CEO and founder of AllVoices, the employee feedback management platform empowering anyone to report workplace wrongdoing 100% anonymously.
getty
It's all over the news: Amazon, Facebook, Disney and McDonald’s. These are just a few of the companies that have been in the news in recent years for discrimination and harassment lawsuits from employees. These aren’t just isolated incidents of discrimination.
Despite being illegal in the workplace, discrimination is actually a widespread issue, with 55% of workers having experienced discrimination at their current workplace, according to my company's new report, “The State of Workplace Discrimination 2021.” It’s not just us finding these statistics. Glassdoor reports that 61% of workers in the U.S. have experienced or witnessed discrimination, and Gallup found that one in four Black and Hispanic workers have experienced discrimination at work over the last year as well. The Williams Institute also reports that 45.5% of LGBTQ workers have experienced unfair treatment at work, and 48.8% of transgender employees have experienced discrimination.
Part of what’s leading to these public lawsuits and media headlines isn’t just the fact that discrimination is happening, but that it’s not being adequately addressed by organizations. Our report uncovered that of those workers who reported discrimination, a little over half saw their issues fully resolved.
Workplaces rely on their employees to alert them to ongoing issues that can hurt the culture and affect a worker's experience at work. Yet workers also rely on their leaders to take measures to address those issues. If organizations aren't taking initiative, or don't have streamlined processes in place to track and resolve reports, employees will be more reluctant to report. They may also leave a workplace where discrimination isn't addressed.
How can organizations do a better job at surfacing and addressing discrimination? One solution is improving your employee feedback methods. Here's how:
Evaluate Current Approaches
The first step in addressing discrimination in the workplace is not only understanding the scope of the problem but addressing your current tools for feedback. While organizations may have measures in place to prevent discrimination, the numbers round occurrence and non-resolution beg the question: Are those measures working?
Not only evaluate what methods of feedback are working—meaning that employees are actually using them—but also understand the reasons for non-reporting, including fear of retaliation, not thinking they’ll be believed if they report, or not thinking it’s a big enough issue to report. A recent survey from Leadership IQ found that only 29% of employees say that management "always listens to concerns about discrimination without blame or defensiveness,” and that only 23% of women say that top leadership would always take action if they reported discrimination. So, don’t just work on the tools—work on trust as well.
Get Employee Involvement
As you reevaluate your tools and approach for reporting, bring employees into the process. Ask them for feedback on your feedback process, and include them in planning and strategy meetings. It will not only give your employees the opportunity to tell you what they need in terms of feedback tools and messaging, but it'll also demonstrate your commitment to combat discrimination. This can help increase employee buy-in, especially if initiatives haven't been successful in the past.
Implement New Tools And Approaches
In order to address discrimination, you need to know when and where it's happening in your workplace. This means ensuring that employees are reporting issues they see and that they're aware of the ways in which to do so. We've found that employees are more likely to report issues of discrimination through anonymous channels, so ensure you're offering truly anonymous channels. According to research from Qualtrics, “To collect honest feedback, employees need to know that they can be free to share in a confidential way: one that prevents leaders or stakeholders from connecting their responses directly to their identifiable data.”
Having processes where reports can be collected, assigned and tracked can also help with ensuring reports are addressed and resolved efficiently.
Communication And Normalization
According to our findings, the biggest reason why employees don't report is that they don't think what they experienced was a big enough deal to report. This means they aren't sure what they want their employers to know and may assume their workplace has a threshold at which discrimination becomes “bad enough” to report (when, really, all discrimination should be reported). Some workers might not even believe their workplace wants them to give feedback on their experiences.
Another way to combat discrimination is to be vocal about wanting feedback and clearly communicate what discrimination is and how to recognize it. Communicate the importance of feedback at staff meetings, in newsletters, in one-on-ones and through other means in order to stress the importance of it and to normalize the conversation around it. Also, consistently mentioning the feedback process and tools that are available to give feedback means that when there is an issue, employees will know how to report it without searching for resources.
Data And Iteration
Finally, how will you know if you're curbing discrimination if you don't have data around your efforts? Make sure you're tracking reports and their resolutions. Analyze the data on where the reports are coming from and how successful you’ve been in resolving them. This practice allows you to see what's working, change what's not and iterate for better results.
Take Steps Toward A Discrimination-Free Workplace
The fight to end discrimination in your organization will take commitment, but staying out of the news and away from lawsuits, and improving your workplace culture and your workers’ experiences—higher engagement, higher morale, higher retention, and more—is worth the effort.
Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?
