Category: DEIJ

Fostering Connection in the Workplace

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

Research shows that the strength of co-workers’ connections in the workplace plays a key role in determining levels of team engagement and performance. Directly correlating to higher performance, collaboration, levels of innovative thinking, good working relationships are one of most important factors that contribute to job satisfaction.

The long periods of physical isolation people went through during the pandemic heightened the value of this link. 

In a recent webinar “Fostering Connection in the New World of Work,” Praxis Labs Curriculum Lead Dr. Olivia Holmes explains the link between feelings of belonging and performance in the workplace. She references American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s renowned theory of human motivation, often referred to as the Hierarchy of Needs, which proposes that in order to achieve self-actualization, people need to first have their “base needs” met. In addition to physical well-being and safety, this includes feelings of love and belonging.

How companies can support greater connection in the workplace

And despite companies’ best efforts to preserve a culture of belonging since the pandemic, 60% of employees report feeling less connected to their coworkers in the past year. And more than half of employees who left their jobs in the last year said they lacked a sense of belonging. This build-up of disengagement and employee turnover results in trillions of dollars lost globally per year. 

To remedy this, companies like Meta, Amazon, and Starbucks are calling for employees to return to work fully in person, assuming a lack of face-to-face interaction is to blame for decreased engagement. But this doesn’t have to be the answer, especially for employees who prefer the flexibility that remote or hybrid work offers. 

Dr. Holmes suggests that all companies, whether remote, hybrid, or in-person, can foster greater connection and belonging.

“The advancement of technology has made this possible, literally shortening the distance between people,” she says. Noting how the internet has been proven to make expressing one’s “true self” easier, she cites frequent contact and mutual disclosure as key to building and maintaining strong co-working relationships.

Regardless of whether your employees are working on-site or remotely, there are a number of proven ways to foster social connection in the workplace.

1. Make sure you are meeting your team’s physiological and safety needs

Employees who don’t feel their basic needs are being met will disengage, no matter how many team-building activities you schedule. When benefits like mental health apps and fitness stipends are connected to a wellness strategy that supports employee safety and well-being, companies can see improvements in connection, belonging, and engagement. 

2. Get people together, whether remote or in person 

Whether it’s just once or twice a year, provide opportunities for employees to get together in-person at a team or functional level. Throughout the year, plan activities that promote team-building, vulnerability, and ways to set inclusive team norms and ways of working.

3. Be able to articulate and share group goals, norms, values, roles and responsibilities

One of the biggest culprits of employee burnout and disengagement is not being able to connect one’s scope of work to the company’s larger mission, vision, and goals. Rallying employees around a shared purpose can help new and existing employees establish closer bonds and team cohesion that promotes better collaboration and innovation.

4. Start at the top 

When leaders communicate transparently through turbulent times, it helps build trust that informs employee’s perceptions of leadership and company culture. When people feel anxious about economic headwinds, they are more likely to seek jobs elsewhere. This can be a challenge, especially at a time when businesses are trying to tighten their recruiting costs and focus on upskilling and reskilling existing employees in critical areas. 

5. Leverage emerging tech to build human skills 

Advances in learning technology that helps people build skills like empathy, connection, and interpersonal communication, can help move the needle on business metrics like equity, manager effectiveness, and productivity. 

Working better together 

A robust workplace social life positively correlates strongly with fulfillment, pride, and meaning. When you invest in equitable access to networking and create opportunities for informal contact and collaboration, stronger and more meaningful employee relationships will follow.

Watch the Webinar

The most common leadership skill gap – empathy

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

Layoffs can be an unfortunate reality for businesses forced to adapt to unfavorable market conditions. But at a time when the importance of empathy in the workplace is most critical for leaders, some companies are electing to do the opposite; from entire departments being laid off in a Slack message to hybrid policies being replaced with “hardcore” return-to-office plans.

Coupled with the stories of layoffs in Big Tech, impacting 70,000 workers this year, these reports sent shockwaves across the global economy. And not because they foreshadowed a recession of apocalyptic scale. The surgical approach these companies took to reducing headcount, characterized by short-notice communications and shaky rationale, confused workers and made company leaders appear untrustworthy.

Their approach signals that one of the modern workplace’s widest skill gaps, empathy, needs addressing now more than ever.

Slashing wellness benefits and DEI programs during economic downturns might save money in the short-term, but ultimately will end up costing more in the long run.

Weathering tough times with compassion

A growing body of evidence supports the importance of empathy in the workplace. Empathetic leadership is crucial to a company maintaining high levels of engagement, retention, innovation, and productivity. In the absence of this kind of leadership, workers tend to look for employment elsewhere. 73% of employees are considering leaving their jobs for other positions. Of those, 74% would consider accepting a pay-cut for the right role. This suggests that their search is motivated by factors like growth opportunities, exciting work, flexibility in their schedules, and cultures that support well-being and belonging, in addition to better pay.

Our current market climate and employee needs begs the question: how can employers deliver on a winning employee experience that makes people want to stay? It starts with compassion and trust.

A 2023 Workhuman Workforce Trends report found that almost half of workers today feel undervalued. And over half of workers believe their organization’s leadership would lie to employees if it would benefit the business. At a time when there’s stress and uncertainty around job security, how companies navigate cutbacks and layoffs will determine employee trust in leadership going forward.

Fortunately, empathy is a skill leaders can learn. Making a conscious effort to build empathetic leadership among executive teams and people leaders is a great start toward building lasting trust. Here are steps you can take:

Focus on employee experience and retention

There is a real risk for businesses that undervalue the importance of empathy in the workplace. When the pendulum of the labor market swings back in employees’ favor, they will likely leave for companies that held on to their ESG and DEI commitments. 

Companies charting out their employee engagement strategies for the remainder of 2023 should be advised: now is not the time to walk back commitments to employee experience and DEI, especially without consulting your employees first or providing adequate transition support. It could be your costliest mistake. Research by SHRM suggests that for each employee who quits, the cost to the company could be 50% – 250% of that person’s salary.  

Even if you’re not anticipating having to make cuts this year, you can still take steps to encourage an open, honest dialogue with employees who are feeling anxious about economic headwinds.

