Wave HR Solutions

Workplace Microaggressions

Women are more likely than men to face microaggressions that undermine them professionally. These microaggressions include being interrupted and having their judgment questioned.

Women of color experience a higher rate of these microaggressions. They are more likely than white women to face microaggressions that reinforce harmful stereotypes or cast them as outsiders.

Women who regularly experience microaggressions are twice as likely to burn out, more than twice as likely to report feeling negatively about their job, and three times as likely to say that they have struggled to concentrate at work because of stress.

According to a 2017 Pew Research Center report, 4 in 10 women have experienced discrimination at work because of their gender. This includes being treated as if they are incompetent, receiving less support from senior leadership, being passed over for important assignments, and experience repeated slights at work. Additional examples of gender discrimination include women being paid less then men despite having similar job responsibilities, being evaluated or held to a different standard, being excluded from important meetings, being fired or demoted due to a pregnancy, and being subjected to sexual harassment or sexual advances.

Gender discrimination has shown to erode women’s confidence and decreases self-efficacy. Many of these gender discriminations stem from patriarchal assumptions about women’s lack of competence and suitability for the workplace and/or leadership roles. These assumptions can be perpetrated by both male and female leadership. This lack of confidence and low self-efficacy is associated with low motivation, disengagement from work tasks, and other negative outcomes that can harm work performance. Ultimately, these outcomes impact women’s careers and organizational outcomes.

Gender discrimination also erodes collegiality, collaboration, and teamwork. If left unresolved, it can create a toxic work environment that could undermine the success of the organization.

While gender discrimination is the most wide-spread, other forms of discrimination such as age discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination, racial discrimination, and disability discrimination (just to name a few) can have similar effects. Microaggressions towards any group of people has a detrimental impact on the employees and the organizational goals. Strengthening diversity, equity, and inclusion programs can improve a company’s culture and create a welcoming environment for people of all backgrounds. It can also improve recruiting and retention efforts. Education, promotion, and equal pay can help alleviate perceived workplace discrimination and avoid the risks associated with pay equity as well.

On May 22, tech professional Patrick Shyu admitted that he used to trash the resumes of female applicants on front of them during job interviews and immediately reject them. Sometimes he told them, "Go home and have some kids." After some criticism for the now-deleted tweet, he went on to say "Women shouldn't work as coders and should instead prioritize being a good mother and a wife." He also suggested that misogyny is a myth and an excuse for "incompetent women who spent too much time researching misogyny instead of improving themselves." On May 26, he deleted the tweets stating that this is an example of how we never stop learning and growing as people.

Unfortunately, these "opinions" are far too common, particularly in male-dominated industries or when the executive management of a company is male-dominated. While most do not go as far as Shyu's reported behavior, many do ask female candidates inappropriate questions that can be perceived as discriminatory and could result in a lawsuit against the company. These questions not only are illegally used to prevent them from becoming employees, but, in some circumstances, have been used to target them for future inappropriate actions.

Inappropriate questions include:
Are you married?
Do you have kids?
Who is responsible for taking your kids to and from school?

They have nothing to do with the candidates qualifications for a position, and they are illegal to ask during an interview or hiring process. They can also tarnish a business' reputation and compromise its ability to recruit and retain talent.

For those who are interviewing potential employees, it is imperative that you have a basic understanding of what questions are appropriate and the context behind why certain questions are problematic and potentially discriminatory.

Some suggestions for avoiding bias in hiring include removing adjectives from a job listing that may be closely associated with a particular gender, control your personal feelings about a candidate by giving likability a numerical score, use a software program or screening process that blinds the surface demographic information and ensures a level playing field, set diversity goals and track your progress, use standard interview questions for each candidate of the same position, and ask candidates to take a work-sample test to compare applicants and predict future job performance.

