Big Solutions to Big Problems
Sarah Auer, MPH, CHES® (she/her/hers)
Program Analyst II
[signature_931968460]<http://www.cste.org/>
Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists
“Using the power of epidemiology to improve the public’s health”
Become a Member<https://www.cste.org/general/custom.asp?page=WhyJoin> • Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/CSTE.org> • Twitter<https://twitter.com/CSTEnews> • Instagram<https://www.instagram.com/cstenews/>
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From: Jessica Arrazola <jarrazola@cste.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2022 4:02 PM
To: Sarah Auer <sauer@cste.org>
Subject: FW: Big Solutions to Big Problems
________________________________
From: HBR's Women at Work <noreply@a.email.hbr.org<mailto:noreply@a.email.hbr.org>>
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2022 4:02:01 PM (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
To: Jessica Arrazola <jarrazola@cste.org<mailto:jarrazola@cste.org>>
Subject: Big Solutions to Big Problems
Three ideas for how companies can support and retain women.
Read online<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,1603071d&e=cDE9QEpMZ2pseGVKSU85S0c3UkYtNzh2UGV5bEE2T3NKb3lxVGgwNVljS1hIWFJSeFJTMlU1UmE2VFEwZC0wS3AtV29qMFBSRzNsS1JtTlJfQzhPUGdaT19Yd1NJVlVfejJ2MERsWjE5ekFUbUlXZmJHRTU&s=WEB8Ips-EfxOc5ydbRxzjA0n-CPxOKFDQI2XeR3WeNY>
[HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW]<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,1603071e>
[Women at Work]<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,1603071f>
Conversations about where we’re at
and how we move forward.
[Amanda Kersey]
From Amanda Kersey, Senior Audio Producer
I read the September–October issue of Harvard Business Review while I was at the beach with my family this past weekend, and I found it to be especially relevant. So, I wanted to highlight two articles here, along with one from HBR.org. All three of these pieces address institutional problems: insufficient trust and solidarity among team members, lack of diversity in management, and preconceived notions about men’s and women’s career priorities. They also present solutions.
Depending on how much power and influence you have at work, these ideas may be an item you can put on the agenda for your leadership team’s next meeting—or they may be something you float to your boss or your company’s head of HR. Maybe they’re a link to share in a Slack channel you’re active on. Regardless, I hope you’ll read about them, think about their potential to bring about positive change in your world, and tell me about how putting them into practice goes.
Dig, Bridge, Collectively Act<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030720>
A proven approach to dismantling systemic inequities via authentic personal relationships.
by Tina Opie and Beth A. Livingston
In 2018, Tina Opie came on the podcast<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030721> to tell us about the power that women gain when we develop trusting relationships with one another, particularly when that involves learning about each other’s upbringings and differences. Tina and her collaborator Beth Livingston call that power Shared Sisterhood. And in this article, they describe how leaders can cultivate that understanding and trust.
First, dig, and encourage employees to join you in the process, which is actually three steps: 1) figure out which of the many social identities out there are yours and how tightly you hold them, 2) read up on the power dynamics associated with those identities, and 3) recognize your knowledge gaps.
This digging may seem like individual work, but when multiple coworkers do it simultaneously, they’re setting themselves up to bridge differences at scale—and ultimately act collectively for positive change. For instance, when one company’s senior leadership team did digging and bridging across a series of workshops, it led them to taking on the responsibility for sending internal responses to hate crimes or other racist violence (a task the company used to leave to its communications team).
The Surprising Benefits of Work/Life Support<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030722>
It’s a secret weapon for achieving organizational diversity.
by Alexandra Kalev and Frank Dobbin
Any time I see an article by social scientists Alexandra Kalev and Frank Dobbin, I read it because I’ve come to know them as a research team who take a popular organizational practice, like sexual harassment programs<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030787> or diversity training<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030788,> and reveal its faults. They’re not simply out to tear down well-intentioned initiatives though; they recommend alternatives rooted in their analysis of large sets of data collected over many years. In short, they’re results-oriented.
In this latest article, Kalev and Dobbin show how various types of work/life support raise the percentages of women and people of color in management. For example, companies that offered employees vouchers for childcare increased the number of Black women by 12.3%, Hispanic women by 16.4%, and Asian women by 10.6%.
When companies give employees predictable and flexible schedules, at least 12 weeks of parental leave, and childcare support (e.g., vouchers that subsidize it), they’re able to retain women as well as Black and Hispanic employees long enough for them to rise into management. “Black women are nearly twice as likely as white women to have quit a job or refused a job offer because of childcare problems,” they explain in the article. And “52 percent of nonwhite adults who quit a job in 2021 cited a lack of flexibility.”
If supporting employees with these benefits has such a clear upside, what’s keeping leaders from extending them? “In some cases,” they write, “the problem is conceptual: Many managers believe that employees who take advantage of work/life support will do less work and that overseeing them will become harder. In other cases the problem is practical: Managers simply don’t have the tools to administer systems of support for everyone and to push people to use them.” Kalev and Dobbin offer several recommendations for addressing these issues.
Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030789>
Researchers found that companies assume talented men will job hop to further their careers, while talented women will stay loyal.
by Elizabeth L. Campbell and Oliver Hahl
Here’s a new bias to be aware of when you’re applying for a job you’re overqualified for: Hiring managers often assume that women will stay put in that job, regardless of whether they give you a promotion, raise, bonus, or additional responsibility down the line. So not only will you be in a job you’re overqualified for, but you might not be recognized and rewarded appropriately.
Researchers Elizabeth Campbell and Oliver Hahl discovered this bias by asking people with hiring experience to evaluate candidates with qualifications above and beyond the job requirements. They learned that those people were 26% more likely to choose an overqualified woman over an overqualified man. Why? Overqualified men, in their minds, were greater flight risks. Overqualified women, on the other hand, would be loyal because, as their thinking went, women value their relationships with colleagues too much to leave. And so, the researchers deduced, managers might not work as hard to retain women.
Campbell and Hahl suggest interventions to counter these assumptions. For hiring managers, that’s asking about a candidate’s career goals as part of the interview process. And then for every manager, standardizing retention practices like routine conversations about a direct report’s “goals, motivations, and commitment to continuing to work at the firm.” (This piece from Susan Peppercorn, “5 Questions Every Manager Needs to Ask Their Direct Reports<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,1603078a,”> is a model. In fact, during my last mid-year review, my manager asked these questions, and they really did help us talk candidly and productively about my career growth and what I needed in order to do my best work.
One of the perks of working at Harvard Business Review is receiving a free premium subscription, and so there’s no limit to how much I can read about leadership and organizational culture. I can, and often do, go down rabbit holes on topics like compensation or feedback. If you haven’t ever subscribed, know that we offer three options<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,1603078b> that you can buy for yourself or gift someone else. Just an idea! (But it’s also an excellent way to support Women at Work.)
Thanks for reading,
Amanda
The Women at Work newsletter is edited by Amy Gallo, Erica Truxler, and Holly Forsyth.
Listen and Subscribe
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Copyright © 2022 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved.
Harvard Business Publishing
20 Guest St, Suite 700
Brighton, MA 02135
Program Analyst II
[signature_931968460]<http://www.cste.org/>
Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists
“Using the power of epidemiology to improve the public’s health”
Become a Member<https://www.cste.org/general/custom.asp?page=WhyJoin> • Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/CSTE.org> • Twitter<https://twitter.com/CSTEnews> • Instagram<https://www.instagram.com/cstenews/>
2635 Century Parkway NE, Suite 700, Atlanta, GA 30345
Tel: 770.458.3811 | Fax: 770.458.8516 | www.cste.org<http://www.cste.org/>
We are hiring! Please visit our Career Center<https://workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/default/mdf/recruitment/recruitment.html?cid=e81ae9c7-e644-4610-b6d3-397907be3551&ccId=19000101_000001&lang=en_US> to apply.
From: Jessica Arrazola <jarrazola@cste.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2022 4:02 PM
To: Sarah Auer <sauer@cste.org>
Subject: FW: Big Solutions to Big Problems
________________________________
From: HBR's Women at Work <noreply@a.email.hbr.org<mailto:noreply@a.email.hbr.org>>
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2022 4:02:01 PM (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
To: Jessica Arrazola <jarrazola@cste.org<mailto:jarrazola@cste.org>>
Subject: Big Solutions to Big Problems
Three ideas for how companies can support and retain women.
Read online<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,1603071d&e=cDE9QEpMZ2pseGVKSU85S0c3UkYtNzh2UGV5bEE2T3NKb3lxVGgwNVljS1hIWFJSeFJTMlU1UmE2VFEwZC0wS3AtV29qMFBSRzNsS1JtTlJfQzhPUGdaT19Yd1NJVlVfejJ2MERsWjE5ekFUbUlXZmJHRTU&s=WEB8Ips-EfxOc5ydbRxzjA0n-CPxOKFDQI2XeR3WeNY>
[HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW]<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,1603071e>
[Women at Work]<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,1603071f>
Conversations about where we’re at
and how we move forward.
[Amanda Kersey]
From Amanda Kersey, Senior Audio Producer
I read the September–October issue of Harvard Business Review while I was at the beach with my family this past weekend, and I found it to be especially relevant. So, I wanted to highlight two articles here, along with one from HBR.org. All three of these pieces address institutional problems: insufficient trust and solidarity among team members, lack of diversity in management, and preconceived notions about men’s and women’s career priorities. They also present solutions.
Depending on how much power and influence you have at work, these ideas may be an item you can put on the agenda for your leadership team’s next meeting—or they may be something you float to your boss or your company’s head of HR. Maybe they’re a link to share in a Slack channel you’re active on. Regardless, I hope you’ll read about them, think about their potential to bring about positive change in your world, and tell me about how putting them into practice goes.
