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Employee Retention

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024

Employee attraction and retention perpetually rank at the top of HR’s priority list.

60% of businesses find it hard to retain employees. Given the change in cultures since the pandemic, and how many businesses now want to go back to working as if it never happened, it’s not really surprising that employees are jumping ship.

But if businesses can prevent 75% of the reasons employees leave, why don’t they work on fixing those issues?

Especially when almost three-quarters of businesses are struggling to attract employees right now?

Let’s look at some of the ways you can boost employee attraction and retention this year.

Share your values

How often do you share what matters to your business?

Are you laser-focused on green initiatives?

Do you work with grassroots organizations to improve diversity in your industry?

Whatever your values are, when people know what matters to you and your business, you’ll attract like-minded individuals who want to work toward the same or similar goals.

This will improve the quality of the candidates who apply for roles.

It will have a positive impact on employee attraction and retention because people will feel aligned with the organization.

Give employees a purpose

Employees want to feel like more than just a cog in a machine. They want to know that what they do matters.

Giving your employees a greater purpose improves their wellbeing and quality of life. It can even help people live longer.

That purpose could be tied to your shared values, or it could complement those values in some way. For instance, if diversity is important to your business, an employee could specifically focus on disability awareness in the workplace.

You could also give employees the chance to volunteer a couple days a year for organizations that matter to them. Social impact opportunities are a great way to boost employee attraction and retention.

Let your culture shine

If someone knows what your company culture is like before they join your business, they’re more likely to be a good fit because they know what they’re signing up for.

Make sure you’re vocal about your culture on your company website, social media, email marketing—anywhere you interact with customers and candidates. This will give them a clear idea of what you’re about as an organization.

It will also nurture the relationships you have with them. Which means they’ll be more primed to apply when a suitable vacancy opens.

To monitor your company culture and make sure it aligns with your values, why not send an employee survey?

With Workrowd, you can send them automatically, so you can act on the results right when they come in. Keeping a pulse on workers’ wants and needs is key to employee attraction and retention.

Ensure job descriptions match your business

One of the reasons employees leave during onboarding is because what they were sold during the hiring process isn’t what the role or company is actually like.

Job descriptions can play a big role in this. Do you euphemize how stressful the role is? Do you talk about being a “team player” when they’ll do a lot of solo working?

All job descriptions should accurately reflect the company culture and what employees can expect from the role and their team (if they’re even part of a team, or if they’re going to be a one-person band).

Otherwise, you risk attracting wrong-fit candidates who will leave sooner and mean you have to repeat the costly hiring process.

Practice true diversity

When a company is truly diverse, it’s more profitable and innovative.

There are no downsides to more diverse organizations, but the term can be met with eye rolls anyway.

Make sure that when you’re hiring, the hiring panel is truly diverse.

If the hiring panel only has one female or person of color, it can actually decrease diversity within the organization.

The underrepresented team member won’t want to look like they’re playing favorites, but the white/male hiring managers are more likely to think they’ve got diversity covered and don’t need to worry about it.

So have more than one female, person of color, person with a disability, etc, on your hiring panels. It can help tackle unconscious bias and ensure that your employee attraction and retention efforts yield the right hire.

Remember: perks aren’t everything

Focusing on perks over payment might’ve worked ten years ago. Now though, employees see perks for what they are: an excuse to not pay them what they’re worth.

Instead, focus on paying employees the market rate and valuing their expertise and knowledge. Don’t bother trying to reward them with tokens like dart boards or free fruit. Those things won’t deliver results on employee attraction and retention.

Nail your onboarding process

The more effective your onboarding process is, the quicker new hires will reach full productivity. And the quicker they can start making money for you. Plus, it can mean 69% of new hires stay for 3 years or more.

But an ineffective onboarding process can lead to confused employees who leave before finishing their probation.

It could also lead to negative reviews on sites like Glassdoor or LinkedIn.

Some things to consider including in your employee onboarding process:

  • Business background
  • About your product/service
  • How you expect employees to behave
  • What their role entails
  • Company values
  • Who to go to for different queries
  • Where to find information
  • How to use tools
  • Social media policy
  • Where to find HR policies
  • How to book paid time off, sick leave, etc.

Invest in employees’ growth

Employees want to learn more. Investing in their growth can improve your employee attraction and retention success and boost loyalty.

This could come in the form of training to make them better at their role. Or training in a related area to expand their industry knowledge.

You could also run lunch and learns or one-off workshops where employees learn a new skill such as storytelling or public speaking.

While these won’t be directly related to every role, creative skills and confidence-boosting workshops help every area of a business, and every employee regardless of rank. They’ll be more confident, persuasive speakers and having learned something new will be good for their mental health, too.

Conclusion

Employee attraction and retention is a cycle. The types of candidates you attract and hire will ultimately impact your employee retention.

It’s therefore important to communicate your company values and expectations early on, during the hiring process.

That way, candidates who are a poor fit will exclude themselves, reducing the number of resumes you need to filter through, and potentially saving you money and ensuring you hire better-quality employees.

Want to boost employee attraction and retention in one step? Workrowd has what you need. With all your employee programs, groups, and events in one place, it’s easy to showcase your culture to potential hires. And current employees will want to stick around with such easy access to everything that makes your organization great.

Want to learn more and see how Workrowd could plug in to boost employee attraction and retention in your workplace? Drop by our site or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com.

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024
How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters
5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement
Categories
Company Culture

How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters

Empathy. We’ve all heard the word. But how many of us really know what it means? Or actively practice it? Especially when it comes to empathy at work?

It’s not about walking a mile in someone’s shoes. It’s not about offering them a shoulder to cry on.

The dictionary defines it as: “The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.”

Walking a mile in someone’s shoes or offering them a shoulder to cry on doesn’t necessarily mean you understand what they’re going through or share their feelings. Everyone reacts differently to the same situations.

How I’d react to an incident at work is different from how a Workrowd colleague would react, or how a stranger would respond. Despite all of us being in the same situation.

So if that’s not showing empathy, what is?

The dictionary said it best: “understanding.”

That’s the key, and that’s where most people go wrong.

Offering someone a shoulder is a sign of compassion or sympathy, but not necessarily empathy.

To feel empathy, you have to truly understand the other person’s emotions even if you wouldn’t respond to a situation in the same way.

Why does empathy at work matter?