Listen to your people 

Decisions that impact your employees day-to-day lives should generally be arrived at collectively, with their input considered. 

Earlier this month, Disney mandated a 4-day in-office policy that met considerable pushback from employees. Employees issued a petition that the new policy is “likely to cause long-term harm to the company” and will “lead to forced resignations.” The petition received over 2,300 signatures, many of them from working parents. One employee told the Washington Post that workers were feeling “betrayed.”  “Workers feel like they did a really good job of demonstrating trust and showing up during the pandemic,” he said. “Coming back to the office through a mandate seems punitive, and it certainly isn’t something most workers were consulted on.”

This blow to morale and company trust could have been mitigated had Disney’s leaders been transparent (i.e. provided data-informed rationale for the change) or taken actions that showed empathy and a commitment to collaborative problem-solving.

Most recently we’ve seen this kind of empathetic leadership attempted at Zoom: Following an announcement of a 15% staff cut, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan pledged to take a 98% pay cut and forgo his bonus. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger did something similar to offset layoffs (albeit at less of a personal cost). Do these small tokens of solidarity compensate for the thousands of jobs lost? No. But they show leadership is invested in preserving its workers’ good-will and trust in leadership.

Continue to invest in tools for empathy education

Despite significant evidence that DEI is considered a top priority by key stakeholders, a recent report showed that when companies need to cut costs, HR and DEI programs are among the first to go. Categorizing these necessary HR functions as “nice to have” rather than “need to have” only calls company leaders’ empathy into question.

How company leaders understand (or don’t understand) the importance of empathy in the workplace sets the standard for an entire organization. Leveraging the perspective-taking power of immersive technologies is one proven way to ensure your people have the resources they need to become effective, empathetic leaders. 

When learning is paired with opportunities for open and honest discussion, you ensure that grievances don’t go unspoken. When employees see leaders making an effort on this front, they are more likely to see them as trustworthy.

One of our learners shares, “More conversations around DEI are happening and people seem to be genuinely excited to keep the conversations and actions going. It’s evident that it’s important to the organization, which is awesome.” When employees see their leadership is committed to building a people-centered culture, retention soars. More than half of our learners express that they are more likely to stay at their company because of Praxis Labs training. 

The importance of empathetic leadership in the workplace

We can never know for certain whether tough times are coming. But we can better prepare ourselves for when they do. Empathetic workplaces that encourage open and honest conversation, active listening, and cultures of learning and growth, are the best positioned to stay resilient during turbulent times.

3 tips to support Black employees all year round

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

Black History Month is coming to a close, but DEI-minded companies’ work to empower and support Black employees is far from finished. 

“While Black History Month creates an opening to engage in important conversations, we advise our clients and partners to think about their Black employees’ experience all year round,” said Praxis’ Co-founder & CEO Elise Smith in a recent article with HR Today.

Praxis surveyed platform users to better understand the range of Black employee experiences and found that Black American respondents were twice as likely as any other demographic group to select race-based microaggressions as a top concern at their company.

The report also revealed the top areas Black employees find most important in the workplace. 

  • The chance for genuine career advancement (31%) 
  • Inclusive and transparent hiring processes (23%)  
  • Pay equity (15%) 

 

Career advancement, hiring, and pay equity top Black employees’ concerns.

“The data from learners on our platform reveals that Black Americans disproportionately experience race-based microaggressions in the workplace. Moreover, they believe race-based microaggressions pose barriers to their individual and their company’s success,” said Smith, about the results. 

Translating data into action

Here are three actions we recommend business leaders take to support Black employees year-round:

Listen to your people 

Regularly polling Black employees invites them to share their workplace concerns and flag areas where their experience could be improved. Open dialogue and active listening helps build empathetic, collaborative teams that spark innovation. We recommend business leaders leverage this data to better identify areas for improvement. Then, you can more strategically allocate company resources that speak to Black employees’ concerns and drive real impact.  

Empower Black employees to reach their career goals

Concerned glass ceilings are preventing Black leaders from advancing to more senior roles in your organization? We recommend launching a mentorship program that encourages Black employees to network and learn from one another. 

The “Black Googler Network” at Google has 35K members and collaborates with HR to set hiring targets and direct L&D investment, such as the launch of focused onboarding programs. Morgan Stanley, Uber, and others leverage similar programs to drive improvements for their Black employees’ experience at work.

Continue to invest in DEI programs

Investing in leadership to develop human skills that promote an equitable and inclusive workplace culture is proven to drive more sustainable business outcomes. Methods like immersive and experiential learning help build empathy and provide opportunities to practice new behaviors and interventions that could create more equity and inclusion — from how to give feedback to how to de-escalate a difficult conversation. 

“From there, team members can apply their learning in the workplace, driving real behavior change at scale,” says Smith.

Unlocking potential

​​At Praxis, we believe that people success is business success. By encouraging open, honest conversations with your Black employees, and committing to actions that support them, you build on your DEI commitments and foster a workplace that supports everyone to reach their true performance potential.

How People Leaders Can Use Data and Analytics to Drive DEIJ Impact: Q&A with Elise Smith

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

HR Exchange brought together Praxis Labs Co-founder & CEO Elise Smith and Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio for a thought-provoking conversation about how to bring data and learning together to create meaningful outcomes for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) initiatives. 

In part one of this Q&A, read what Elise has to say about Praxis’ philosophy of the workplace, how DEIJ impact drives business value, the power of immersive learning, and much more. Then, check back for part two, where Maria delves deeper into analytics, intersectionality, and pay equity. 

Maria Colacurcio: To start, what brought you to this work? What does workplace equity and inclusion mean to you? 

Elise Smith: Diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice work is personal work for me, not just because of my lived experiences, but those of my family. 

When I think about what an equitable and inclusive workplace looks like and what it means, I like to unpack what we’re all driving towards: The goal is to have a more just workplace and a more just society. How we get there is by removing the barriers to equity and inclusion, and really driving towards better outcomes for everyone. 

That’s not just for the people who work in our companies, but for the people we’re serving as well. We remove those barriers by first identifying what they are, then by uncovering gaps and the distance that we need to travel to close them. 

