Author: Sherri Holmes

Unit 3 Reflection

This course took me through a range of emotions. Initially, I was very excited to find out that this writing class on organizational culture would have a focus on diversity and inclusion. After all, I am very involved in my company’s DEI committee. How exciting! However, when I learned that we’d be sharing our work on the blog, I was horrified! I hadn’t shared my “in-progress” writing with a group in a very long time. It’s so personal! Nevertheless, it is extremely valuable to give and receive feedback. It makes us all better writers. I also learned so much from my classmates about some issues I knew very little about. After a couple of weeks of reading very interesting articles on diversity and inclusion, I started to feel fatigued by my involvement in both work and coursework as it related to racial equity. So, I turned my focus to non-racial D&I. I wrote about AI and its effects on people who are neurodivergent or disabled and seeking employment. I thought it was an important topic that not many were aware of. It was also an emotional respite for me. Later, after recharging, I knew my research project would need to focus on Black equity and inclusion because it was a part of my life experience. I understood that I would need to make a case for why it was particularly necessary for Black people and would need evidence. This was especially important because I envisioned corporate leaders, who are often data-centric, reading my article. So, I concentrated on seeking out sources that provided data and first-hand accounts showing disparate treatment.

Tackling what many might see as a controversial topic, was going to need planning. For most of my life I just sat down and wrote. I didn’t always have a plan. I wrote, then edited. I didn’t think about all the steps, I just did it. This course forced me (in a good way) to break down my writing and research into pieces and plan it out. I found that the Focusing flowchart, Rounding out the Conversation and Notetaking exercises really helped me. All of these were visual representations of my thoughts and enabled me to see at a glance what I needed to do to firm up my ideas, as well as what wasn’t necessary for my final piece. This course assisted me with honing my skills. I must write grievances when I am acting in my role as a union representative. A grievance generally outlines all the wrongs committed against an employee by management, along with a request for restitution. It’s important to amplify these offenses so that the evidence for restitution seems overwhelmingly in the employee’s favor. I think my time spent on this coursework, and practice with case building, will certainly enhance my grievance writing skills. I have also learned about endurance. I don’t think I’ve ever written this much in such a short period of time, and now I have a new appreciation for those who do it for a living! I have always enjoyed telling a story on paper (or maybe I should say “having a conversation” on paper). A much-loved interest has definitely been reawakened!

Final Research Project – Sherri

I’ve written an article for business leaders who understand that they should have a solid diversity policy in place but don’t realize that those policies might miss the mark when it comes to their Black employees. These leaders might not know much about the history or current state of Black labor in the U.S. and may view D&I as just making sure there are a variety of different ethnicities at their company. They haven’t really thought much about inclusion and equity. I have endeavored to inform them of these issues. I envision readers will be checking out their online subscription to a business magazine that regularly offers insight into employee matters.

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Research Project Draft – Sherri

I am writing an article for business leaders who understand that they should have a solid diversity policy in place but don’t realize that those policies might miss the mark when it comes to their Black employees. These leaders might not know much about the history or current state of Black labor in the U.S. and may view D&I as just making sure there are a variety of different ethnicities at their company. They haven’t really thought much about inclusion and equity. I envision readers will be checking out their online subscription to a business magazine that regularly offers insight into employee matters.

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Discussions / Homework Week of 8/16

I’ve decided to share an example of an online magazine article from the Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2021/08/how-to-work-with-someone-who-creates-unnecessary-conflict?ab=hero-main-text . What’s distinctive about this type of writing is that it offers advice and it’s written in the first person. So, although this piece is meant for anyone who works in or owns a business, and is published in a business magazine, the author makes it friendly and as though she were having a conversation with a colleague. She also breaks down her advice into chunks with explanatory headers. The author quotes experts, as well as the experiences of those in the workplace, and includes links to research and other relevant articles. I appreciate the conversational tone and, as I too plan on doing, the links to other articles. These links help to provide evidence to back up her statements without changing the flavor of the article into something more scholarly. This made me realize that what I’ve written for my project so far might need to be tweaked a little to sound more advisory and less explanatory. I also like how the author used several case studies to demonstrate the issue being discussed. I think I may lean on some examples of situations I’ve encountered as a union rep. as my own case studies. In the sample article, there are step-by-step instructions on how to tackle the stated problem. Later, the author offers best practices that are being used successfully by other companies. I probably won’t be able to offer step-by-step instructions, but I will be able to suggest what can help create the cultural change I want to see in organizations.