Consulting firm EY found in 2021 that 90% of employees believe empathetic leaders increase job satisfaction. What’s more, 79% believe they lower employee turnover. Those are some pretty significant numbers.

For companies struggling to retain employees, cultivating empathy at work could make a huge difference.

Greater empathy can also lead to more innovation. In fact, 61% of employees at empathetic organizations felt they could innovate.

Just 13% felt they could at apathetic organizations.

In our ever-changing, fast-moving times, the more innovation going on in your business, the more likely you are to differentiate yourself from competitors to both customers and employees. And the more money you’re likely to make as a result.

But first, that requires a psychologically safe workplace.

And how do you build that?

Empathy!

4 ways to build empathy at work

How can you create more empathy at work? Let’s take a look:

Define what empathy means in your business

As I mentioned in the introduction, a lot of people have heard of empathy, but very few people understand what it really is.

There’s a difference between witnessing racism and really feeling its impacts in the short- and long-term.

Same as there’s a difference between seeing someone in a wheelchair and understanding the challenges that come from living in a world that isn’t disability friendly.

So, what does empathy at work look like at your organization? How will you show empathy to your employees?

Will it be through active listening?

Sending feedback surveys and acting based on the results?

Training managers and employees on what empathy at work looks like and how to use it?

Or something else?

Make your CEO human

The larger a company is, the more a CEO can feel like a mythical creature who only comes out at night.

Employees further down the ladder may have only heard their name and seen their headshot on LinkedIn. They may never have had a conversation with them.

When CEOs open up to employees and show a human side, it creates a connection that can help motivate team members, foster understanding, and set an example. Managers and employees alike can then follow this display of empathy at work.

Get managers to set an example

If a manager sets an awkward work environment, employees won’t feel comfortable in their roles. They’re also likely to subconsciously mimic this to protect themselves.

If a manager creates a welcoming work environment, everyone will feel involved and want to be a part of that team. New team members will be more likely to stay because they’ll feel like they belong.

Managers can set an example by how they talk to their team members and even how they greet them in the mornings. Everything from their body language to their tone of voice can set the atmosphere for the day.

If a manager is having a bad day, they should either tell their employees that they’re feeling off, or find a way to not let their mood rub off. Otherwise, it can ruin the productivity of everyone on their team.

Open the lines of communication

Open communication is important in any relationship. But how can employees share their feedback in your workplace?

Who can they go to if they have issues with a colleague? Or their boss?

There should be formal processes in place, as well as informal ways to discuss less serious matters.

Sending regular surveys to see how your employees really feel is another way to find out what they think. It allows you to stay informed about what’s happening within your business and analyze the results.

Seeking to understand what employees are going through in this way can really help you build empathy at work.

Conclusion

Fostering empathy at work is a key trait of any successful organization. It improves creativity, productivity, and innovation—all components that have never been more important for businesses.

Listening to what employees have to say, and setting examples, helps employees understand your workplace culture. This is especially true if instigating the new, more empathetic attitude meets some resistance.

Over time, you’ll start to see the benefits of empathy at work and your employees will repay you with their hard work and loyalty.

Ready to up your game when it comes to empathy at work? Giving employees a one-stop shop for building real connections is a great place to start.

Workrowd enables you to do just that, alongside automated surveys and real-time analytics. Curious to learn more? Drop by our site, or reach out directly to hello@workrowd.com today.

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024
How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters
5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement
Categories
Employee Engagement

5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement

Employee disengagement is rampant. Almost a quarter of the global workforce is “actively disengaged.” What’s more, 59% do the bare minimum, a trend now referred to as “quiet quitting.”

This is costing companies across the globe $8.8 trillion in lost productivity. That’s 9% of global GDP.

Since 2020, active disengagement has continued to grow. And to be honest, I’m not surprised. Covid changed how many of us see and experience the world. Add to that climate change, wars, and the political climate, and many of us feel a continued sense of existential dread.

Where we choose to work can make or break our mental health. We can either feel like we’re making a difference, or that we’re just going through the motions. It can seem like nobody would notice if we left.

To get the most from employees, you need to make them feel like they matter. Like their presence in your business contributes to something bigger than themselves.

So let’s take a look at some causes of employee disengagement that you may not have considered before:

Incompatible values

Many employees today aren’t just motivated by a paycheck. They want to feel like their life—and their work—has a purpose, too.

This is why your employer brand is so important. You can make it clear to potential candidates what your company values are. This will help you attract people who share those values.

As a result, anyone who applies to work for your business will have already qualified themselves. That way, you’ll be able to hire someone quicker.

On the flip side, if employees don’t understand your values before they join, and they don’t share them, they’ll be less motivated. So they won’t work as hard and they’ll be less likely to stay long term. Which will then cost you more time and money to hire and train their replacement and overcome employee disengagement.

Not being as inclusive as you think

When a business or person thinks they’re fully inclusive and has nothing left to learn about diversity, equity, and inclusion, that’s when the cracks start to appear.

Being an inclusive business requires active work. It’s not something where anyone can afford to get complacent.

It’s also not just about educating people on DEI. Those kinds of training programs can often cause employees—and even some senior leaders—to roll their eyes and treat the training as a box-ticking exercise.

To truly be inclusive, it requires:

  • Calling out microaggressions
  • Checking the language you—and your colleagues—use in emails, job descriptions, blog posts, and anything else you publish to ensure it’s truly inclusive
  • Analyzing job descriptions to ensure they use neutral language

These all help you, and your employees, keep inclusivity front of mind and support underrepresented talent in the workplace. It also helps stop employee disengagement before it starts.

Feeling unvalued

Employees want to feel like you care about them.

There are lots of different way to show them that you do. It doesn’t have to be anything big or expensive.

A simple “thank you,” or a “great job” can show someone you value what they’ve done for you.

Another way to make employees feel valued is to listen to their opinions and take their feedback into account.

Even if what they hope for can never happen, allowing them to voice their opinion makes them feel heard, respected, and valued, rather than silenced and unappreciated.

Employee feedback surveys—and acting based on the results—is one way to make employees feel heard and appreciated.

Automate survey sending and results analysis so that you can act sooner and successfully reduce employee disengagement.

Lack of growth

The more we do the same thing day in and day out, the more repetitive and boring it becomes.

Our brains crave novelty and stimulation. That means leaving the house, changing our working environment (whether we work from home or an office), working with different people, and trying new things.