And it all boils down to investing in our people to achieve those goals. This is something we’ve thought deeply about at Praxis Labs. How do we embed equitable and inclusive policies, practices, systems, and structures from the very beginning of our company? 

It’s not just about hiring diverse teams — although that’s a great place to start. It’s ensuring that we can support those teams across the employee lifecycle by giving them the tools and access points they need to progress in their careers and feel like they belong. The way we do that is by offering training and development. 

Working across differences and knowing how to show up in difficult conversations is not something we innately know how to do. So we need to provide more opportunities to learn and to lean into these types of empathetic, human-centered leadership. 

The bottom line is that equitable and inclusive workplaces work for everyone. They steer us towards a future of work where people feel valued enough to bring their authentic selves to work, and in turn bring their best and brightest ideas. That’s where teams get their competetive edge. 

MC: How do you address the argument that this is just “woke capitalism?” That DEIJ isn’t fundamental for businesses and organizations to get better or be more durable, more profitable, or able to overcome the volatility that’s currently happening. How do you respond to that? 

ES: Often, workplaces are the most diverse spaces we enter — the first time we have to interact and work across differences. Sometimes people think about diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) training as only helping folks who come from underrepresented backgrounds or marginalized identities. I think that’s the wrong way of looking at it, because DEIJ work is really about helping all people collaborate and work better together. 

DEIJ is about helping us feel comfortable expressing our ideas, understanding barriers that prevent people from reaching their potential, and creating and challenging each other so that we can have the best outcomes. It’s about being more innovative, more profitable, and more durable. 

It all starts with human skills that we often refer to as “soft” skills. It starts with being able to step into a courageous or difficult conversation and acknowledging intersectional identities and systems of structure and power when they’re at play. It’s also being able to feel confident in those conversations and in making decisions knowing that you aren’t causing harm. 

I hear the concern around “woke capitalism” that it’s “just one more thing to do.” But really it is all about driving value — because people success is business success

MC: What do you think about data and training working hand in hand? Especially because you are doing this immersive experience that’s so different from the one-off training that is immediately forgotten. Can you talk about what you’re seeing from some of your clients’ experiences? 

ES: Often, asking folks to invest even more of themselves into the workplace to achieve inclusive outcomes can feel like a lot. That’s why it’s important for L&D and DEI leaders to make learning personally and contextually relevant to learners. And they also want to know that their investment will yield meaningful results. 

That’s why our approach to training and development starts with the evidence. What’s in the research? What are we seeing academically in practitioner work? What are interventions that are actually proven to move the needle on DEIJ?

Then, instead of the one-and-done training format that we know doesn’t work, we develop continuous and reinforced learning and practice moments, which are directly tied to long-term memory building and connecting learning theory to real-world action. 

Data and analytics is integral to this work. We look at not only how folks are progressing in and completing content, but how they’re growing on our competencies and how they’re feeling about their workplaces’ culture and policies. 

We put folks in the driver’s seat by giving them self-directed learning. They’re able to go through workplace scenarios and practice encountering barriers to equity as themselves, as a bystander, and as someone complicit in the incident. They get to practice self-advocating or advocating on behalf of others as an ally or upstander, as well as repairing harm after making a mistake. 

The immersive experience of going through multiple perspectives in workplace scenarios is really core to building empathy for experiences different from your own. It’s also core to being able to identify barriers to equity in the workplace, as well as being able to actually intervene in the moment. 

Beyond learning and practice, we get a lot of feedback from our partners around employees’ experiences within their workplaces. We ask how they want to see equity and inclusion prioritized, and then we’re able to give feedback to that client, and further break down those insights by demographic factors such as race, age, and gender.. 

For example, one of our clients used our platform data to realize that Black and Latinx women weren’t accessing mentorship and sponsorship opportunities the same way other demographics are. Equipped with this data, leaders were then able to ask: how can we create and invest in those communities and ensure they can take advantage of growth opportunities? 

It’s also about understanding how you can use existing pulse surveys and people analytics to measure learning impact. One of our clients was able to filter a recent employee engagement survey by managers who went through our training compared to managers who didn’t. They looked at differences in inclusion surveys, engagement scores, and how their teams felt. 

They found that folks who went through our trainings were more likely to practice inclusive and equitable behaviors and create teams that feel more included. The ultimate result was people who feel like they belong, and who are more likely to stay and recommend others to work there. 

MC: I’d also like to ask about folks that have been the recipients of consistent microaggressions or have been in situations where they don’t feel as included or as if they belong. What happens to them, in terms of engagement, when they watch their leaders or their colleagues go through this training and actually start to change?

ES: As a Black woman myself, I don’t always feel comfortable standing up and then naming when something’s amiss. Being aware of those moments helps me understand areas that I can improve and be a better advocate for myself and on behalf of others.

What we hear from a lot of folks who share similar intersectional identities of the characters in our learning experiences is the value of being seen and validating their lived experiences. Being seen is one of the most powerful ways that you can feel that you belong and that you’re included. 

Another thing that we hear from these learners is that they feel like a burden was removed from them. So often when you come from a marginalized identity, there is a burden of proof that you are experiencing mistreatment in your workplace. 

You are sometimes asked to share out trauma, to share out pain, to share out moments of bias or discrimination for the education of your colleagues. Many of our learners say that it’s such a relief to not have to play that role, that these immersive experiences can help with that education and empathy-building. 

Lastly, it’s about practice. It’s not just building up the muscle to self-advocate. It’s also about having conversations with your colleagues and teams about why self-advocacy isn’t always a solution. We often need to zoom out from the interpersonal level to focus on systems and structures, and how those can be improved to support equitable and inclusive workplaces.

 

Watch the full Q&A

Why Disability Inclusion Strengthens Your Company and How to Achieve It

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

“Nothing about us without us.” This is the global slogan for the disability rights movement. It means that nothing should be decided for people with disabilities without their presence, participation, and inclusion. 

While the movement has achieved a great deal of progress since its founding in the 1960s, people with disabilities still face many challenges in the corporate world. They face exclusion from decision-making and also from consideration within workplace diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice initiatives. 