Project Proposal – Sherri

My project will be examining what it means to have significant and purposeful equity and inclusion for Black people in the workplace. I’ll be working with sources that are first-hand accounts of experiences of Black employees as well as scholarly sources that provide historical context on how misperceptions about Black people in society at-large leaks into the workplace. I’ll also be using data that shows higher levels of inequitable treatment of Black workers versus most other ethnicities as well as how initiatives that work for other underrepresented groups may not work for Black employees, despite the reverse being true. Additionally, I will speak to several of the criticisms that some people will surely have regarding this topic. I plan on building a case for there to be objectives and policies put into place that address the unique needs of Black employees and why this might benefit an organization.  Ultimately, I hope to offer concrete solutions on how to meet those objectives. My intended audience will be company leaders and executives because as we’ve all learned as a class, without the buy-in of those at the top, meaningful change to company culture will not happen.

Discussions / Homework Week of 8/9

Response # 1

Author Mollie West helps companies to create good organizational culture. In her article “How to Create a Culture Manifesto for Your Organization (And Why It’s a Good Idea), Stanford Social Innovation Review, she examines the manifestos of three companies. West gets into examples right at the start. There is a section for each company with a header naming the company and what they sell. She provides a synopsis of each company’s manifesto, what spurred them into creating it and who wrote it. She provides links to the companies’ websites and includes photos from each workplace. Last, she provides an update on what each company is doing currently. Finally, after focusing on what she most likely believes are outstanding models of company manifestos, West proceeds to educate readers on how they too can create a statement of their organization’s core cultural values. It is understood, based on the publication her article appears in and the companies she chose to highlight, that the audience she is attempting to reach are social change leaders in business. Most leaders don’t have a lot of spare time, so when they read an article, it’s because the title was catchy (perhaps it mentions a problem that needs solving). The content is straight to the point, easily digestible, visually appealing, not too long and offers solutions. I believe Ms. West was adept at including all of those elements in her article and will surely reach and inform her intended audience.

Response #2

I am strongly considering writing my area of research as an online business magazine article in order to reach leaders of organizations. Part of my decision-making process stems from the material I want to convey. Because equity and inclusion for Black people might be considered an important and hot topic in this moment for some, it might also be a divisive or scary one for others. I think (depending on the chosen title) I might reach more people in a magazine that isn’t threatening but also lends its authority to the subject simply by publishing it. An online magazine article isn’t stuffy like a scholarly article, it contains casual or informal language and often tells a story with text broken up into sections with headers. There are images and links to data or more scholarly articles for those so inclined to explore them. As I stated in my first response, leaders don’t have a lot of free time, so an article that is visually appealing, easy to absorb, offers a solution to a problem and is a relatively quick read will be appealing to my intended audience.

Discussions / Homework Week of 8/2

Response # 1

As the title implies, the article “Why Most Performance Evaluations are Biased, and How to Fix Them” by Lori Nishiura Mackenzie, JoAnne Wehner, and Shelly J. Correll, imparts some solid advice. Nishiura, et. al, researchers at the Stanford VMWare Women’s Leadership Lab, conducted studies of performance review procedures at three U.S. companies. These studies revealed patterns of ambiguity in evaluations for women. Research has shown that ambiguity or vagueness in procedure leads to implicit bias on performance reviews. It turns out that the most problematic area filled out on a performance assessment was the “open box” area where a manager can write the answer to an open-ended question like “Describe the ways the employee’s performance met your expectations.” The authors report that ambiguous questions like that often illicit a biased answer. The reasoning is that since there are no clearly established parameters in which to judge if the employee met expectations, managers fall back on their perceptions of the employee’s gender, race or other identity information to answer the question. Nishiura, et. al, offer several solutions to “constrain” the open box. They recommend creating a checklist to refer to when filling in boxes. That way, managers are consistently using the same criteria for all of their employees. Another key suggestion was for managers to establish a rubric by which employees will be evaluated by before the performance review. This ensures that the manager is basing their evaluation on actual evidence, not subjective feelings. Overall, this article is invaluable to anyone who is working. Afterall, every one of us will be evaluated and some of us will also be providing evaluations. As a side note, several of the managers written about in the article were relieved to finally have some structure and uniformity in the review process because they wanted to be fair but didn’t know how to. This piece provides an expanded lens in which to see how one of Alison Wynn’s six stages of the “employee life-cycle” in the “The Gender Policy Report” has a domino effect on what comes after performance reviews – Pay, Promotion and Termination Decisions, the crux of inequality issues for women and underrepresented groups.