When an employee feels stuck in their role and like there’s nowhere else for them to go, it can lead to feelings of frustration and boredom.

These feelings can lead to resentment and cause them to not work at their full capacity and “quiet quit” instead.

Growth doesn’t just have to mean a promotion, it can mean:

  • Moving departments
  • Expanding their skillset, such as a copywriter learning about video editing
  • Working on a different project

Finding ways to break up the working day and keep it fresh reduces employee disengagement and enables you to retain their knowledge.

Hiding health conditions

Young people now struggle with depression and anxiety at a higher rate than their older colleagues. This hasn’t happened since records began.

But someone doesn’t have to be quiet in the office to have a mental health condition. Sometimes the most outgoing, vocal, seemingly happy people are the ones who are screaming on the inside.

That’s why it’s so important to check in with your employees.

It could be that the most compassionate people, the ones who deflect conversations away from being about them, are the ones struggling the most. But they may also be the most uncomfortable talking about how they feel.

That’s not to say it’s always the case—mental health conditions look different on everyone.

Ensuring managers check in with their employees and notice significant changes in their behavior, productivity, engagement, or working patterns is therefore key. It helps prevent employee disengagement before it negatively affects people’s mental health and your business’s bottom line.

Conclusion

To avoid employee disengagement, you need to take active steps to keep employees engaged.

That means maintaining basic DEI efforts like speaking up when you see someone being disrespectful, supporting employees through their health or other personal struggles, and finding ways to keep employees interested in their jobs.

If you’re ready to make real strides on reducing employee disengagement, Workrowd’s all-in-one suite of tools can help. With everything you need to organize and track employee engagement programs under one roof, you’ll always know what is and isn’t driving results.

Want to learn more? Visit us online or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com to schedule some time to chat.

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024
How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters
5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement
Categories
Employee Retention

Top tips to boost millennial employee retention in 2024

More than half of millennials are disengaged at work. This results in lower productivity and higher turnover. In other words, boosting millennial employee retention should definitely be on your to-do list.

In many countries, wages haven’t kept up with the rate of inflation, leaving millennials in the prime of their working lives with little hope of ever buying a house. Almost half live paycheck to paycheck, despite now being in their 30s and 40s.

Because of these anxieties, pay is the main reason millennials changed jobs in the last two years.

But they still prioritize things like work-life balance and growth opportunities alongside pay. 

So these things are still important to focus on when hiring this huge demographic.

Saying that your benefits make up for not paying people at the market rate isn’t good enough. Perks like foosball tables aren’t what candidates want. In the current economy, they’re barely on anyone’s radars anymore.

In an increasingly fractured world, we’re craving financial security and connection.

So, how can you engage the largest working demographic and improve millennial employee retention?

Offer a flexible working environment

84% of millennials want to work remotely. It provides flexibility and more time to spend reading, relaxing, or connecting with loved ones.

Workplace flexibility could involve offering full-time remote options, hybrid work options, or allowing employees to work the hours they choose so long as they get their work done.

Enabling team members to work their schedule around their life can do wonders for millennial employee retention.

Support their career growth

Just 24% of millennials are satisfied with their career progress. I can’t say I’m surprised. I’m a millennial myself and many of my friends who choose to stay in traditional employment find it hard to get up the ladder and feel stuck in their current roles.

But employees want career progression. They want to know that their employer supports their growth, too.

How can you support your employees’ career trajectory?

Some options:

  • Courses to develop new skills
  • Come up with a progression plan with them
  • Help them move into a new department

You could also ask employees how they’d like to progress during their onboarding or performance reviews.

To maximize millennial employee retention, provide options, too. Team members may not know what’s available to them.

Give them a purpose

In a world where we can feel helpless, millennials want a way to add purpose back into their lives. It’s no longer enough to work to pay the bills. That work has to mean something, too.

How can you give team members a greater purpose?

Is it offering them more responsibilities?

Helping them choose which charity you’ll support?

Getting them to run an employee group to support their colleagues?

The answer will probably be different for every employee. One way you can get answers is to ask them with an employee feedback survey.

Then, you can collect answers from employees who want to work toward the same thing, connect them, and they can work together toward their mutual goal.

Workrowd can help you send feedback surveys and get more from them. That way, you have more time to take action on millennial employee retention based on the results.

Make them feel like they belong

Employee groups are a great way to connect team members with colleagues who share things in common with them.

Whether they connect over their demographics, favorite TV shows, career goals, or something else, it’s a way to foster a sense of belonging in the workplace.

This is key to supporting employees’ mental health and avoiding common health issues like burnout.

Organizing employee groups can be a challenge, but with Workrowd, it’s a breeze. Everything employees need to connect with their colleagues is in one place. That way, you can increase millennial employee retention without the stress.

Prioritize mental health

Too many people I know have burned out because of work.

Whether that’s because they worked too hard to hit deadlines, or because they were neurodivergent and desperately trying to mask to fit in, the results are the same.

No energy, passion, or productivity.

Employers need to look after their employees. Not only should employees feel comfortable being themselves in the workplace, but employers need to support their mental health so that they don’t burn out.

Watch out for your top employees who often stay late or log into their laptop at weird hours. They may love what they do, but they’re the ones most likely to burn out. They can’t maintain that level of productivity forever. And the longer they try to, the greater their risk of burning out.

Burned out team members are more likely to leave, impacting millennial employee retention.

Actually be inclusive

Being an inclusive business is about more than education; it’s also about action. It’s about embracing employees’ differences and appreciating the strengths that come with them. Moreover, it’s about treating people fairly regardless of their backgrounds. They all contribute toward your business, after all.

Millennials are a diverse bunch. And most of us embrace that diversity. Which means we also want our employers to.

It’s not enough to not be racist; employers should be actively anti-racist. Working hard to stamp out microaggressions in the workplace.

Working hard to not just tell the world that they’re inclusive, but to show it. Authenticity is crucial when it comes to millennial employee retention.

Conclusion

To boost millennial employee retention, you need to understand their priorities. That means paying them what they’re worth while remembering that it’s about more than just a paycheck—it’s also about making a difference in the world.

To increase your millennial employee retention, giving them somewhere they can connect with their coworkers and share their feedback is important. That’s where Workrowd comes in.

Using our tools, you can help employees engage with colleagues from across your organization, share what matters to them, keep up with what’s going on within the business, and track outcomes with automated analytics.

