A new report suggests that Black women are more likely to face significant challenges when working with mostly white teams.
This assertion comes from a Harvard Kennedy School working paper released in November.
In a landmark study that analyzed the job outcomes of more than 9,000 new employees in a professional services firm from 2014 to 2020, it was found that Black women who got hired onto whiter teams were deemed as “low performers” and over time, were less likely to receive promotions, or even stay with the company.
Having fewer billable hours is a huge setback, because in that firm, like many firms.
“One of the main metrics used to define employee success is billable hours and so, regardless of your race and gender, employees who report lower billable hours are also likely to receive lower performance scores,” said co-author Elizabeth Linos, who is an Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor of Public Policy and Management.
She adds: “The ‘penalty’ ― how much your performance evaluation drops based on a reduction in billables ― is larger for Black women than other groups.”
A Huffpost analysis of the report wrote that Black women were the only demographic group to face significantly worse promotion and retention outcomes as a result of being placed on a whiter team. The study showed that when the share of white co-workers went up by 14 percentage points, that was associated with a 10.6 percentage-point increase in turnover for Black women.
“Ultimately, I interpret these findings as confirmation that while as a society, we may be making progress in diversifying workplaces on some dimensions, Black women may still face additional hurdles for promotion at work,” Linos told the outlet. “Seemingly neutral practices around staffing and promotion that rely on peers and networking can have a negative impact on equity at work,” Linos said. “We need more research on how white employees can adjust their behavior to ensure they don’t contribute to existing racialized and gendered dynamics at work.”