Dive Brief:
- Accenture, IBM, KPMG, Procter & Gamble and Verizon top the list of Working Mother magazine's 25 best places to work for women of color in 2018. The Working Mother Research Institute has been tracking corporations' progress in promoting women of color and placing them at all managerial levels since 2003.
- This year is the first that Working Mother has broken down its statistics by specific races and ethnicities in order to better pinpoint successes, the company announced. The selected companies were lauded for training their HR staff, executives, recruiters and hiring managers to better understand bias and make their workplaces inclusive. Best companies also performed better in promotions (though only marginally), pay progress and mentoring.
- At the 2018 Best Companies, women of color represent 23% of their staff, with a 1% point gain in numbers over the preceding year; while that number may seem low, it is higher than typical representation in U.S. workforces generally (19%), according to U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data. Regarding pay, 19% of women of color, compared to 30% of white women, have reached the top 20% of companies' top earners.
Dive Insight:
Best companies were selected for making quantifiable progress in hiring, promoting and paying women of color, who tend to lag behind both white men and women in these areas. Other employers can look at these companies' records for incentive in hiring and retaining women of color and eliminating biases that are barriers to their advancement on the job. Many studies have shown that more diverse workplaces tend to perform better on various business metrics, including innovation.
But the inequalities at play can be deeply entrenched and difficult to suss out alone. Black and Hispanic women in the tech industry, for example, often face mistreatment in the form of unfair or illegal practices, such as being denied deserved promotions, bullying, stereotyping, sexual harassment and discriminating, a Kapor Center for Social Impact study shows.
Employers also might note another study released earlier this year showing the impact bias has on the physical and emotional well-being of women of color. According to Catalyst, women of color face an "emotional tax" that keeps them anxious and on guard when they're passed up for promotions, ignored on the job and generally mistreated. HR departments can train executives, recruiters and hiring managers to recognize and eliminate bias and vigorously enforce their workplaces anti-discrimination policies.