- The new “Women in the Workplace” report surveyed 423 participants representing 12 million employees.
- It found woman are more likely than their male counterparts to lead DEI and wellbeing initiatives.
- Yet this work is rarely recognized. Experts say it must be weaved into reviews and raises.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
A recent study by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company uncovered what many feared to be true: Women leaders continue to take the lead on emotional labor at work.
Women are more likely than their male colleagues to be allies to women of color, champion diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts outside their formal job responsibilities, and provide emotional support to their teams, according to the latest “Women in the Workplace” report, which surveyed 423 company participants representing over 12 million employees.
However, these efforts are often overlooked and undervalued by employers — despite the fact that corporations say they prioritize employee wellbeing and DEI.
According to the study, 90% percent of companies say that DEI is a top or very important priority and 60% report they’ve expanded or added mental-health benefits as a response to the pandemic. In fact, 86% of companies say it’s “very or extremely” critical that managers support employee wellbeing, yet only 25% formally recognize this work in performance reviews, the study finds. The trend is similar for DEI work.
“COVID laid bare the places where women are uniquely stepping up in the office,” Alexis Krivkovich, a managing partner for McKinsey’s Bay Area office, told Insider. “Companies are prioritizing and focusing on employee wellbeing, mental health, and diversity and inclusion, and we are seeing that women are disproportionately providing this type of support.”
Courtesy of Alexis Krivkovich
More than 65,000 employees responded to the study’s Employee Experience Survey, which revealed about 61% of women managers regularly practice allyship — for example, advocating for women of color and speaking out against bias — compared to 48% of men managers. It also found that about one in five women senior leaders spends a substantial amount of time on DEI work that’s not central to their job, compared to fewer than one in 10 men senior leaders. 61% of women who do DEI work outside their formal job say they do so because they believe deeply in the benefits of DEI, compared to 53% of men, the study reported.
“Women are showing up as better leaders across so many dimensions,” Rachel Thomas, cofounder and CEO of LeanIn.Org, told Insider. “They are getting into the nitty gritty of helping employees manage their workflow, doing the real work of recruiting underrepresented candidates, and working on the employee resource groups more often than their male colleagues.”
Latinx employees reported similar concerns in the 2021 Prospanica Workplace Inclusion & Equity Report released October 4. The burden of arranging DEI training and implementing DEI programs unfairly falls to Latinx employees, with 63% of Latinx employees indicating that they felt the burden of teaching or explaining DEI issues to their colleagues, according to the study by Kanarys, a DEI technology company, and Prospanica, a national association of Hispanic MBAs and business professionals.
Courtesy of Mandy Price
“If companies are going to continue to express that DEI is an important priority for their organization, they need to ensure employees are being compensated for their work,” Mandy Price, cofounder and CEO of Kanarys, told Insider. While some law, accounting, and consulting firms are starting to put DEI metrics into their performance reviews, more organizations need to take these steps, she added.
The reality is most corporations aren’t rewarding employees for DEI work. “It’s not a key performance measure, it’s more of a marketing initiative for most corporations,” Kim Folsom, founder of Founders First Capital Partners, a San Diego-based firm supporting businesses founded by women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and military veterans, told Insider.
Courtesy of Kim Folsom
Essential contributions related to DEI and employee mental health should not be overlooked, Thomas said. “When employees believe their manager cares about them, they are less likely to leave an organization and more likely to be happy in their roles, which is vitally important as companies struggle to retain and hire employees,” she said. At least 3.6 million workers have quit their jobs for the fourth month in a row.
These tasks are even more essential than ‘office housework’
Despite the critical need for managers to support their employees, Thomas worries that work focused on DEI and employee wellbeing will become the new “office housework” similar the other unrewarded tasks that have fallen on women, such as organizing company events, taking notes in brainstorming sessions, and serving on a low-ranking committee.
Courtesy of Rachel Thomas
A 2018 Harvard Business Review study found that women are more likely to receive office housework requests because they said yes 76% of the time, compared with men who agreed to these tasks 51% of the time. The HBR study also found that these tasks don’t lead to promotions.
“The gap between what is valuable versus what is rewarded needs to be narrowed because women are doing a lot of the work that is valued but not rewarded,” Linda Babcock, a professor of economics and head of the Social and Decision Sciences Department at Carnegie Mellon University and an author of the 2018 Harvard Business Review study, told Insider.
Courtesy of Linda Babcock
However, Babcock said, calling this work “office housework” mischaracterizes it because it doesn’t capture the full range and importance of these activities. The work of mentoring people, developing people, and making sure teams are working well is hugely critical. “This work builds the human capital of the company, but management might not even know that someone did that work because it is invisible,” Babcock, who wrote a book about unrewarded work with colleagues that will be published this spring, added.
Diversity and employee retention need to be tied to performance reviews
To prevent DEI and employee wellbeing initiatives from becoming tasks that don’t lead to promotions, companies need to tie diversity results and employee retention to manager’s performance reviews and reward that work financially, Krivkovich said.
Specific metrics could be added to performance reviews, including whether a leader is:
- Showing up at DEI trainings
- Sponsoring or mentoring underrepresented employees
- Actively recruiting underrepresented job candidates
- Participating in and helping to running ERGs
Performance metrics could also focus on the transferable skills an employee is learning from taking the lead on these additional tasks, Cynthia Orduña, a DEI consultant at Peoplism, said.
Courtesy of Cynthia Orduña
“There is a set of actions organizations can look at to measure leadership’s participation, reward those who deliver it, and raise the bar for those who don’t,” Krivkovich added. In fact, the “Women in the Workplace” study found that employees are 13% less likely to feel burned out when their company recognizes managers who support employee wellbeing and DEI work, Thomas said.
For a woman of color trying to advance up the corporate ladder, it can be a valuable experience to run, lead, and champion a DEI effort, Regina Gwynn, co-creator of Black Women Talk Tech, a membership organization of Black women tech entrepreneurs, told Insider. “There is validation in educating the people you are around every single day,” she said.
Courtesy of Regina Gwynn
However, if these tasks aren’t valued by management, an employee might decide to just do her core job and give up this important work even if she knows she is making a difference, Orduña said.
“If employee development or DEI activities are important, then companies need to include them in the performance evaluations so that men will start doing them, too,” Babcock added.
