion.

3. Create tasking tool. See example.

4. Have managers use tasking tool for 2-3 months to gather baseline data. This should take no more than 5 to 10 minutes a month.

After implementing intervention(s), participating managers will fill out the tool every month for 3-4 months, and you will send the work allocation pulse survey one more time.

Interpreting Data

The Work Allocation Pulse Survey gives you insight into whether certain groups at your workplace are spending more time than peers on non-promotable work. First, look at the time spent and perceptions of peer time broken down by demographic groups. If you see differences, that is evidence that the non-promotable work is spread unevenly.

If your numbers are high enough, you can examine the data for subgroups of people of color, but we recommend not analyzing the data if there are fewer than 20 people in a given group – this can lead to problems.

Using the Tasking Tool data to examine the demographic breakdown of access to opportunities will help you determine whether there is a pattern of group differences in your assignment allocation systems. Examine the results for men of color, women of color, white women and white men.

You will be looking at two key indicators of access to opportunities:

·Percentage of individuals from each group who are given at least one opportunity over the data collection period, broken down into the different categories of high- and low-profile work.

·The average number of opportunities of each type obtained by each demographic group.

For both the percentages and the average numbers of opportunities, start by comparing across groups.

· Are some groups getting more of certain types of opportunities?
· Are some groups getting more of ALL opportunities?
· Are some groups more likely to get at least one shot at a type of opportunity, while others aren’t?

If you see differences, that is an indicator that you aren’t tapping into your top talent. It’s also a clue if you’re seeing issues when it comes time for promotions – you need to be making sure that everybody has access to the opportunities they need to get promoted.

If you see that some groups are getting more of every type of opportunity, you should evaluate whether other company initiatives might be playing a role. It’s important that everybody has access to the high-profile work, but it shouldn’t be the case that certain groups are stuck with more work overall. If you see this pattern, it’s important to spread the non-promotable work to a wider group.

After you have a few months of Tasking Tool data, you can compare the Work Allocation Pulse Survey results to the reports of managers.
If you’re seeing the same patterns, managers will be well-placed to make changes to the way non-promotable work is allocated.
If managers aren’t reporting the same issues as their direct reports, they may need to see some data in order to understand the magnitude of the problem.

Acting on Data

Depending on the pattern(s) you see in the pre-intervention tasking tool data, you will choose one or more areas of focus for your structural intervention:

· Diversity work
· Office housework
· Glamour work

We’ve curated a drop-down menu of Bias Interrupters below for each area of focus. Additionally, an effective workshop teaching managers how to equalize access to opportunities is typically part of every successful intervention. Learn more here.

You should choose which options are best for your organization. Many organizations are drawn to particular strategies because they fit well with other initiatives or the company culture.

Interpreting Post-Intervention Data

You will want to examine the impact of the tasking tool and implemented bias interrupters. There are four key indicators you should be looking for:

· Percentage of individuals from each group who are given at least one opportunity over the data collection period, broken down into the different categories of high- and low-profile work.

· The average number of opportunities of each type obtained by each demographic group.

· The amount of time spent on non-promotable work by each demographic group.

· The perceptions of time spent on non-promotable work compared to peers by each demographic group.

Are you closer to equal numbers for groups? That is a good indicator that your intervention was impactful.

Are you seeing the same issues as before? That is a good indicator that you need to add more bias interrupters.

Are you seeing more, or different issues than before? Interrupting bias is an iterative process – you may need to make several rounds of changes.

Consider the menu of options below, and decide whether you want to add in more bias interrupters to different parts of the assignments process.

2) Implement Bias Interrupters in diversity work, office housework, and/or glamour work, detailed in the drop-down menu below.

Diversity Work

· Don’t assume employees who hold historically excluded identities can or would like to take on DEI work on top of their technical roles.

· Consider hiring a DEI director whose sole job function is to do the DEI work.

· Make it clear that this is valued work. Sometimes organizations say they highly value this kind of work—but they don’t. When it comes time for performance evaluations and promotion decisions, make sure that mentoring and DEI work are recognized and that employees are compensated for the extra time they spend on this work.

· Provide administrative support and adequate funding for people running diversity initiatives and Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).

Office Housework

· Don’t ask for volunteers. Women and people of color are more likely to volunteer because they are under subtle but powerful pressures to do so.

· Establish a rotation. A rotation is also helpful for many administrative tasks (e.g. taking notes, scheduling meetings, sending Zoom links). Rotating housework tasks like ordering lunch and planning parties is also an option if admins are unavailable.

· Hold everyone equally accountable. “I give it to women because they do it well and the men don’t,” is a common sentiment. This dynamic reflects an environment in which men suffer few consequences for doing a poor job on office housework, but women who do a poor job are seen as “prima donnas” or “not team players.”