To find out how we can partner to benefit your business, visit us online or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com to schedule a demo.

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024
How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters
5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement
Categories
Wellness

Top tips for reducing stress in the workplace in 2024

Stress prevents around a million Americans from going to work each day. When you consider that 94% of people feel stressed at work, it’s surprising that number isn’t higher. It also really highlights the importance of reducing stress in the workplace.

Stress comes with too many physical and mental health issues for me to list in this blog post, but some of its more insidious symptoms include joint or muscle aches; shorter tempers; detachment from events/surroundings; and getting ill more frequently.

All these symptoms can impact an employee’s home life and their ability to do their job.

It’s not just employees who feel the impact of work-related stress, though. The global cost of stress, anxiety, and depression amounts to roughly $1 trillion in lost productivity.

So not working towards reducing stress in the workplace can have a huge effect on your business. 

How do you prevent your employees from experiencing stress at work? Here are our tips for reducing stress in the workplace:

Don’t treat everyone like an extrovert

It’s been years since Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking debuted. Yet for introverts, it can still sometimes feel like we’re expected to be raring to go and happy to be around people all the time.

Not everyone likes loud, open-plan offices or socializing after work. That doesn’t mean they don’t like their colleagues. It just means they need time to reset so that they can perform at their best.

What one person sees as celebratory drinks with coworkers, another may see as a trap. Whether someone drinks or not, we don’t get a lot of time to ourselves after work. For those of us who need a quiet space, those few hours between work and sleep are crucial.

Yet saying no to those drinks can mean colleagues judge us and even pass us over for promotions. All because we recharge our batteries differently.

And, while we’re at it, someone not talking in a meeting doesn’t mean they’re not engaged. It could simply mean they’re digesting what’s being said. Or they’re uncomfortable around so many people. It doesn’t mean they’re incapable of performing in their role.

Accommodating an array of different communication styles is an important way of reducing stress in the workplace.

Monitor workloads—and adjust accordingly

It’s all too easy for a manageable workload to slowly get bigger and bigger until it becomes unmanageable. And this can happen without employees or managers realizing it until the employee becomes stressed or burned out.

Managers therefore need to keep an eye on their employees’ workloads, ensuring they’re doable within their working hours and they don’t have to sacrifice personal time to hit deadlines. Unsurprisingly, employees’ workloads have a huge impact on how well you succeed at reducing stress in the workplace.

Be realistic with deadlines

While deadlines can be motivating, they can also lead to a lot of stress. It’s all too common for managers to overpromise to clients then push their employees too far and cause them to burn out.

For instance, this is especially common in the gaming industry, with what they call “crunch.”

The closer a game’s release gets, the greater the expectation that employees work longer hours, sacrificing time with their loved ones and possibly even sleep, too.

Someone I know who previously worked in the gaming industry would get home around midnight, then leave around six the following morning. For months. That’s not healthy, normal, or acceptable.

Things in the game industry are changing, slowly. And while the game industry may be bad, it’s not the only industry that pushes its employees to work harder and risk burnout to hit an impossible deadline.

Maintaining reasonable expectations is key to reducing stress in the workplace.

Keep an eye out for discrimination and microaggressions

Any time a business thinks that it’s 100% dealt with discrimination, it’s likely to slip backward.

Preventing discrimination in the workplace requires constant, active effort, in the same way that for a business to grow it requires regular effort. It is work, after all.

Just because you don’t experience discrimination in the workplace, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It could just be that it’s directed toward a different group and you haven’t seen it. Or you don’t know what to look for.

Disabled people experience the most discrimination in the workplace, for example.

People with hidden disabilities may not even share their disabilities with their colleagues for fear of negative reactions.

I’ve been told many times that I’m being a drama queen because I find lights too bright or spaces too noisy, even if sensitivity to those things affects my ability to do my job.

Those types of comments affected how comfortable I felt in the workplace and made me feel judged and less accepted in that space. It was a clear indicator that employer wasn’t as inclusive as it claimed to be.

If you see someone say or do something discriminatory, either call them out on it if you feel comfortable doing so, or if you don’t, speak to HR. When your organization is more inclusive, reducing stress in the workplace becomes easier.

Connect employees

Loneliness can be stressful. And even someone surrounded by people every day can feel lonely if the people they’re with don’t understand them.

Employee groups can help them to connect with colleagues from different departments, or even countries, who have things in common with them. This helps employees feel like they belong at work and can help new employees settle in faster.

But finding an effective way to manage employee groups can be challenging. That’s where we come in.

Using Workrowd, you can manage your employee groups in one, simple place. Employees have everything they need to network with their colleagues. And, you can measure your groups’ effectiveness with regular feedback surveys.

Conclusion

Stress, like many health conditions, can creep up on you. One minute you’re fine, the next you’re crumbling over a never-ending workload.

That’s why it’s so important to always be on the lookout for signs of stress in the workplace, in both you and your colleagues. You can then find ways to work towards reducing stress in the workplace before it escalates.

Are you ready to implement some of these strategies for reducing stress in the workplace? Workrowd can help.

With our all-in-one engagement tool suite, you can easily keep tabs on stress levels in your organization. From automated surveys to groups offering crucial support to stressed employees, everything you need is in one place.

Curious to learn more? Visit us online or email us directly at hello@workrowd.com.

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024
How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters
5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement
Categories
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging

How to combat signs of ableism in the workplace

Having had some form of invisible illness most of my working life—most of my life, actually—I’ve seen a lot of signs of ableism in the workplace.

Sometimes this comes from people who mean well but have no experience with a particular health condition. Other times it’s based on the assumption that someone would fake or exxagerate health issues to get out of work.

I don’t deny that there are people out there who might do that. However, most of the people I know with significant long-term health conditions play them down.

They may not even disclose their health issues to their employer because they’re worried about being discriminated against.

And, since the most common form of discrimination claim in the US in 2020 was disability discrimination, this is a legitimate concern.

So how can you avoid ableism and disability discrimination? Here are some tips from someone with personal experience with signs of ableism in the workplace:

Don’t offer unsolicited advice

“Have you tried lavender to help you sleep? What about going to bed earlier? There’s this really great supplement that—”

My whole life, on and off, I’ve struggled with insomnia. And, as much as I love lavender, it hasn’t helped.

But far too many colleagues have suggested it as a panacea to my brain that won’t quiet down.