In fact, according to a report from the Return On Disability Group, while 90% of companies claim to prioritize diversity, only 4% consider disability in those initiatives. This is a staggering statistic considering the CDC’s estimate that 1 in 4 U.S. adults—61 million people—live with a  cognitive, physical, or emotional disability that impacts major life activities. 

Companies cannot consider themselves truly inclusive if they continue down this path. And it hurts them from far more than just a PR angle. To remedy the issue, business leaders must first understand the challenges people with disabilities face in the workplace. And then take concrete, informed actions to better recruit and retain a truly diverse workforce.

Diagnosing the Problem: Obstacles to Disability Inclusion in the Workplace

For many people with disabilities, the obstacles begin before they even get the job or enter an office. Even the application process can be extremely exclusionary. Example issue areas can include: 

  • The format of the application
  • Online accessibility
  • The language used in job descriptions
  • Requirements for physical tasks (even when the role does not demand them)
  • In-person interview requirements (even when remote is allowed)  

These items are often coded and hard to detect by the average, well-meaning person. They could even reflect an unconscious bias that needs to be unpacked.

Even when a candidate successfully navigates the application process and gets the job, a lack of accessibility presents major challenges. This can range from holding a work event in an inaccessible location to forcing people to quickly read small text in a presentation. Careful consideration of these obstacles is especially relevant now that many companies require at least a partial return to work. 

Just as harmfully, people with disabilities often face microaggressions and a general lack of understanding from organization leadership and colleagues. While this is true for members of any underrepresented group, it can be more pronounced for people with disabilities who are often excluded or glossed over in DEIJ trainings.

Taking Accountability: How Leaders Can be Advocates for Disability Inclusion in the Workplace

In light of the challenges people with disabilities face, there are many ways an empathetic, emotionally intelligent leader can show up as an advocate and ally for disability inclusion in the workplace. Here are five actionable activities leaders can do to create a culture where people with disabilities can thrive:

 1. Collect employee experience data on people with disabilities

Research and data can help you build sturdy foundations for an intentional, high-impact strategy. Consider including questions on future employee pulse surveys that help you understand the following points:

  • What policies, practices, and activities contribute to inequities? 
  • Do disabled people feel valued as their whole selves, including their differences?

Just like any other employee, people with disabilities want to be valued and appreciated for what they bring to the table. In this evaluation, leaders should be particularly cautious that messaging and practices do not communicate pity or tokenism.

2. Educate employees on disability inclusion

This can look like making sure your current DEIJ training adequately centers disability, or finding additional training that does. It’s particularly important for anyone involved in hiring to consider accessibility throughout the recruitment process. 

Education about disability inclusion can lead to innovation and can help companies connect with a severely under-tapped talent pool. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities is higher than for the rest of the US population. 

Ernst & Young, for example, created a specific hiring program focused on autistic and otherwise neurodiverse people. Hiren Shukla, the executive who founded the initiative, said EY has saved over 3.5 million hours on work process optimization thanks to its Neuro-Diverse Centers of Excellence. 

3. Create Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) for employees with disabilities 

ERGs not only provide support for employees with shared characteristics or life experiences, but play an outsize role in wellness, community advocacy, and building dialogue across an organization.

For people with disabilities, they are crucial for creating dedicated time for discussing disability inclusion in the workplace and encouraging leadership to engage with the subject. Also, since many disabilities are invisible (and only 39% of employees with disabilities disclose them to their manager), this can literally create visibility and transparency within the company.

4. Make sure physical accommodations are in place and accessible 

This is a great example of when to be proactive rather than reactive. When leaders are proactive about supporting employees with disabilities, it can remove the burden of needing to ask. Information such as the location of accessible bathrooms should be easily available to everyone in an organization. Digital resources, like login information for a company’s mental health app subscription, should also be readily available. 

Presenting this information in a centralized way, like in an employee onboarding packet or a dedicated section of your company’s intranet can improve access and use.  

5. Consider your company’s products and services

If applicable, reflect on the products, goods, and services your company creates and how it can better serve and support people with disabilities. Not only is it the right thing to do, but being inclusive is a great way to attract talent, build an authentic brand, and have a more resilient business.

Not to mention, having more diverse employees at a company also leads to more diversity of thought. The lived experience of people with disabilities can lead to otherwise overlooked business breakthroughs For example, Microsoft created a captioning feature on its products because their own employees demanded it, and it has exploded in popularity on its Teams app since the start of the pandemic. 

Leading With Empathy as We Face New Challenges

In the past few years, we’ve seen enormous strides in how business leaders are prioritizing DEI initiatives. As of July 2022, every single Fortune 100 company has DEI initiatives outlined on their respective websites. 

Yet many companies face increasingly worrisome talent shortages, exacerbated by the pandemic and the still-unknown long-term effects of COVID and long COVID. Corporate and DEI leaders simply cannot afford to continue ignoring people with disabilities, both for moral and economic reasons. 

Most importantly, we can all heed the “nothing about us without us” call to lead with empathy and action.

Why Every Leader Should Focus on Empathy (and How to Do It)

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

Reading about current workplace trends — like Quiet Quitting and the Great Resignation — it’s clear that people are unhappy at work. These phenomena are a wakeup call for business leaders to do something different. 

Luckily, there’s a treasure trove of inspiration from companies who are getting it right. Among companies who are boasting high levels of retention and engagement, one theme is clear: empathetic leadership. 

Why empathetic leadership, why now?

For one thing, several recent studies and reports have shown that employees care about it. They care about it a lot. 

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) surveyed nearly 2,500 U.S. workers and found that a whopping 97% believe empathy is an essential quality of a healthy culture. More specifically, 92% say that when looking for a job they value organizations that demonstrate empathy.

In our current volatile talent market, empathetic leadership is more important than ever. You’ve likely read about workers leaving their jobs and even entire industries in droves (this has been referred to as the Great Resignation or the Great Attrition), as well as the phenomena of quiet quitting. To illustrate this recent trend of employee dissatisfaction, studies show that the voluntary quit rate is hovering at 25 percent higher than at pre-pandemic levels.

