Giving Notice

What can US businesses do to stem the hemorrhage of red ink that they suffer due to the voluntary turnover of professional and managerial employees? What do jobseekers need to know to see through Corporate America’s empty diversity platitudes and identify potential employers’ true practices? The answers to these and other workplace fairness-related questions are found in Giving Notice: Why the Best and Brightest are Leaving the Workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay by Freada Kapor Klein and the Level Playing Field Institute.

Giving Notice offers a first-of-its-kind look at how hidden bias and hidden barriers are having a costly and profoundly negative impact on Corporate America. Despite the fact that companies are spending billions on programs to create more diverse and welcoming environments, the results, for many, have fallen far short of success. For example: Why are there so few minority CEOs? Why aren’t more women, people of color, and gays and lesbians reaching higher rungs on the corporate ladder? Why is genuine talent being overlooked and squandered?

Klein and her team of co-authors (Kimberly Allers and Pulitzer Prize winner Martha Mendoza) offer no-nonsense recommendations in a format that is low on jargon and high on readability. Findings from the Level Playing Field Institute’s groundbreaking and rigorous nationwide study on voluntary turnover due to unfairness are presented alongside real-life stories gathered by Klein during her decades of work as a researcher, trainer, and consultant—including focus groups and individual interviews with thousands of employees from companies like Microsoft, Home Depot, Goldman Sachs, and Skadden Arps.

Giving Notice offers readers a comprehensive blueprint for understanding and correcting the thought errors that are rampant in many of today’s workplaces. When these errors go unchecked, the economic, societal, and human capital consequences can be catastrophic. The book challenges readers to re-examine their ideas about biases, barriers, stereotyping, and other forms of workplace unfairness, and to rethink “commonly accepted business practices” that will continue to hold US companies back, even as they begin to face severe talent shortages.

Book Reviews

You capture that “tired-ness” that different people often feel in a
“mainstream” environment – the little things that just tire people out
over time, or wear them down. It can be so invisible to us when we’re
the ones in the majority, and so all-consuming when we’re not.
Blatant harrassment is, of course, a major problem, but in the absence
of it, people seem to assume everything is ok.

You put it in a way that I think any audience can hear. I will share
this with my business school friends, I can use it to help train
colleagues in one of my jobs. It doesn’t attack the sometimes)
well-meaning white/male/straight person who really isn’t aware of the
impact of their actions.

Freada Kapor Klein, Ph.D.

Freada is a pioneer in the field of workplace bias and diversity, having designed and analyzed surveys, conducted training, and consulted to workplaces around the world. At age 24, she co-founded the first organization in the United States focused on sexual harassment. In 1984, she obtained her Ph.D. in social policy and research from the Heller School at Brandeis University and served as the first Director of Employee Relations at Lotus Development Corporation.

For two decades, Freada has had a wide-ranging consulting clientele—including top tier international law firms, Wall Street investment banks, and high-flying Silicon Valley startups—with a focus on issues of bias, harassment, and discrimination. She has served as an expert witness in dozens of lawsuits and has been an often-quoted voice in the business press and national broadcast media during the past 15 years.

Freada is the founder of the Level Playing Field Institute, a non-profit organization promoting innovative approaches to fairness in higher education and the workplace. The Institute is dedicated to revealing and removing barriers from the classroom to the boardroom. She is also co-founder of the IDEAL Scholars Fund, which invests in high-caliber, underrepresented students of color at the University of California at Berkeley, Freada’s undergraduate alma mater. [fklein AT lpfi DOT org]