Or suggested I can magically go to bed earlier and I’ll be able to adjust my sleeping pattern quicker than I can say “F1” (my favorite sport).

Unsolicited advice like this is unbelievably frustrating. It may be well-intentioned, but that doesn’t change how it feels to receive it.

It doesn’t take into account someone’s individual needs or what they might’ve already tried. People often volunteer it without listening to that person’s frustrations, or history, first. 

If an employee has a diagnosis for a long-term illness, there’s a high chance they’ve already tried a lot of the basic solutions that you can find on Google…many of which don’t even have any scientific basis to them. (Take it from someone who reads the studies about them for fun.)

Listen to employees’ concerns—don’t assume what they need

Every employee with a disability will have different needs.

Many people with disabilities have a “cocktail of conditions” (thanks to my support worker for that term), too.

For example, I have fibromyalgia and ME/CFS. These conditions can be connected to ADHD. They can also weaken muscles and make it harder to exercise, further exacerbating my chronic pain. And all three come with sides of insomnia.

So what I need because of my chronic pain/ADHD combo is different from what someone with only chronic pain or only ADHD might need.

Many conditions can have dozens, if not hundreds, of symptoms. So it’s impossible to take a one-size-fits all approach. Health issues will show themselves in different ways depending on the person.

And that’s why it’s so important to listen to an employee’s needs in order to address signs of ableism at work.

Help employees adapt their work environment

Lots of different things can make employees’ working lives better or worse.

In addition to asking employees what they need, have a list of things you can offer.

Options that the UK’s Access to Work scheme, which helps get people with disabilities into work, provide include:

  • Noise-cancelling headphones
  • Touchscreen tablets or e-ink tablets
  • An ergonomic keyboard or mouse
  • A virtual assistant
  • A better desk chair

Be mindful of energy drains

Full-time work, especially when it’s in an office, can be incredibly draining.

There’s constant stimuli in the office from people talking, flashing computer screens, colleagues’ deodorants, air fresheners, fluorescent lights, and more.

We may not consciously realize it (although I think more people do since the pandemic), but all these things assail our senses and drain us faster than if we’re working in our own spaces.

Not only that, but things like having to be in the office at a certain time can be hard for someone with a disability. Health conditions are often worse in the morning after the body has been in the same position all night.

This means an employee with a disability may be more productive if they can start or finish later, if they can work from home, or if they can work for fewer hours.

Sending an employee feedback survey helps to gauge employees’ wants and needs. That way, you can improve employee wellbeing and thereby productivity and engagement.

And, with Workrowd, you can automate survey sending, meaning you get all the answers in an easy-to-read dashboard with no effort on your end.

Embrace pacing

Pacing is the art of, well, pacing your energy levels. When I received my diagnosis, the doctor described pacing as doing slightly less on the good days and slightly more on the bad days. That way, in theory, my energy would balance out.

In the workplace, this could look like offering more breaks for employees rather than one long lunchbreak.

It’s not natural for us to be superglued to a desk chair for eight hours a day.

Even with a lunchbreak in between that’s far too long for us to sit down for.

A lot of chronic pain improves with moving more often. This is especially true for chronic back pain, which is one of the biggest reasons for workplace sickness.

So if you’re worried about absenteeism alongside signs of ableism in the workplace, enabling employees to move more often is one of the simplest solutions.

Allow employees to connect

Having any sort of long-term health condition can be isolating. A lot of people don’t get it (that’s where the unsolicited advice often comes from—people’s desire to “fix” us).

Enabling employees to connect with others who face similar struggles makes a huge difference. It means they feel less alone and there are people within the organization who can provide empathy and compassion when they’re having a bad day.

Sometimes, when someone talks about their illness, they’re not looking for a solution. They just need to externalize their feelings so that they don’t take over. The solution to that is listening.

That’s why employee groups can be such a powerful tool for connecting employees.

Workrowd can help you manage your employee groups and get more out of them—and therefore your employees.

Conclusion 

Signs of ableism in the workplace can creep in in unexpected ways, especially if someone doesn’t have experience with disabilities, directly or indirectly.

It’s therefore important that team members, but especially managers and HR pros, are educated in the best ways to support people with disabilities.

This allows employees with disabilities to stay in the workplace, not face discrimination, and feel a sense of purpose—something that’s good for their mental wellbeing.

Businesses also get to be truly diverse instead of preaching diversity but not living it.

Are you looking for ways to address signs of ableism in the workplace? Workrowd has the tools you need. From standing up and managing employee groups, to collecting and visualizing employee feedback, we’re your one-stop shop.

If you’d like to learn how Workrowd can help you automate tasks and build a more inclusive workplace, visit us online or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com.

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024
How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters
5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement
Categories
Company Culture

7 all-hands meeting ideas for a more connected culture

Many businesses, both big and small, use all-hands meetings to get everyone together. So it’s always good to have some all-hands meeting ideas on hand to ensure you’re making the most of yours.

All-hands enable organizations to share company updates, industry news, and future plans. For some businesses, these meetings are a regular occurrence, happening monthly or quarterly. For others, they’re yearly or intermittent depending on what’s happening.

Regardless of how often you hold your all-hands, they offer an opportunity to improve employee engagement and create a sense of belonging. 

When employees are truly happy and feel like they belong in the workplace, they work harder and stay for longer. All-hands are just one way that you can make people feel like an important part of the team, no matter what their role is.

So, let’s take a look at some all-hands meeting ideas to create a more connected culture:

Change up the speakers

Hearing the same C-Suite executives talk every time can get repetitive for employees. Especially if you hold monthly all-hands meetings.

So why not give employees a chance instead?

Rather than the head of each department giving updates each month, rotate which employee shares a team’s updates. This gives them the chance to build their public speaking and leadership skills. It also shows you’re invested in their professional development—something which is increasingly important to employees.

Not to mention public speaking skills increase people’s confidence and can help them more easily articulate their thoughts.

Hold it at different times and locations

While holding a company-wide meeting at the same time may sound like a good idea so people know when to expect it, if every meeting is at 9am on the first Monday of the month, it excludes the same people. Meaning those team members feel less connected to the business and may not get the opportunity to ask their questions. 

So if you held the meeting in the morning last time, consider doing it in the afternoon the next. 

If you meet in person but have a distributed team, change which location you hold it at. Consider making it available online as well. That way it’s easier for people to attend whether they work in that office or not. It’s one of the easier all-hands meeting ideas that can offer a big payoff.

