A Business Case for Change: The Evidence is in the Data!
Carol Hymowitz recently wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal about the continued gap in progress for women and people of color with respect to pay and power in American companies, even 40 years post the outlawing of employment discrimination. Consider these pay discrepancies between different demographic groups and white males in 2005:
Black men earned 74% of the wages of white males; Hispanic men earned 58%; Asian-American men earned just 1% less than white men. Full-time female employees earned 77% of all men’s median wages. Further broken down by race, Asian-American women earned 78% of the median annual pay of white men; white women earned 73%; black women earned 63%; and Hispanic women earned 52%.*
Though women represent half of all managers and professionals in the workforce, their leadership representation has dwindled from 16.4% of corporate-officer posts at Fortune 500 companies in 2005, to 15.4% in 2007, according to the research group, Catalyst. Women of color hold a humble 2% of these positions.
These less than comforting statistics beg the question of why such a gap continues to exist for women and people of color. Is it their own fault? Some argue that such discrepancies could be attributable to women prioritizing motherhood and worklife balance over the partner track for example, or a lack of assertion on the part of women and people of color to demand promotions and navigate their own advancement.
But as Giving Notice contends, it is critical for corporate leadership to consider what tone they set and to identify institutional barriers in their companies that may be derailing employees, specifically women, gays and lesbians, and people of color. Why is this important? The 2007 Corporate Leavers Survey unveiled that over 2 million managers and professionals leave their jobs every year solely due to unfairness—mostly in the form of hidden biases and barriers—at an annual cost of $64 billion dollars to companies. It is therefore very much the responsibility of the employer to take actionable measures against hidden barriers in the workplace and to ensure a level playing field exists for all employees with regards to hiring, pay, promotions, and career advancement.
Giving Notice encourages employers to start by proactively gathering data (without fear of later litigation) on unfair practices within their organizations that negatively impact employees. Traditionally, the easier diversity approach has consisted of throwing millions of dollars towards cosmetic, one-size-fits-all diversity programs and good marketing to make the “Best of…” lists. But in reality, such hands-off solutions coupled with smoke and mirrors have not effectively addressed the issues at hand nor have they yielded sustainable results, as evident in today’s failing diversity efforts at many companies. For those executives who challenge whether fairness and diversity issues exist and are really worth addressing—the evidence and impetus for change (at least from a business perspective) are in the data.
*2005 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey (the latest year for which data is available)
