Giving Notice

Freada Kapor Klein featured in Human Resource Executives article “Calling it quits.” Excerpt:

Inappropriate — but not illegal — behaviors too often prompt employees to find other jobs. The offensive behavior is sometimes so subtle that managers fail to realize the problem, and sometimes includes diversity-promoting efforts that prompt unintended results.

Columbia News Services’ article “The racist in all of us: are subtle insults and indignities towards minorities oversights or something bigger?” Excerpt:

Carl Bell was waiting his turn to check in at his hotel. A well-regarded psychiatrist and academic, he was traveling for a TV appearance. The TV station had flown him first-class and sent a chauffeur-driven car to pick him up at the airport. But just before he stepped up to speak with the hotel clerk, a white man marched in and cut him off. Bell, who is black, was indignant. Do you think I’m waiting for a bus?” he demanded. “I’m standing right here!” The man claimed he simply hadn’t seen him.
To many, this would seem to be an ambiguous encounter. Perhaps the man simply had not seen Bell waiting in line. But to Bell, it was part of a pattern­one he says he sees virtually every day. The sheer number of negative interactions such as these has convinced him, and many others, that they are more than merely innocent oversights.

Freada Kapor Klein’s article “Do Snap Judgments Amount to Bias in the Workplace?” Excerpt:

So how does this impact the workplace? Actually, the better question might be: How doesn’t it impact the workplace? From letters of recommendation, resumes and hiring interviews to promotions, wages and job assignments, the unintended but inherent biases of our corporate leaders throw up barriers that are not the blatantly discriminatory practices that can be fought in the legalistic framework. These barriers are, perhaps, even more insidious, since they remain the largest impediment to success for people of color, women, and gays and lesbians in the United States.

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Freada Kapor Klein quoted in New York Times article “The Office Party, as a Tight Rope Walk.” Excerpt:

Nowhere are the hazards of workplace holiday celebrations more apparent than at parties, particularly those held at night…And, of course, the risk of sexual harassment is high. “We used to talk about harassment as a seasonal business because we got a flood of calls after holiday parties,” said Freada Kapor Klein, a consultant and diversity expert and the author of “Giving Notice: Why the Best and Brightest are Leaving the Workforce and How You Can Help Them Stay.” “Drinking, middle-aged men, young women in cocktail dresses and no spouses around — what were these companies thinking?”

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Freada Kapor Klein was featured in Pittsburgh Post Gazette article “Employment: Why Good Workers Leave Bad Workplaces.” Excerpt:

Bias at the office can drive good employees away. The key is to be open to the realization that bias exists and then to address it.

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Freada Kapor Klein was referenced in Anita Hill’s article “Our bittersweet sixteen.” Excerpt:

Despite high-profile suits, a woman’s chance of winning a valid sexual harassment case is by no means certain. My letters confirm that most women can’t afford or don’t care to file a lawsuit. In her book, “Giving Notice: Why the Best and Brightest Leave the Workplace and How You Can elp Them Stay,” Freada Kapor Klein recommends structural and institutional changes to eliminate the entrenched discrimination that permeates corporate settings so that fewer suits are needed.

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San Francisco Chronicle featured Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein’s article “Early Admissions Policies Give Children of the Rich an Edge.” Excerpt:

This week the College Board released its annual report on college pricing – and as many feared, tuitions continue to rise, while the average Pell Grant, the cornerstone of federal funding for higher education, failed for the fourth year in a row to keep pace with inflation.

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Freada Kapor Klein’s book Giving Notice: Why the Best and Brightest Leave the Workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay reviewed in the Miami Herald. Excerpt:

Klein looks at the problem from the angle of diversity. It’s an extremely worthwhile approach, since not taking individuals’ needs and backgrounds into consideration is a sure way to communicate to them that they do not matter.

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Freada Klein was quoted in the New York Times about office romance in “Boss’s Memo: Go Ahead, Date (With My Blessing).” Excerpt:

Attempts to regulate office relationships are not just meant to avoid sexual harassment claims. Romance among colleagues can lead to unfair and unethical treatment, and to a poisonous atmosphere that affects many others. In a book to be published later this month, “Giving Notice: Why the Best and the Brightest Leave the Workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay” (Jossey-Bass), Freada Kapor Klein explains how unproductive, even hostile, a work environment can be if there is a culture of crudeness or rampant extramarital affairs, especially those that cross lines of power and authority.

Yet Ms. Kapor Klein, the founder of the Level Playing Field Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes fairness in the workplace and in society, said that forbidding office dating, even between superiors and subordinates, is no solution. “The real issue is not that they’re sleeping with each other,” she said. “The real issue is that their emotional attachment to each other may get in the way of their business judgment.”

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Clarence Thomas’ memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” was published earlier this month. In it, he writes that Anita Hill was a mediocre employee, who was used by political opponents to make claims she had been sexually harassed. That week, the Women’s Media Center ran an op-ed by Freada Kapor Klein.  Excerpt:

Although the more blatant forms of unwanted sexual attention—the quid pro quo where a boss essentially tells an employee “sleep with me or you lose your job”—have decreased, more subtle forms persist. The incidence of unwanted sexual attention in the form of teasing, jokes, remarks or questions, remains at 11% annually for Caucasian women and 14% annually for women of color, according to the Level Playing Field Institute’s 2003 study, “How Fair.”

Read More at Womensmediacenter.com