Make it accessible

If it’s a short update, or you have a global team, can you do the update online? Or take a hybrid approach?

This ensures people with disabilities don’t have to worry about travel arrangements, parents don’t have to pay for expensive care, and it’s not eating into employees’ time with their loved ones.

You could record the all-hands (whether it’s in-person or not), then create a replay for people who can’t watch live. This makes it accessible to everyone regardless of their time zone or working schedule.

If you decide to host it in-person or hybrid, make sure you choose an accessible venue. 

It should have a working elevator, a plan in place for wheelchair users if there’s a fire, working toilets, parking and/or public transit links, and somewhere employees can get food and drink.

This ensures your employees can be at their best for the meeting.

To make things even more accessible, you can use Workrowd to centralize materials you want to share before or after the meeting. Any meeting information also becomes archived and easy to find, so everyone can quickly refer to it when needed.

Make it interactive

The more you involve employees, the less likely they are to tune out. 

Sorry, but all-hands can be boring and repetitive. They may be interesting to managers , but you want employees to get value from them, too. This only happens if they feel valued and bought into the company mission.

So make sure to give employees the chance to ask questions about what’s happening in your business/industry. You could allow them to put executives on the spot, or give them the option to submit questions in advance.

Using Workrowd, you can make sessions more interactive, giving employees the chance to discuss the meeting before, during, and after on the meeting’s page.

Be open and honest with your employees and they’re more likely to reward you with their loyalty. Introducing more interactivity is one of the all-hands meeting ideas every organization should consider.

Send a reminder

With everything going on at work, it can be easy for employees to forget that an all-hands is even happening.

Sending a reminder can help keep it top of mind. This then means people are less likely to leave organizing travel, accommodation, or childcare to the last minute.

You can also use Workrowd to schedule and collect meeting RSVPs so you know who’s coming. Your team will then get automatic reminders as well. It puts some of the all-hands meeting ideas on autopilot, so you can focus on creating an even better experience.

Offer optional socializing and networking

While I disagree with mandatory workplace socializing, there is a place for optional socializing. 

Whether this is going out for a meal, an activity, or a book club, giving employees the chance to hang out with their colleagues face-to-face and do something that isn’t work-related can help with collaboration and allow them to let off some steam.

Get feedback

If you want everyone in your company to pay attention to, and get the most from, an all-hands, you need to know how they feel about it. 

Regularly soliciting feedback on the meetings’ format and usefulness ensures you can see what’s working and can act to continuously improve it.

To make your life even easier, Workrowd can automatically follow up with employees after your all-hands. You can collect employees’ feedback, then see the results in your automated analytics dashboard. 

That way, you’ll know exactly what employees love—and aren’t so keen on—within your current format. It then makes it easy to improve on your all-hands meeting ideas for next time.

Conclusion

To get the most from company-wide meetings, you have to meet employees halfway. 

All-hands aren’t just about you sharing company updates. They’re about finding out what your employees want and need from you going forward. 

You can do that via a Q&A, or send a survey after the all-hands to find out what they think. 

Changing up how and when you host all-hands meetings ensures they’re accessible to more people regardless of their location or circumstances.

Ready to take things to the next level with some of these all-hands meeting ideas? Workrowd’s all-in-one suite of tools can help.

Using our one-stop platform, you can easily keep everyone in the loop, encourage better discussions, and collect feedback on how your all-hands meeting ideas are working out.

Does this sound useful for your organization? If so, visit us online to learn more and see how Workrowd can help you build a more connected culture. Or, just send us a quick note at hello@workrowd.com to set up some time to chat.

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024
How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters
5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement
Categories
Employee Retention

5 exit interview questions you should definitely ask in 2024

Around three quarters of businesses conduct exit interviews when employees leave. So businesses see the benefit of them, but are they asking the right exit interview questions?

In a study of over 17,000 exit interviews, 63% of ex-employees rated their former employer as excellent or very good. And 66% rated their former supervisor the same.

It seems fewer people will talk about the negatives and why employees leave, though. Just 7.6% of companies share the most common reasons employees quit. 

Without sharing these statistics, it’s impossible to learn from what could be a common problem. Employees get no backup and businesses with bad practices and cultures never learn.

So how do you get the most out of an exit interview? And what are the best exit interview questions to ask?

How to make employees feel comfortable in an exit interview

I’ve spoken to friends before who dislike exit interviews and don’t bother with them because they’re concerned about burning bridges. Particularly in industries like tech, where it can feel like everyone knows everyone else.

So it’s important to make employees feel comfortable answering exit interview questions. This is especially true when some answers could be sensitive. For instance, if they felt excluded by their team or didn’t get along with their manager.

Explain the benefits of exit interviews

Your employee is already leaving. So why would they care about your exit interview questions?

An exit interview can be part of their legacy at the company, helping improve the company culture, supporting their colleagues, and improving work-life for the person who replaces them. 

So while there are no direct benefits of an exit interview to an employee, they get the warm fuzzies that come from helping people they’ve spent several months or years working with.

One of my legacies at an old job was getting a manager their own office so that they could work in a quieter environment.

Keep it anonymous or only include HR

Allowing employees the chance to answer exit interview questions anonymously may help them feel more comfortable. That way, they can answer challenging questions and reduce any concerns they might have about burning bridges.

Alternatively, if you want to do the interview in person, keep direct supervisors out of it. 

Unless employees get on really well with their supervisors, they’re less likely to be honest about why they’re leaving. 

If it’s just HR or even an external consultant, employees can share their feedback without worrying about a bad reference or no reference from their line manager.

You could even ask employees whom they’d prefer to have ask the exit interview questions.

Exit interview questions to ask in 2024

So, what exit interview questions should you ask?

Why are you leaving?

This is obvious, but it’s one of the most important exit interview questions to include because it can tell you a lot. It helps you spot patterns in everything from leadership style to employee pay.

For example, if several people from the same team leave within a short time frame, is there something going on within that team that warrants an investigation so that you don’t lose more team members?

Or if a lot of employees leave for a pay raise, are you paying below the market rate? Is there budget to change this and retain more employees?

Hiring and training new employees is expensive, after all. You might save money by giving existing employees a raise instead.

Is there anything we could have done to retain you?

There are many reasons employees choose to leave their roles. Asking exit interview questions such as whether there’s something you could’ve done differently to get them to stay is another way to help you look for patterns.