Based on SHRM’s report, it’s easy to see why people are seeking greener pastures. Over half of respondents believe their organization’s leadership would lie to employees if it would benefit the business. Over a third claim to have witnessed inconsiderate or insensitive treatment of a co-worker by a manager in the past year. And, according to Gallup, only 28% of employees strongly agree that their organization is fair to everyone

Empathetic Leadership is the Key to Retention

Companies are competing for talent in ways they never had to before.

According to a recent McKinsey report, there’s a disconnect between why employers thought people were quitting and the reasons people actually gave. Employers named things like compensation and work-life balance, while employees cited factors like not being valued and uncaring or uninspiring leadership. 

These types of cultural and human factors are especially important to younger generations. Millennials and Gen-Z in particular value inclusivity and diversity more highly than other generational groups. 

These trends go beyond retention. A growing body of evidence indicates that empathetic leadership is crucial to a company maintaining high levels of engagement, retention, innovation, and productivity. Empathetic organizations promote positive workplace relationships, encourage collaboration, and foster diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ). 

For organizations to reap the benefits of an empathetic workforce, it needs to start at the top. Read on below for tips business leaders can take to prioritize and build empathy. 

How Can Leaders Build Workplace Empathy?

Fortunately, empathy is not necessarily something you’re born with — it can be developed and learned. Making a conscious effort to build empathetic leadership among executive teams and people leaders is a great start. Here are three ways L&D and DEI teams can build empathy as a core leadership skill:

1. Harness the power of perspective-taking:

Leaders should make a conscious effort to understand and imagine what it is like to experience the world as someone other than themselves. The benefits are even greater when leaders encourage all employees to do the same. When building empathetic leadership at scale, immersive learning technology can give you the upperhand. 

By understanding where someone from a different background is coming from, one can learn to respond to them in an empathetic way. This is especially important when an employee is bringing up something difficult or making a complaint. It is equally important when leaders are managing complex change management projects, or supporting their employees during global crises. 

2. Expand professional networks:

It’s hard to open yourself to ideas or perspectives when you’re always talking to the same people. Leaders, like most people, usually seek advice from their peers. And our networks tend to look a lot like we do. While you might get some great insights about business, it won’t help much when it comes to empathy.

Instead, leaders should make an effort to seriously and regularly engage with employees who are from different backgrounds. This can be done in a formalized mentoring (or reverse mentoring) structure, or in more informal settings like ERGs and lunches. When employees see leaders making an effort on this front, they are more likely to see them as trustworthy.

3. Create space for self-reflection:

Most managers do not realize they have a trust or empathy issue until it is too late. This is why they should practice checking in with themselves about how they are showing up in the world and leading at their company. 

Leaders should regularly review their company’s core values and reflect on how they embody them in their day-to-day. How might a junior employee answer that same question? Are others in leadership roles being held accountable? Is there an open dialogue of communication across company hierarchies? Is there a culture of cooperation and teamwork being fostered? Am I behaving empathetically? Am I someone people can trust?

All of these and more are questions that go beyond basic financial metrics that leaders should keep top of mind. When tied to specific measures, leaders can assess how they are progressing towards a more empathetic workplace. 

Empathetic Leadership Drives DEIJ

Leaders are viewed as role models by the entire organization. How they practice (or don’t practice) empathy sets a standard that can inspire behavior change and dedication to empathy from others. This can have a powerful ripple effect that can transform an organization, leading to significant gains in retention, cooperation, as well as in DEIJ initiatives that build trust and understanding across all employees. 

As Chantal Gaemperle, LVMH group executive VP of human resources & synergies said, “Understanding of the power of empathy is rooted in an important core value: people make the difference. As we create a truly inclusive workplace, empathy plays an important role in ensuring talent can come to work in an emotionally safe environment where they feel comfortable being their true selves.”

Performance Review Bias: What Is It and How Can You Avoid It?

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

“Articulate.”

“Competent.”

“Friendly.” 

All of these seem like perfectly nice words with positive connotations, right? On the surface, yes. These are all qualities you’d be happy about a friend or coworker associating with you. However, when they show up on performance reviews, these words might actually indicate bias. How they’re used has everything to do with identity.

Unfortunately, not only is bias all too common in performance reviews, it is something every single person inherently possesses. That doesn’t mean that we should throw our hands up and give up. In fact, there are steps managers can take to become more aware of their biases, mitigate bias, and make the performance review process more equitable for all employees. 

This article will take you through some tips you can put into practice today and explain why all companies should strive to reduce bias in their performance review.

What is Bias and How Does it Show up in Performance Reviews?

The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines bias as ‘partiality: an inclination or predisposition for or against something.’ Another word closely associated with bias is prejudice, or ‘a negative attitude toward another person or group formed in advance of any experience with that person or group.’ 

Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who has dedicated much of his career to studying bias, concluded that the vast majority of human decisions are actually based on biases, beliefs, and intuition, not facts or logic. 

This is where performance review bias come in: even when well-intentioned managers believe they are evaluating employees based on “hard facts” or “quantitative metrics,” bias almost always seeps through.

In performance reviews, biases have major implications in situations that inform decisions about promotion, compensation, hiring, or even firing. What does this mean for employees from diverse backgrounds?

How Review Bias Harms Employees from Underrepresented Groups

The relationship between performance review bias and the experiences of diverse employees in the workforce has been studied extensively. Academics across disciplines generally agree that people from different groups are often rated differently for identical behavior. Additionally, expectations for certain functions, like leadership, can themselves be gendered or racialized.

Often, these biases are difficult to quantify because they do not typically rely on standardized rubrics or numerical measurement. Instead, bias is revealed in the type of language used. 

For example, recent research by Correll and Simard showed that “women were described twice as often as men as supportive, collaborative and helpful, and their appraisal contained twice the number of references to the team as opposed to individual accomplishments. In contrast, men’s appraisal focused on assertiveness, independence, and self-confidence, and feedback was much more often linked to business outcomes or technical expertise.”

Obviously, “supportive” and “collaborative” are positive attributes. Yet these traits can hinder women who want to be seen as leaders and promoted to managerial roles. 

