Common Work Situations:

Work Assignments: Glamor Work vs Office Housework

1. Gapjumpers survey: women employees were 42% more likely than male colleagues to be limited to lower impact projects

• No one gets glamour work all the time, and junior people still have to pay their dues and tend to do more of the less glamorous work. However, it is important to consciously check that peers at the same level have the appropriate mix of glamour work and office housework.

  • As people rise in organizations and become more senior, they should modify the balance of unglamorous housework. This is especially important for people of underrepresented groups

  • Don’t let some people, like men, do less glamorous work poorly just to get out of it.

• Equalize less glamorous office housework:

  • Make them part of the office manager or administrative assistant’s job.

  • Create a rotation system for everyone at same level.

  • “Plus One” system: Invite a junior employee to meetings to take notes. Bonus they get access to senior level meeting

Meetings

• Pay attention to how teams work together and behave in meetings.

  • Men tend to interrupt women far more often than the other way around.

• If a few people are dominating a conversation, address it.

  • Create and enforce a policy for interruptions

  • Create open space to solicit other opinions

• If people are re-explaining other’s ideas, note the original credit. “I’m glad you also acknowledged [name’s] insightful idea.”

• Resources:

  • “How to Manage Interruptions in Meetings” by Harrison Monarth (Harvard Business Review)

  • Meeting Participation Tracking- Majority vs Underrepresented Groups

    • Website: AreMenTalkingTooMuch.com

    • App: TimeToTalk

Casual Networking

• Casual hanging out with colleagues, such as lunches, travel, and outings, provide great ways to develop bonds and build professional networks.

• Ensure equal access.

  • Not comfortable hanging out with women outside of work? Then limit casual networking to business hours for everyone.

  • If bonding occurs at hobby or social events, such as golf outings, ensure alternative opportunities other employees get access in different ways.

    • Examples include: hiking, volunteer activity, concert, sports event, play games, fishing, lunch

Burnout & Work-Life Balance

Ask employees their goals and priorities:

• Don’t make assumptions on desires of employees, especially based on parental status or other life stage. Especially for mothers, don’t just assume they are looking to change their workload or career ambitions.

• Discuss opportunities and ask if they are interested. Make clear if they are not interested now, they will be offered opportunities in the future. 

Flexible Work

• Don’t overvalue overwork or pretending to work long hours.

  • Set boundaries so employees don’t feel the need to be “always on” except for unique, critical business situations.

  • Be clear if/when responses are expected “off hours” otherwise default is during standard hours.

• Think about what is important for teams to get work done and what is optional.

  • Consider core business hours (example 10am-3pm) where people should be on, and more flexible hours outside to complete work.

  • Be creative on how teams can cover work together.

  • Be thoughtful about travel and other off-hours commitments. What is needed for the job and what can be more flexible?

Structure High Profile “Greedy Work”

• What career paths lead to senior leadership and higher compensated roles? How can those be more attractive to a broader employee set? Less travel, flexible hours, more staffing for backup?

• HBR podcast “If We Want Equity, Work Needs to Be Less Greedy”

• Offer all: if this is not a good fit for you right now, let me know. I’ll be sure to ask you again.

Be Open About Broader Life Challenges

• When leaders share about personal and professional challenges, it makes others more comfortable speaking up when they are going through a difficult situation or need extra help.

• Increase mental health supports.

Parental Leave and Other Caregiving Considerations

• Parental Leave: Provide paid family leave for all new parents. Determine the maximum paid parental leave your company can afford and encourage all expecting parents to take it. Can offer leave to be taken in smaller chunks.

• Steps for Expecting Employees - both Men & Women

  • Congratulate them, explain company leave policy, discuss work to be done before leave, discuss the employee’s transition back to work.

  • Have managers reach out to every newly expecting parent. Explain leave policy and ask them to think about how they plan to take the leave and communicate to you.

  • Ensure men take leave too, so women are not stigmatized.

    • Track % of men taking parental leave - this is measure of change that is structural

• Offer leave for all types of caregiving responsibilities. This can require permission from HR or supervisors to ensure substantial caregiving responsibilities exist.

• Emergency backup childcare services for parents can be a great benefit to provide to help caregivers be less stressed on personal situations and be able to focus more on work. This is a benefit that is available to organizations, but often hard for individuals to procure on their own.

Increasing Comfort with Diversity & Bias Conversations at Work:

Conversations about Diversity & Inclusion

• Normalize so we can talk about these things in the workplace. =

Advice to Deal With Situations of Bias

• Seek to understand and reflect not respond or solve.

• Acknowledge the impact, don’t defend the intent.

• Follow up and incorporate feedback.

• Be proactive.

Intervene in Situations of Bias

• “I’m noticing that when [insert name] speaks, she gets interrupted. That happened twice in the last twenty minutes. I want to be sure we’re aware of that. What does that feel like? How can we monitor this as a group? I probably interrupt too, and I want to be held accountable.”

• “Was that helpful, or do you wish I hadn’t done that?”

External Business Relationships

If your organization is looking to expand your diversity initiatives outside your company to your external relationships, review:

• Hire new vendors and how you spend money.

  • Can you encourage diversity at your partner organizations?

  • Can you include minority and women-owned businesses in your procurement process?

• Liaise with the community.