Our latest report with Emtrain, a Silicon Valley workplace technology company that engages, measures, and improves workplace culture, provides a novel cross-sectional analysis of our combined DEI and workplace culture datasets. Our analysis of data from 22,000 employees across industries reveals that inclusion, respect, bias, and sexual harassment are closely linked. Our findings demonstrate that workplace bias accounts for 41%, 53%, and 26% of the variation in reports of belonging, respect, and career prospects, respectively.
“The takeaway message here is clear,” says WorkLife Law’s Founding Director, Joan C. Williams. “Respect, authenticity and belonging, and confidence in career development opportunities are all impacted by workplace bias. Furthermore, sexual harassment is strongly linked to bias, belonging, and confidence in career development opportunities.”
These findings can be a challenge for organizations that tend to manage harassment, inclusion, and respect in different functional silos. In many organizations, human resources teams select anti-harassment training and learning & development teams deploy it, legal teams manage discrimination and harassment complaints and claims to protect the organization from financial and reputation risk, and diversity leaders are tasked with inclusion, many of them in newly created positions across leading companies and in silos.
“This should serve as a wake up call for companies that take a siloed approach to their DEI, culture, and anti-harassment initiatives,” said Emtrain CEO Janine Yancey. “This siloed approach is flawed: because these issues are linked, organizations committed to creating lasting change need to address respect, inclusion, bias, and harassment in a holistic manner. Companies that ignore the connection between these initiatives expose themselves to greater risk and are at danger of losing valuable talent.”
We offer strategic recommendations for implementing an integrated, metrics-driven, legally relevant, and inclusive approach to building a culture that will attract, engage and retain top talent. Read the report here.