Friday Facts: Manager’s Role in Advancing Women and Visible Minorities

Posted on Friday, November 30th, 2018

This week I’m sharing some research from the Harvard Business Review by Williams and Multhaup entitled ‘For Women and Minorities to Get Ahead, Managers Must Assign Work Fairly’ (read the full article here). I’ve chosen this as particularly relevant for us here at AC, as we see higher numbers of turnover from our Visible Minority employees than any other group.

There are two types of extra assignments at work:

1. Glamour work gets you noticed by higher-ups, gives you the opportunity to stretch your skills with a new challenge, and can lead to your next promotion. It’s the project for a major client, the opportunity to build out a new team, or the chance to represent the company at an industry conference.

2. Office housework happens outside of the spotlight. Some is administrative work that keeps things moving forward, like taking notes or finding a time everyone can meet. Some is emotional labor (“He’s upset — fix it.”). Some is work that’s important but undervalued, like initiating new processes or keeping track of contracts. This kind of assignment has to get done by someone, but it isn’t going to make that person’s career.

Guess who gets which type of extra assignment according to research?

· Female engineers of color were 35% less likely than white men to report having equal access to desirable assignments; white women were 20% less likely.

· For lawyers, women of color were almost 30% less likely than white men to say they had equal opportunity to high-quality assignments, and white women were 18% less likely.

 

How Team Managers Can Fix the Problem!

1. identify what the office housework is in your department and who is doing it. Make a list of regularly recurring housework tasks and ask your team how often they do each task and how much of their time it takes up (here’s a sample survey for guidance).

2. Don’t ask for volunteers when assigning these tasks – establish a system for making sure everyone takes a turn at office housework.

3. If there’s someone on your team who never gets asked to do office housework because they “don’t do it very well”. that’s a performance problem. It should be addressed like any other performance issue.

4. If you hear comments like “I ask women to plan the parties because they’re better at it” or “I ask women to do those kinds of things because they’re more organized.”, interrupt that thought pattern as that kind of thinking can lead to a toxic environment where women are expected to take on and excel at unrewarding tasks, while men’s time is protected for more remunerative work.

5. For new glamour work assignments, consider all eligible employees, not just the ones who come to mind first or who ask to do it. Formalize the pool of employees with the requisite skills by writing it down. Establish a rotation of plum assignments with the pool. While your rotation system for office housework can be somewhat arbitrary, your rotation for more important assignments should be strategic; you’ll want to match the job to the person much more carefully. Be methodical about how you hand out these tasks.


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