You can also check yourself prior to the hiring process by reflecting on these questions:

1. Do I typically hire similar types of people or people who are like me?

2. What do I mean when I say a candidate is not the right fit?

3. What do I do if my candidate pool is not sufficiently diverse?

4. What can I learn about my past hiring choices, both successful and unsuccessful?

Ways to Engage a Dissatisfied Employee

Good employees – sometimes even your best employees – are handing in resignation letters frequently these days. Convention wisdom says to “bribe” these employees to stay by offering bigger paychecks and better perks, but if your business cannot afford to do these things, what do you do?

The truth is that bigger paychecks and better perks may hold off the resignation for a period of time – typically six months to a year – but those are not the keys to keeping your employees if they are dissatisfied with their jobs. Just 38.2% of workers aged 25-45 say that pay is the most important factor in their job satisfaction.

In 2021 and 2022, mid-career employees (30-45 yrs old) resigned at a rate 20% higher than in 2020. But this worker dissatisfaction started long before the pandemic. It seems that the pandemic just gave workers the opportunity to make the move to leave the jobs they no longer like.

What employees want more than anything else is work that inspires them and creates harmony between who they are and what they do. When they are inspired, they are more engaged, more productive, and more loyal. Employees want to feel like they are working toward something larger than themselves, understand how their day-to-day job makes that happen, and have autonomy to shape their role in it all.

I was one of these dissatisfied workers. I stayed with a company that treated me poorly, limited advancement, and paid well below market value simply because I felt like our agency was making a difference in the lives of people. When that agency started to make it clear that the people we served were nothing more than money for the agency, I wanted nothing more than to leave and go somewhere else. Suddenly the 10-18 hour days, the requests for assistance while I was on PTO, and the constant need for me to handle situations for others was no longer balanced by making a difference. So what could my employer have done to keep me there?

They could have created a way for me to have a better work-life balance and to have a work-life alignment. I don’t mind working long hours if it means something, but it matters how much the work detracts form the time that employees spend away from it too. In a recent poll from SHRM, 65% of workers wanted to have more control over the teams to which they were assigned, the projects on which they worked, and their ability to influence hours or earnings. While one would expect to see workers gain more control as they risk through the ranks, the opposite is true for women in particular. The higher the rank of a woman, the more likely she had less control over her work and her work-life balance. This causes women like me to leave the workforce at higher numbers than their male counterparts.

Ask your employees how the work they do each day allows them to achieve the career advancement the seek, nurture their families, or manifests their values on a daily basis. If they have pain points where their work is counter to these things, it gives you a place to start to address their dissatisfaction.

The biggest deficit seen in the recent poll was the employees’ relationships with their leaders. Almost all workers said they want to work for a leader who inspired them, but only 36% said they actually do. Investing in your relationship with your employees is one to bridge the divide and unlock their motivation. Take time to find out what brought the employee to the job, what energizes them, and what excites them about your company. This will deepen your understanding of what inspires them so that you, in turn, can better create a connection for them between the company’s work and their personal needs in the future.

Incorporate your current employees in recruiting efforts. Managers should ask current employees if the vacated position is still needed and if the job description is still relevant. Ask for their help improving it or filling gaps on the current team. This process has both external and internal benefits. Position descriptions are scanned by employees, and a great job description connects the position’s responsibilities to your organization’s purpose. Reading it will help your current staff rekindle the excitement that brought them to your organization and will remind them of how their day-to-day work fits into the bigger picture.

92.4% of respondents reported that they do better work when they see how the quality of their work matters in the big picture. Rather than simply passing on organizational imperatives, how can you connect the dots for team members who wonder, “How does this affect or benefit me?” Help employees see the connection between their day-to-day and the long-term goals of the company.

Rather than letting your best workers consider resignation, offer them an alternative and personally compelling path. By giving people more agency, re-engaging them, and re-inspiring them, you can create work environments that help them feel like the best versions of themselves. When this happens, they reinvest themselves into their organizations and amplify their own team-building behaviors. Instead of job searching and resigning, they’ll be there with renewed dedication, increased investment, and elevated energy.