In an article for Harvard Business Review, the Center for WorkLife Law detailed the “sobering” results of an audit they conducted at a U.S. law firm’s performance evaluations. Most dramatically, they reported that fewer than 10% of people of color received mentions of leadership in their performance evaluations. This was more more than 70 percentage points lower than white women, and these leadership mentions typically predicted higher competency ratings the next year.

Luckily, following the audit, they were able to help the firm deploy some tactics that actually work to reduce performance review bias. Let’s explore those tactics and how you can put them into place. 

The Solution: Ways to Reduce Performance Review Bias

Bias creeps into our performance reviews whether we realize it or not. The good news is that there are actionable steps leaders can take to confront and mitigate performance review bias.

1. Recognize Your Own Bias

The first step is admitting there is a problem. Simply recognizing that bias exists is not enough. That’s where a comprehensive Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) program comes into play. 

While educational DEIJ initiatives — especially immersive ones — create a deeper understanding and context for the types of biases a manager might have, it is important to note that recognizing bias is an ongoing process. The reviewer or evaluator should be able to identify bias throughout the evaluation and check in with themselves or colleagues at several points in the process. 

One should always start from a place of empathy and understanding. This applies not only to the person you might be reviewing, but to yourself as well. 

2. Reconsider Performance Indicators and Metrics

The subjects brought up in performance reviews should never be a surprise. Managers should work with their team to craft a performance review process that works for them. This means talking through specific, measurable goals well ahead of the final review.

Additionally, an organization should create a clear evaluation structure for all managers to follow and train them on how to use. This will help improve accuracy and remove bias in the process. Otherwise the reviews will be left up to individual discretion with potentially open-ended, bias-producing questions and criteria.

This is a continuous process. Managers should review employee progress on established goals throughout the year, not just during annual review time. It is often helpful to source feedback from other coworkers throughout the year, as it can help check your own biases.

Bias Reduction as a DEIJ Initiative

Reducing bias in performance reviews is a key step towards unlocking opportunities for your employees, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds. 

While bias is ever-present, being aware of it and consciously working to reduce it are incredibly important. These steps may appear small, but they can have massive implications for individual employees’ career paths. 

The more managers and middle-managers understand the extent to which their word choice matters in performance reviews, the more aware they can be about their own biases. In turn, they can build a more equitable employee experience within their team and company. 

 

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Want to Retain Diverse Talent? Launch a Mentorship Program

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

First there was “The Great Resignation.” Now, “quiet quitting” is the new big threat facing companies nationwide. The common thread across these phenomena is that many employees are just not satisfied. 

Recent data paints a picture for why employees are seeking greener pastures. According to a survey by McKinsey, the most popular reason why people quit their jobs in the last 18 months was due to a lack of career development and advancement. Other popular responses included uncaring leaders, a non-inclusive or unwelcoming community, and lack of support for health and well-being.

The call for business leaders has never been clearer: people success is business success. When employees feel they can bring their authentic selves to work, and that they will have opportunities to grow and advance, they’ll bring their best ideas that drive your business forward.   

How can companies keep their employees engaged and happy while developing their talent and helping them grow? More importantly, once organizations have gotten diverse talent in the door, how can they create a culture of inclusion that drives belonging and opens opportunities for career advancement? 

One way forward is to develop a strong mentorship program, particularly one that centers employees from underrepresented groups and works in tandem with other Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) efforts. 

How a Robust Mentorship Program Helps Employees and Your Businesses

Generally speaking, a robust mentorship program provides opportunities for skill development and networking that can unlock career advancement. The many benefits of mentoring and the effectiveness of mentorship programs have been studied and supported by scientific studies, and fall into three main buckets: 

  • Mentoring helps employees feel more valued by their employers;
  • Mentoring builds supportive networks with coworkers;
  • Mentoring develops critical skills that help advance their careers.

Employees who feel valued and empowered at work tend to stick around. An Association for Talent Development study saw employee engagement and retention increase by 50% when companies offer mentorship programs. This research fortifies other studies that cite mentoring as absolutely critical to retention, engagement, and a healthy talent ecosystem.

The Connection Between Mentorship and DEIJ

While a mentorship program is useful for all of an organization’s employees, the benefits increase exponentially for members of underrepresented groups. When polled, women and people of color are more likely than others to report mentoring as very important to their career development. 

For Black employees, this likely stems from them being significantly less likely than their white counterparts to report seeing leaders who look like them in their organization. In turn, when Black employees see leaders of their own race, a Gallup study found that they have 12 times more trust in their organization. 

Not only should employees of underrepresented groups simply see leaders that look like them, companies should take the proactive step of creating formal mentorship programs that connect these leaders with more junior staff from similar backgrounds. 

Though it may seem simple compared to other DEIJ initiatives, the impact of mentorship cannot be understated. A 2016 study in the American Sociological Review found that mentoring, in comparison to other tactics (such as diversity trainings, grievance systems or job tests), increased minority representation among managers in the workplace anywhere from nine to 24 percent. Some of the largest increases in leadership positions were among Black, Hispanic and Asian women, respectively. 

What a Mentorship Program Looks Like in a Remote or Hybrid Environment

Now that we can agree that mentorship is highly important for employee retention, what does it actually look like in practice? After all, mentorship can look like anything from informal coffee meetings with a senior colleague to a formal program with metrics and goal-setting. 

The post-pandemic landscape further complicates matters, as some activities traditionally thought of as mentoring are less feasible or effective in a remote or hybrid work environment. And the need for connection when working remotely can be even greater with many employees feeling less engaged or burnt out since the start of the pandemic. 

For large, globally-distributed companies, a remote environment can actually be an asset to mentorship. Mentees can form relationships with leaders in other parts of the country and even world. Mentors can be chosen for reasons other than geographic proximity, which can make connections more meaningful.  

The following four forms of mentorship can be effective in any type of workplace environment, whether in-person, remote, or hybrid:

1. Career Mentoring

This is the traditional type of one-on-one career development that many think of when they think of mentorship. Career mentorship can illuminate employees’ paths to advancement by identifying opportunities for stretch assignments, promotion, and increased pay.

2. Reverse Mentoring

Just as it sounds, this type of mentoring refers to senior leaders being the mentees and more junior employees acting as mentors. When applying a DEIJ lens to reverse mentoring, junior employees from diverse backgrounds have the opportunity to mentor senior executives. This empowers junior employees with an opportunity to influence business decisions and can help the more senior professional learn about new perspectives, technologies, and trends. 