Response # 2

I think company leaders would benefit most from reading Alison Wynn’s “The Gender Policy Report”. Wynn, a Research Associate at the Stanford VMWare Women’s Leadership Lab, puts forward several meaningful strategies for handling inequality in the workplace. Ms. Wynn has surely been successful in catching the eye of company executives when she states, “It may be easier to think of individualistic solutions—such as training ourselves to think differently and change our own behavior—or to blame larger societal forces we can’t control, rather than to change the intricate organizational procedures and practices that contribute to employment outcomes in complex ways. However, my research suggests that we must address organizational forms of inequality as well.” In this sentence, the author goes out of her way to include statements that reflect how executives she examined in a year-long case study understood what constituted inequality in an organization. It most likely will cause executives’ interest to be piqued and to wonder what Wynn’s suggestions are because they mistakenly thought they were already doing everything they could to reduce inequality. 

Sherri Holmes Research Portfolio

When preparing my portfolio, I sought to include sources that supported my goal of providing meaningful suggestions and dialogue on how to make workplaces more equitable and inclusive of Black workers. Despite my initial resistance to using the SU library databases, ultimately, I found more articles than anticipated on this topic. As a matter of fact, on several occasions, one article led to another and so on. I didn’t necessarily decide in an orderly fashion as to what I would need, rather as I saw what kind of information was available, it informed what direction my research would take. I knew that I needed to explain why America is in this space of devaluing Black people’s labor and disrespecting our humanity with micro and macroaggressions.  I realized I would need a source that provided historical context on Black labor in the U.S., which serves as a foundation for understanding how Black workers are perceived today.  I knew that data showing statistics on the state of Black employment trends would align with many Black people’s experiences, therefore validating them.   Then I thought it was imperative for people to understand how it feels to be a Black person in the workplace, so I’ve included sources that detail personal recollections of Black people’s experiences at work. Later after doing some of the research portfolio exercises, I realized I needed information from the opposition detailing how they might feel about diversity and inclusion initiatives. Finally, it was of course necessary to include sources that provided an answer to my research question – what are solutions for being inclusive and equitable to Black workers? This is a topic close to my heart because I have both experienced and seen in others the consequences of lack of equity and inclusion. Black people have contributed so much to this country and to its economy. We deserve better.

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Research Plan

Discussions/Homework Week of 7/26

Response #1

My research on how to make workplaces more equitable and inclusive of Black workers led me to an enlightening report, Being Black in Corporate America, An Intersectional Exploration from non-profit think tank Coqual (formerly CTI). Researchers Pooja Jain-Link, et. al, take us on a tour of the “Black experience” at work. They explore statistics on Black representation in Corporate America. The dismally low percentages (8% overall and .08% for Fortune 500 CEOs) do not correlate with college graduation rates of Black Americans, which leads to the false perception that there are a short supply of qualified Black people available to fill corporate positions. We are shown how the few Black professionals that have been hired, perceive their lack of prospects for advancement into upper management, despite being more than qualified and even more ambitious. The report also notes Black folks’ perceptions on having little access to senior leaders. The data backs up their suspicions. 65% of Black professionals report being very ambitious vs 53% of white professionals. The researchers also provide us with an examination of Black workers’ experiences compared to other underrepresented groups. Consequently, the report uncovers the higher rates in which Black people encounter microaggressions and racial prejudice compared to others (4 times as likely), as well as lower rates of allyship, particularly from white women. The data that was reported suggests that to counter this, many Black employees (particularly men) leave within two years or start their own businesses.

This report is an important addition to my conversation on Black equity and inclusion because it establishes a baseline for issues Black workers feel need to be addressed in Corporate America. It helps quantify, and in some cases legitimize through data, what many Black employees knew anecdotally was happening at their own workplace but were never sure to what extent it was happening to their cohorts in other locations. One of the most valuable aspects of this report is its analysis of what makes Black employees want to stay at a company along with meaningful solutions for transforming workplaces into inclusive and equitable spaces.