Dig, Bridge, Collectively Act<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030720>
A proven approach to dismantling systemic inequities via authentic personal relationships.
by Tina Opie and Beth A. Livingston
In 2018, Tina Opie came on the podcast<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030721> to tell us about the power that women gain when we develop trusting relationships with one another, particularly when that involves learning about each other’s upbringings and differences. Tina and her collaborator Beth Livingston call that power Shared Sisterhood. And in this article, they describe how leaders can cultivate that understanding and trust.
First, dig, and encourage employees to join you in the process, which is actually three steps: 1) figure out which of the many social identities out there are yours and how tightly you hold them, 2) read up on the power dynamics associated with those identities, and 3) recognize your knowledge gaps.
This digging may seem like individual work, but when multiple coworkers do it simultaneously, they’re setting themselves up to bridge differences at scale—and ultimately act collectively for positive change. For instance, when one company’s senior leadership team did digging and bridging across a series of workshops, it led them to taking on the responsibility for sending internal responses to hate crimes or other racist violence (a task the company used to leave to its communications team).
The Surprising Benefits of Work/Life Support<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030722>
It’s a secret weapon for achieving organizational diversity.
by Alexandra Kalev and Frank Dobbin
Any time I see an article by social scientists Alexandra Kalev and Frank Dobbin, I read it because I’ve come to know them as a research team who take a popular organizational practice, like sexual harassment programs<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030787> or diversity training<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030788,> and reveal its faults. They’re not simply out to tear down well-intentioned initiatives though; they recommend alternatives rooted in their analysis of large sets of data collected over many years. In short, they’re results-oriented.
In this latest article, Kalev and Dobbin show how various types of work/life support raise the percentages of women and people of color in management. For example, companies that offered employees vouchers for childcare increased the number of Black women by 12.3%, Hispanic women by 16.4%, and Asian women by 10.6%.
When companies give employees predictable and flexible schedules, at least 12 weeks of parental leave, and childcare support (e.g., vouchers that subsidize it), they’re able to retain women as well as Black and Hispanic employees long enough for them to rise into management. “Black women are nearly twice as likely as white women to have quit a job or refused a job offer because of childcare problems,” they explain in the article. And “52 percent of nonwhite adults who quit a job in 2021 cited a lack of flexibility.”
If supporting employees with these benefits has such a clear upside, what’s keeping leaders from extending them? “In some cases,” they write, “the problem is conceptual: Many managers believe that employees who take advantage of work/life support will do less work and that overseeing them will become harder. In other cases the problem is practical: Managers simply don’t have the tools to administer systems of support for everyone and to push people to use them.” Kalev and Dobbin offer several recommendations for addressing these issues.
Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030789>
Researchers found that companies assume talented men will job hop to further their careers, while talented women will stay loyal.
by Elizabeth L. Campbell and Oliver Hahl
Here’s a new bias to be aware of when you’re applying for a job you’re overqualified for: Hiring managers often assume that women will stay put in that job, regardless of whether they give you a promotion, raise, bonus, or additional responsibility down the line. So not only will you be in a job you’re overqualified for, but you might not be recognized and rewarded appropriately.
Researchers Elizabeth Campbell and Oliver Hahl discovered this bias by asking people with hiring experience to evaluate candidates with qualifications above and beyond the job requirements. They learned that those people were 26% more likely to choose an overqualified woman over an overqualified man. Why? Overqualified men, in their minds, were greater flight risks. Overqualified women, on the other hand, would be loyal because, as their thinking went, women value their relationships with colleagues too much to leave. And so, the researchers deduced, managers might not work as hard to retain women.
Campbell and Hahl suggest interventions to counter these assumptions. For hiring managers, that’s asking about a candidate’s career goals as part of the interview process. And then for every manager, standardizing retention practices like routine conversations about a direct report’s “goals, motivations, and commitment to continuing to work at the firm.” (This piece from Susan Peppercorn, “5 Questions Every Manager Needs to Ask Their Direct Reports<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,1603078a,”> is a model. In fact, during my last mid-year review, my manager asked these questions, and they really did help us talk candidly and productively about my career growth and what I needed in order to do my best work.
One of the perks of working at Harvard Business Review is receiving a free premium subscription, and so there’s no limit to how much I can read about leadership and organizational culture. I can, and often do, go down rabbit holes on topics like compensation or feedback. If you haven’t ever subscribed, know that we offer three options<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,1603078b> that you can buy for yourself or gift someone else. Just an idea! (But it’s also an excellent way to support Women at Work.)
Thanks for reading,
Amanda
The Women at Work newsletter is edited by Amy Gallo, Erica Truxler, and Holly Forsyth.
Listen and Subscribe
APPLE PODCASTS | <https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030725> GOOGLE PODCASTS | <https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030726> RSS<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030724>
Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast, to Harvard Business Review, and to forward this email to friends and colleagues who need it.
Not yet subscribed to this newsletter? Sign up here<https://t.a.email.hbr.org/r/?id=hb31f2a1c,1603071b,16030727> to get Women at Work in your inbox.
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