3. Buddy Program

Here, a new hire is paired with someone who’s been at the company for a while to informally share knowledge. The key is that this starts early on, and on a regular basis. This can help build a sense of belonging, especially those from underrepresented groups, cultivate other workplace relationships, and foster connection to the company’s culture. 

4. Peer to Peer

This type of mentorship enables employees to find coworkers with different backgrounds and share experiences as a group. This type of networking increases understanding across an organization. Often, this looks like joining employee resource groups (ERGs) that connect people based on shared identities, such as women or members of the LGBTQ+ community. These have proven to be highly effective for networking, creating community, removing barriers, confronting bias, and building more empathetic relationships in the workplace. Especially when supported by executive sponsors and funding, ERGs can be a powerful tool for culture-building, career advancement, and accountability. 

In all four of these types of mentorship, employees are able to bypass the traditional hierarchical chains of command, creating more organizational trust and empowering those who may otherwise feel alienated or unengaged. 

Don’t Overlook the Value of Mentorship

While they can be a bit of work to get off the ground, mentorship programs are hugely important in helping a company build a culture that supports diversity and inclusion initiatives. It is no wonder that the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies have formal mentorship programs, and that the vast majority of younger workers see mentoring as crucial to their career success.

With the right planning and training, mentoring can save your company high turnover costs, develop employees’ leadership and management skills, and ultimately create more trust and connection within your organization. 

Five Activities to Build Empathy in the Workplace

Posted on by Miranda Villanueva

It goes without saying that we’ve experienced monumental changes in the last two years. The workplace looks very different and even the very nature of work itself feels unfamiliar. As a result, the skills needed to be effective in these changing environments have also changed and evolved.

Empathy, or the ability to share and understand the internal states of others, is an important skill in both in-person offices and remote settings. Yet the way it is presented and experienced can be quite different. For example, authentic communication may be harder to detect over Zoom and Slack than in-person meetings and interactions. 

Workplaces can implement several types of activities and exercises that help employees practice and build empathy. Many of them are best enjoyed through immersive learning. New and emerging technology allows learners to navigate real-world experiences in a safe, simulated environment.

What is Empathy? Two Types to Know 

Empathy is now a workplace buzzword. Its use spans anything from feeling something deeply to taking the time to understand a perspective different from one’s own. Before we dive into the importance of empathy in today’s modern workplace, let’s explore what it actually is. 

Psychologists will typically define  empathy in two ways, cognitive and emotional empathy. While emotional empathy is associated with automatic and unconscious processing, cognitive empathy is associated with mentalizing or perspective-taking. It concerns the explicit effort to understand how you might feel if placed in the circumstances of another. 

Both experience-sharing and perspective-taking have been proven to predict prosocial or helping behavior that benefits others. Research strongly suggests that empathy in the workplace is positively related to job performance. One wide-reaching study found that managers who practice compassionate leadership toward direct reports are viewed as better performers by their bosses. In turn, leaders rated as empathetic by their team were also rated as high performing by their boss.  

The best part? Empathy is something that every person in the workplace can learn. 

Activities and Exercises that Practice and Build Empathy

Cognitive empathy is not something people are innately born with, and there are exercises that can build and strengthen these important muscles. A soft skill, like any other skill, must be practiced. Here are some examples of these types of activities:

1. Active Listening

Give others your full attention in order to better understand them. This can look like being present in conversations, giving nonverbal cues, asking connective questions, and paraphrasing. Going a bit further, empathetic active listening puts a special emphasis on understanding the other person’s emotional experience.

2. Perspective-taking

Workplaces are often the most diverse environments we encounter in our lives. Taking the time to understand and imagine what it is like to experience the world as someone other than yourself can be a valuable way to deepen relationships with your colleagues. Using immersive learning technology, such as VR and MR, can be a huge help here. It can allow employees to experience situations through the eyes of colleagues from different races, genders, abilities, and backgrounds than them. This helps employees gain a better understanding and appreciation for the challenges their colleagues face on a daily basis.

3. Understand History and Context

No company or person exists in a vacuum, and therefore all must put in a conscious effort to learn about the diverse backgrounds and past experiences of team members. A robust and, importantly, ongoing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) training strategy goes a long way in building this understanding. History can be a powerful tool to help employees understand why inequities persist over time and to help reimagine a more inclusive and equitable society. 

4. Practice Empathetic Language:

In person, a large part of this is body language, while over Zoom it has more to do with verbal responses. One should avoid asking direct questions, arguing with what is being said, making assumptions, or disputing facts. Instead, practice acknowledging feelings, showing sincere interest, and being supportive and encouraging.

5. Take Accountability

How we respond to workplace bias and discrimination is a crucial piece of cultivating an empathetic workplace. The key is to communicate clear expectations for all team members and create a system of ongoing feedback. This type of open-door policy builds higher trust within the team, which leads to better business outcomes. 

It is also important to note that some of these recommended empathy-building behaviors can be more difficult for some than others, such as those who are neurodivergent. Ableism is often overlooked, and can seem more invisible when not interacting with colleagues in-person on a daily basis. In an empathetic workplace environment, these differences can be accepted and even celebrated. 

Empathy and the Evolving Workplace

A 2021 Businessolver study found that a whopping 84% of CEOs and 70% of employees believe empathy drives better business outcomes. Yet, many leaders don’t know how to build empathy, especially in our “new normal” of hybrid and remote work. 

Fortunately, with new research and major advancements in immersive learning technology, workplaces can practice empathy through a variety of exercises and activities. 

Immersive Learning: Harnessing Technology to Create a New Empathetic Reality in the Workplace

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

The idea of “immersion” has long captivated the imagination of Hollywood, with protagonists in popular titles like “The Matrix” and “Jumanji” using virtual reality to explore fictional environments like dystopian computer simulations and supernatural jungles, respectively. 