An employee might be more willing to put up with a high workload if they’re paid more, feel valued, or are offered more training, for example.

Or, on the flip side, their workload might not be mentally stimulating enough, and they might be stressed at work because they’re bored.

What do you think of your manager?

For employees to be honest about this one, they have to trust you.

As I mentioned before, some may not want to risk burning bridges in case they come back one day, or work in a close-knit industry. So they may gloss over the answer or insist that everything is fine.

But for managers and companies to truly improve and get the best out of their employees, they need feedback.

If they’re not sure how to explain, you could ask follow-up exit interview questions like:

  • Did you feel like your manager supported you?
  • What was your manager’s feedback style like?

How did you get along with your team?

We spend more time with our colleagues during the week than our loved ones, so it’s important that we get along with them. Or at least treat each other with mutual respect, even if we don’t see eye-to-eye.

Asking employees exit interview questions about how they really felt about the rest of their team allows them to mention any colleagues they thought were particularly helpful or hindering when it came to them doing their roles.

How can we improve the company culture?

A company’s culture can make a difference to how inclusive it is, how employees feel doing their daily activities, if new hires decide to stay, and how long people stay for.

No business has a perfect company culture.

And it’s important to remember that a positive company culture requires active work. 

If you’re not working on your company culture, it can become outdated or forgotten, leading to employees also feeling forgotten. 

And since they’re the key to business success, tapping into what they need is vital.

Conclusion

Conducting exit interviews can tell you a lot about your company culture, employees’ workloads, and how your business compares to the rest of your industry.

To get the most out of them, you need to make sure you ask the right exit interview questions. These will give you quantifiable answers that you can analyze and learn from, highlighting things that are detrimental to your business and its long-term health.

Want better data even before an employee leaves? Workrowd can help. Our all-in-one tool suite ensures you always have your finger on the pulse of what’s improving your employee experience, and what could use a bit more work.

Sound interesting? Visit us online to learn more, or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com to schedule time to discuss.

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024
How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters
5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement
Categories
Employee Engagement

4 ways to maximize the benefits of mentoring in the workplace

At an organizational level, the benefits of mentoring in the workplace are no secret. 84% of Fortune 500 companies have mentoring programs, and 100% of Fortune 50 companies have them.

At the individual level though, it’s a different story. While 97% of people who have a mentor find it valuable, only 37% of professionals actually have one.

And 63% of women have never had a formal mentor.

It’s a reciprocal cycle, though—89% of those who’ve had a mentor will go on to become one.

Mentorship also ranked as the #1 focus for L&D programs in 2023. So if your company doesn’t have a mentorship program yet, it might be time to create one.

Here are our tips to maximize the benefits of mentoring in the workplace:

Match people with mentors from a different demographic

Many people gravitate towards someone like them when they want a mentor. But being mentored by someone from a different demographic can help them develop skills they hadn’t considered. And, for team members from underrepresented backgrounds, it could provide a further boost up the career ladder.

For example, when men have female mentors, it improves their “feminine” traits such as empathy. These often-dismissed capabilities actually create better leaders. Yet, people frequently underestimate them—and therefore don’t encourage or nurture them—in the workplace.

Employees are more satisfied with leaders who possess these traits. What’s more, countries that embrace female leadership have higher GDPs and even experienced fewer deaths during the Covid pandemic.

Team members from underrepresented backgrounds who receive mentorship, meanwhile, gain introductions to industry connections that can open more doors for them to grow their careers.

While employees may initially feel more comfortable as the mentee of someone from the same demographic as them, they won’t get as much from it.

If matched with someone different from them, they can learn not just new skills for the workplace, but reduce their unconscious bias and develop abilities that may be less common for their demographic.

Matching employees with mentors who are equipped to actually help them grow is a key way to reap the full benefits of mentoring in the workplace.

Tailor the program to employees’ needs

Having a mentoring program is one thing. But if your mentors have never mentored anyone before, or even been on the receiving end of mentorship, they may not know how to ensure their mentee gets the most from the experience. So they end up going through the motions instead of offering employees the support they actually need.

Creating a flexible program outline ensures mentoring delivers on its promises for mentees.

For example, if the mentee’s goal is to get a promotion, the mentor can help them identify the skills they need to learn to put them in the most competitive position to achieve that goal.

They can then break the list down further to look at what activities or experiences will help the mentee gain those skills to use in the future.

If your program structure is too rigid it won’t be able to adapt to accommodate the unique skills required for each role.

But if it’s a flexible outline, the mentor and mentee (maybe with a little help from HR) can create a plan that provides mentees with everything they need to succeed.

Create groups for mentors and mentees

Employee groups are incredibly powerful. Creating specific groups for mentors and mentees to ask questions and network can help boost the benefits of mentoring in the workplace even further.

Your team can use groups to share ideas and resources, as well as troubleshoot if something isn’t working. This means nobody has to solve a problem alone. It increases their sense of belonging in the workplace and shortens how long it takes to find a solution.

Ask for feedback

Asking employees for feedback on your mentoring program ensures that everyone gets the most out of it. 

If you don’t have a mentorship program yet, or you want to overhaul it, consider asking employees what they want from it. 

You could ask questions like:

·      What skills would you like to learn?

·      Who do you think would be a good mentor?

·      Would you be interested in mentoring a colleague?

Further down the line, check in with employees to find out how things are going. 

That way, you can double down on what’s working and find ways to solve what isn’t—or cut those parts out.

You could ask mentees:

·      What have you learned from your mentor so far?

·      What benefits have you experienced from being a mentee?

·      On a scale of 1-10, how beneficial have you found being a mentee?

And ask mentors:

·      What have you learned from being a mentor?

·      What benefits have you experienced from mentoring?

At the end of the program, you could ask:

·      Has the mentorship program helped you achieve your goal(s)?

·      What’s the most valuable thing you learned?

·      On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your mentor?

Combining closed questions and open-ended questions will get you the best results. You can analyze the results of closed questions to get quantitative data, while the details from open questions will give you further insights to help you improve the program.

The answers to open-ended questions may also give you new ways to advertise the program to existing employees, or showcase it in job descriptions. Ensuring strong participation is obviously another big part of maximizing the benefits of mentoring in the workplace.

Conclusion

A mentoring program can create new opportunities for mentors and mentees. It’s not just about networking or learning new skills; it opens people up to new ways of thinking and experiencing the world.