Response #3

Although it is true that open office plans disproportionately impact women, as stated in Katharine Schwab’s Fast Company article, Readers respond: Open offices are terrible for women, I would argue that Black employees are equally affected. I currently work in one of those fishbowl set-ups and I hate it. Our department used to be in another building where I had my own office. People frequently commented (sometimes snidely) about how nice it must be for me to have my own space. I came and went at my leisure with no commentary from my boss. I often went to long lunches with vendors who were trying to schmooze me for business. This practice was sanctioned by my company. Other times I traveled off-site to oversee a project. It was understood that I would not always be at my desk. Then my company decided to save money and merged our department into the main building. Our new space is a gigantic room where another person is literally seated in front of my desk and facing me. Another two people are to my right. I was one of the lucky ones because due to my seniority I got an aisle seat! Despite that “privilege”, I noticed a change. Every time I left my desk for even a short time, my boss (who has since moved on) wanted to know where I was. Sometimes she’d loudly ask my co-workers if they knew where I’d gone. If she saw me leaving, she wanted to know exactly when I’d be back. When the entire team was scheduled to go to a meeting, she singled me out publicly to inform me that there was a meeting I needed to get to. As a matter of fact, she began requiring me to email her all of my meetings for the day, every day. Conversely, when the young white women on my team went to lunch together (not for business), they would sometimes be gone for two hours, yet my boss never uttered a peep. I asked my colleagues if they had to provide our boss with their daily meeting schedule. They did not. There is only one other Black person in the same room as me. I’ve noticed that people have a habit of loudly saying things like “Where’s David?” “He’s still not back?” Meanwhile, an Asian woman and white men on his team were frequently gone, and nothing was said. When I changed my hairstyle, the whole office would start a discussion about it. When the news of yet another Black person being murdered by police surfaced, we had to sit in an open space and mask our grief for eight hours. There is no private place to go to process such abhorrent events. Even if there was such a place, our whereabouts were monitored. David and I stand out in the room, and when we’re not there, that stands out too. I imagine this could be the same experience for other Black employees.

Research Plan

“How can a workplace be more inclusive of and equitable to Black workers?” I started thinking about this as a research question for a myriad of reasons, one of which included my interest in the work Dylan and Edward did on the roles company leadership plays in workplace diversity and inclusion practices. This question also connects to me personally, not only because I am a Black woman who works, but I am a union representative who is in a position to advocate for people in the workplace.  

Over the years I’ve seen inequitable treatment of workers in all underrepresented groups, however in my experience, the people who seemed most overlooked, underutilized, misunderstood, underpaid, underemployed and excluded from workplace culture have consistently been Black people. I have seen younger professional Black people start working with lots of enthusiasm and innovative ideas only to be ignored, told they should stay in their lane or that they were too aggressive. Sometimes they have been told to “relax” and that they were too “detail oriented”. Many found themselves in a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” situation. I could see their enthusiasm wane over time. Numerous Black employees were asked to jump through hoops that their white peers were not asked to go through, yet those same peers were often promoted above them. Too often, no concrete indicators were established that indicated how to move up in the company. No upper-level managers took them under their wing like they did with other junior employees. Black staff was never seen as leadership material.

Two years ago, in my capacity as a union official, I had to gather data (job descriptions, performance evaluations, the amount of revenue generated based on work done and promotions) for both Black female employees and their white female counterparts in several departments at my job. I presented this data, along with personal statements from Black female employees to our CEO because it showed a glaring disparity in how white women were being promoted versus Black women, in multiple departments. Earlier, several Black women had come to me complaining that they were not being recognized for their work or considered for promotions. In some cases, other people took credit for their ideas. Some of them had asked their bosses directly what they could do to be promoted. Many were given vague answers. Some were in fact given specific answers, so they tailored their work to meet those expectations, but when new promotions were announced, their names were never among the promoted. To his credit, the CEO (who has since left the company) really listened and heard these women. Some of them were promoted shortly after our meeting. Our current CEO, however, has a bit of a way to go in getting to the same philosophical place as the former.

The experiences at my workplace are not unique. A friend of mine says her brother, who attended an ivy league school and had an MBA, felt othered by his finance co-workers and managers. He worked well into the night every day, he took golf lessons so that he would fit in at company outings, he worked above and beyond, yet white co-workers who didn’t put in as much effort were promoted and he wasn’t. His manager’s manager knew the names of the white junior employees and didn’t know his. He stopped being invited to golf trips. Ultimately, he quit.

I hope to use sources from the fields of Human Resources, Diversity Equity and Inclusion, Data Analysis, Organizational Psychology, Black Studies and even Journalism to provide some context on how Black people are perceived in society and how this perception informs how they are treated in the workplace. I will also use some of these sources to demonstrate first hand experiences and how Black people cope in those situations. Finally, I would like to include some concrete solutions on how organizations can be more inclusive and equitable to Black employees.