Since the turn of the millennium, technological advancements have brought Virtuality Reality/Mixed Reality (VR/MR) to the mainstream, with wearable goggle-like Oculus devices becoming increasingly popular among techies and gamers. Despite this widespread association with recreation and entertainment, many have also begun to realize the incredible potential of VR/MR technology to revolutionize education and skills development.  

This new type of “immersive” learning is quickly growing as a solution of choice for workplaces and schools alike. It’s become much more than just a flashy new toy, with stronger indicators of success than traditional e-learning or in-person classroom training. But what exactly is immersive learning and how does it drive more tangible DEIJ learning outcomes?   

 

What is immersive learning? 

Technically speaking, immersive learning spans virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), augmented reality (AR), and 360-degree video. Learners access content through a VR oculus headset, mobile device, or web browser. Regardless of entry point, immersive learning tech works similarly by leveraging the power of ‘presence’ to create a truly experiential learning environment. 

What makes immersive learning deeply impactful is that learners navigate real-world experiences in a safe, simulated scenario where they can practice and learn from mistakes. 

Immersive learning is a tool that helps learners translate learning into action by building the memory and muscle needed to apply learning to real-world situations; ultimately creating a feedback loop that connects learning outcomes and business goals. This approach, which capitalizes on dedicated knowledge and research about how people learn has proven results, with research showing it can increase knowledge retention by up to 75%. 

While immersive learning can and should be applied to many types of skills development, it’s particularly useful for building core competencies for today’s modern workforce, such as empathy and inclusive leadership. Moreover, immersive learning is ideally suited to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) training, about which much ink has been spilled, but unfortunately rarely moves the needle as it should. 

By harnessing immersive learning technology, there is immense potential in driving the self-awareness and understanding needed to propel tangible results for DEIJ. There are four key reasons why this is the case.

 

1. Empathy: Using VR to Build it in the Workplace

At its most basic, immersive learning allows learners to view and experience the world through a different perspective. They can experience the scenario-based environment from many sensory angles, which can blur the line between simulation and reality. This is where ‘presence’ comes in. 

It means that business leaders and DEIJ professionals can drive greater empathy and understanding across folks with different lived experiences, without burdening colleagues from underrepresented groups to share their personal experiences for the sake of educating others. These learners can then better understand the importance of — and place a greater emphasis on — respecting different perspectives. In turn, empathy lays a sturdy foundation that leads to stronger, more effective teams where all members are valued and appreciated.

There is a proven positive correlation between VR/MR technology and empathy, notably supported by a 2018 Stanford University experiment, where researchers found that those who participated in a virtual reality experience detailing what it’s like to be homeless made them more likely to support affordable housing than other participants in the study. 

In the workplace, once employees are able to feel themselves in the perspectives of colleagues from backgrounds different than their own, other aspects of DEIJ training fall into place.  Lessons are more easily translatable to real-world situations, and learners are able to approach those moments with greater confidence in how to act equitably and inclusively. 

 

2. Unconscious Bias Training: Seeing it “First-Hand”

A key topic addressed in nearly all types of DEIJ training is unconscious bias, which can be defined as an unfair belief about a group of people that you are not aware of and that affects your behavior and decisions. Biases are not always easily identified and may happen without awareness, which is why it can be difficult for some employees to understand and identify them. 

Immersive learning gives the learner the opportunity to see first-hand how unconscious bias affects employees. This form of perspective-taking can equip them with research-backed steps to overcome bias and build authentic connections.

For example, when white employees are shown how racism is experienced by their Black colleagues, or how able-bodied people are thrust into navigating the workplace as someone in a wheelchair, they gain a deeper understanding of what it feels like to be the recipients of unconscious bias. This creates an emotional connection, which is likelier to build memories and influence future behavior than more traditional types of e-learning or instructor-led training. 

 

3. Microaggressions: Using Roleplay to Achieve Solutions

Similar to unconscious bias, microaggressions can be direct or indirect forms of discrimination against members of underrepresented groups, and are also extensively covered in DEIJ trainings. 

Not only can immersive learning enable employees to recognize these microaggressions from the perspectives of colleagues from diverse backgrounds, it can also be taken from the perspectives of those complicit in or bystanders to moments of bias. Taking on these dual perspectives enables learners  to workshop solutions through roleplay and real-time feedback. 

Far more effective than simply listening to someone describe a microaggression, immersion puts the learner directly into the position of individuals on both sides of the incident. They can then practice navigating these tough situations through roleplay, going through the exercise — and potentially some tough conversations — as many times as necessary to feel comfortable, without fear of shame or embarrassment. 

Employees have the freedom to actually learn through trial and error how their tone, word choice, and even body language can have an impact on the given situation. Then, they can feel more confident in both recognizing microaggressions in the office, as well as understanding how to navigate them and achieve solutions. 

 

4. Ally to Advocate: How Immersive Learning Creates Cohesive Teams

As employees use immersive learning to build empathy for people of different backgrounds, identify unconscious bias, and understand how to navigate microaggressions, they also crucially create a foundation for a lifetime of allyship and advocacy. 

Allyship and advocacy are closely related, but there are important differences. 

Allyship denotes passive support in someone or a group in which the person has a vested interest, whereas an advocate uses their own privilege and platform to bring attention to injustice and affect change. Essentially, the line of difference is across passive support versus action. 

By immersing employees in potentially fraught scenarios, they can learn how to move beyond performative allyship and understand how to actually use their own position of power and privilege to affect change. 

For example, immersive learning environments may place the learner in a situation where a manager makes a discriminatory remark about a colleague. Learners then explore various scenarios about how best to speak up. This both empowers the employees and builds trust among team members, which can translate to better cohesion, retention, and efficiency in the company as a whole.

 

The Only Limit Is Our Own Imagination 

Not long ago, the concepts of virtual reality and immersion were squarely in the domain of science fiction writers and creative auteurs who used these abstract concepts to explore far-off and imaginary realms and identities. Now, we are able to harness this incredible technology for a very real and perhaps equally ambitious purpose: to create more equitable, inclusive and empathetic workplaces.

As VR and MR technology continues to rapidly advance and research continues to show its effectiveness in building empathy and understanding, business leaders are only limited by their own imaginations in terms of how it can be harnessed to drive real, tangible results for their DEIJ initiatives.