When you involve mentors and mentees in the creation of the program, it ensures that employees will want to be a part of it and can talk up the benefits of mentoring in the workplace to their friends and colleagues.

This helps the program to grow and means you have better trained, happier employees. Who are also more likely to stick around for longer because they feel supported by their employer.

Are you ready to tap into the benefits of mentoring in the workplace for your organization? If so, Workrowd has your back.

Our all-in-one tool suite makes it easy to connect employees for matching, set up and manage employee groups, and automatically survey employees about their experiences. Plus, with real-time analytics dashboards, you can visualize your progress at a glance.

Want to learn more? Visit us online or reach out directly to hello@workrowd.com.

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024
How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters
5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement
Categories
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging

8 ways your team is being held back by unconscious bias at work

Unconscious bias at work continues to be a major problem for both employees and employers. 83% of employees who’ve experienced, or witnessed, bias(es) at work feel that they were subtle and indirect, or microaggressions.

This means that the person responsible may not know that what they were doing was even a form of unconscious bias.

But it’s still their responsibility to grow their awareness and fix it. Especially when almost two-thirds of employees believe their workplace is biased.

Bias can come in many forms, including:

  • Gender
  • Race
  • Religion
  • Sexuality
  • Age
  • Weight
  • Height 
  • Disability

Making assumptions about people based on any of these characteristics is a form of bias.

For example, assuming that someone over the age of fifty is less computer literate than a twenty-year-old.

This has a financial impact, too. The estimated cost of workplace bias is $64 billion per year. This is based on the cost of replacing more than 2 million US workers who leave due to unfairness and discrimination. 

It doesn’t factor in the legal costs involved when companies need to defend themselves. Or when they’re fined because of unlawful behavior.

So, reducing unconscious bias at work could save—and make—your company a lot of money.

How do you know if it’s a problem in your organization, though? Here are 8 examples of unconscious bias at work you may not have considered.

Thinking there’s no unconscious bias in your workplace

No one is perfect. And it’s far better to admit that, and accept that everyone is a work in progress, than to try to block it out. 

You can do all the training you like, but you still may fall prey to unconscious bias at work. Eradicating it requires active, conscious work. Especially when someone is new to noticing it. 

Eventually the good behaviors become habit, but that takes time. Just the same as learning those good habits did in the first place.

Interrupting colleagues in meetings

Did you know women are more likely to be interrupted in a meeting than men?

Next time you’re in a meeting, track how often each person, or demographic is interrupted. The results may surprise you.

The Woman Interrupted app detects how often men interrupt women during a meeting.

Its data discovered that in the US, men speak over women 1.43 times per minute. PER MINUTE.

In the UK, this goes up to 1.67 times per minute. In Malaysia it’s 6.66 times, it’s 7.22 times in Nigeria, and in Pakistan it’s 8.28 times.

Questioning expertise

How often do you challenge someone’s ideas in a meeting? Do you challenge everyone’s ideas equally?

Men often have their ideas questioned less, even if they have less experience.

Women, meanwhile, find that their ideas and expertise are questioned more often. And they’re more than twice as likely to have to provide evidence of their competence.

But when a man makes the same suggestion, people more readily get onboard. And give him all the credit. It’s one of the most common examples of unconscious bias at work.

You hired your employees because they have the required expertise for the job. So it’s important that their colleagues know, understand, and respect this. And that their behavior reflects it.

Assuming everyone is able-bodied

Not everyone likes to disclose that they have a disability to their employer. Many people with disabilities worry that their colleagues will treat them differently or think them less capable of doing their job if they share their condition.

Whether it’s asthma, allergies, chronic pain, neurodivergence, or something more visible, almost everyone has something.

Yet the default is still to assume that everyone is able-bodied.

So businesses work under that assumption, rather than making accommodations that improve everyone’s quality of life. This is just another way that unconscious bias at work can show up.

For example, does your office have an elevator?

Do you have a plan in place for if there’s a fire in the building and it’s unusable? Who’s going to help employees with mobility challenges down the stairs during an emergency?

Making assumptions about people’s health, and their needs, leads to a huge disconnect. And can mean that employees who don’t disclose their disabilities are more likely to leave because their workplace is unfit for purpose.

Thinking you understand someone else’s experiences

Unless you’ve lived through something, it’s really hard to understand what it’s like. For instance, living with a particular health condition or growing up in a totally different culture or location.

Having witnessed it helps, but it will never give you the full experience because you’re not in that person’s body or mind.

Thinking you know exactly what a person thinks or feels leads to making assumptions about what they need. Which can be risky territory.

Different people can experience the same situation completely differently. That’s why listening in the workplace is so important. You get a better understanding of someone’s experiences and needs, and can suggest further ways to accommodate them.

Not paying attention to promotions

Gallup’s Women and the Workplace study found that at almost 600 companies, for every 100 men promoted, only 85 women received promotions.

Women are also more slowly promoted in the workplace than men with the same level of education and experience. Such unequal promotion rates are a strong indicator of unconscious bias at work.

Telling women to just ask for a raise

I’m sure you’ve heard this before—that women just need to more actively ask for raises.

What if I were to tell you that women do, in fact, ask for raises…we’re just less likely to get them?

That’s what research from Australia showed.

Worse still, male hiring managers are more likely to dislike women who negotiate during the hiring process. It doesn’t bother them if the candidate is male. 

Female hiring managers treat both genders the same.

Assuming someone’s role

48% of African American women, and 47% of Latina women, report having being mistaken for administrative or custodial staff. Regardless of their actual role within the business.

Female managers and CEOs have even had people assume that their employees, or even husbands, are the leader in an organization, addressing the men first or even outright ignoring the women.

Conclusion

There are many ways that unconscious bias at work holds businesses back. Knowing the signs is key to taking the steps to eradicate it.

Does your business suffer from unconscious bias at work? If so, it’s time to make some changes, for both your people, and your bottom line.

If you want an easier way to implement your new programs and track progress, Workrowd can help. Reducing unconscious bias at work is no easy task, but our all-in-one tool suite can set you up for success. From launching and managing ERGs to collecting and analyzing employee feedback, we bring everything you need under one roof.

Ready to learn more? Visit us online or send us a message at hello@workrowd.com.

8 strategies to boost employee attraction and retention in 2024
How to cultivate empathy at work—and why it matters
5 overlooked causes of employee disengagement