· Use admins. If possible, assign office housework tasks to admins, e.g. planning birthday parties, scheduling meetings, ordering lunch.

· Try the “plus one”. Have a more junior person shadow someone more senior to develop new skills — and make sure they take notes.

Glamour Work

· Provide a bounceback. If you have individual assigners whose glamour work allocations is lopsided, hold a meeting to bring the problem to their attention. Work with them to figure out if either
a) the available pool for glamour work assignments is diverse but is not being tapped fully
or whether
b) only a few people have the requisite skills for glamour work assignments.
Read our Responses to Common Pushback and Identifying Bias in Assignments Guide to prepare.

If a diverse pool has the requisite skills…
· Have the supervisor implement a rotation to ensure fair access to plum assignments.

· Formalize the pool and institute accountability. Write down the list of people with the requisite skills and make it visible to the supervisor. Sometimes just being reminded of the pool can help. Have the supervisor track their allocation of glamour work going forward to measure progress. Research shows that accountability matters.

If the pool is not diverse…
· Re-visit your assumption that only one (or very few) employees can handle this assignment: is that true or is the supervisor in question just more comfortable working with those few people?

· Analyze how the pool was assembled. Does the supervisor allocate the glamour work by relying on self-promotion or volunteers? If so, that will often disadvantage women and people of color. Shift to more objective measures to create the pool based on skills and qualifications.

If the above aren’t relevant or don’t solve your problem, then it’s time to expand the pool:
· Development plan. Identify what skills or competencies an employee needs to be eligible for the high-profile assignments work and develop a plan to help the employee develop the requisite skills.

· Leverage existing HR policies. If your organization uses a competency-based system, or has a Talent Development Committee or equivalent, that’s a resource to help develop competencies so that career-enhancing assignments can be allocated fairly more fairly.

· Succession planning. Remember that having “bench strength” is important so that your department won’t be left scrambling if someone unexpectedly leaves the company.

· Shadowing and mentoring. Have a more-junior person shadow a more-experienced person during the high-profile assignment. Establish a mentoring program to help a broader range of junior people gain access to valued skills.

If you can’t expand your pool, re-frame the assignment so that more people could participate in it. Could you break up the assignment into discrete pieces so more people get the experiences they need?

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Equality Action Center. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Footnotes

Williams, J. C., & Dempsey, R. W. (2014). What works for women at work: Four patterns working women should know. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Cooper, M. (2021). Research: Women Leaders Took on Even More Invisible Work During the Pandemic. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2021/10/research-women-took-on-even-more-invisible-work-during-the-pandemic
Williams, J.C., Li, S., Rincon, R., & Finn, P. (2016). Climate Control: Gender and Racial Bias in Engineering? Center for WorkLife Law. UC Hastings College of the Law. Available at: https://worklifelaw.org/publications/Climate-Control-Gender-And-Racial-Bias-In-Engineering.pdf; Williams, J.C., Korn, R. M., Rincon, R., Finn, P. (2018) Walking the Tightrope: An Examination of Bias in India’s Engineering Workplace. Center for WorkLife Law. UC Hastings College of the Law. Available at: https://worklifelaw.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/10/Walking-the-Tightrope-Bias-Indias-Engineering-Workplace.pdf; Williams, J. C., Multhaup, M., Li, S., Korn, R. M. (2018). You Can’t Change What You Can’t See: Interrupting Racial & Gender Bias in the Legal Profession. American Bar Association & Minority Corporate Counsel Association. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/women/you-cant-change-what-you-cant-see-print.pdf; Williams, J.C., Korn, R., & Maas, R. (2021). The Elephant in the Well-Designed Room: An Investigation Into Bias in the Architecture Profession. https://worklifelaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/AIA_An_Investigation_Into_Bias_Study.pdf
Williams, J. C., Multhaup, M., Li, S., Korn, R. M. (2018)
Cech, E. A., & Waidzunas, T. J. (2021). Systemic inequalities for LGBTQ professionals in STEM. Science advances, 7(3).
Barrero, J.M., Bloom, N., & Davis, S.J. (2021). Why Working from Home Will Stick. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/why-working-home-will-stick; Combs, V. (2021). Slack Survey Finds That 97% of Black Knowledge Workers Want the Future of the Office to Be Remote or Hybrid. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/slack-survey-finds-97-of-black-knowledge-workers-want-the-future-of-the-office-to-be-remote-or-hybrid/
Babcock, L., Recalde, M. P., Vesterlund, L., & Weingart, L. (2017). Gender differences in accepting and receiving requests for tasks with low promotability. American Economic Review, 107(3), 714-47.doi: 10.1257/aer.20141734