Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Freada Kapor Klein co-founded the Level Playing Field Institute. Based in San Francisco, the LPFI is dedicated to improving fairness and opportunity in the workplace through educational programs and workplace training. LPFI strives to identify and remove hidden barriers from the classroom to the boardroom.

Kimberly Allers, a writer at Fortune magazine and senior editor at Essence, is a frequent guest speaker at professional development seminars.

Martha Mendoza is a national staff writer for the Associated Press. In 2000, she won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Praise for Giving Notice

"Is the corporate playing field still an obstacle course for people who are 'different'? Freada Kapor Klein, one of America's leading diversity advocates, thinks so. In Giving Notice, she and her coauthors tell you why and what to do about it.This refreshing and eye-opening new book blasts the 'diversity industry' and the 'meritocracy myth-makers' for ignoring the daily indignities and subtle biases that shape career prospects. Giving Notice tells it like it is and then tells it like it could be, offering every American a vision of workplaces that are good for people, companies, and the economy."
?Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor, Harvard Business School and best-selling author of Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End

"This book will clearly set the new standard for the field.I think it will be amazing and it should be required reading for anyone in the investment business."
?David Blood, managing partner, Generation Investment Management and former CEO, Goldman Sachs Asset Management

"Freada Kapor Klein provides many insights into the microdynamics of diversity issues and even more insights into policy issues, organizational dynamics, and ways to change practice. She takes fundamental issues and articulates them in a very concise, engaging, and easy-to-digest way. Her examples are interesting, often humorous, and always clear."
?Stephen Small, chair, African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Aus dem Klappentext

In today's workplace, blatant discrimination has mostly been relegated to the dustbin of America's past. However, in this book Freada Kapor Klein shows how even well-intentioned people can harbor unconscious biases that perpetuate stereotypes. Each year more than two million professionals and managers leave their jobs, pushed out from the pressure of small comments, whispered jokes, and not-so-funny emails. Voluntary employee turnover due solely to unfair treatment costs U.S. businesses an estimated sixty-four billion dollars a year.

Giving Notice reveals the real reasons that this diverse pool of talented managers and professionals leaves their employers--not the safe, half-truths reported during exit interviews. Based on data from a rigorous survey conducted by the Level Playing Field Institute, Giving Notice has at its core well-researched data and detailed interviews from a wide range of managers and professionals.

This groundbreaking book shows why dissatisfied people leave their jobs and offers a powerful solution for retaining top talent in corporate America.

Throughout the book Freada Kapor Klein explores the retention tools that matter the most to a diverse pool of professionals--fair pay, flexible schedules, management that recognizes ability, staffing based on qualifications, positive work environment, better benefits, and more personal time.

Weaving together stories of Eric, Kristen and Miguel--three composite characters--Giving Notice spells out the motivations that cause employees to leave and shows what it takes to keep them. Giving Notice is filled with innovative approaches for dismantling the hidden biases and barriers and offers concise solutions for developing people strategies that are truly integrated with global business strategy.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Giving Notice

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

I arrived in the lobby of the New York headquarters at 2:47 P.M. It was Thursday. The highly respected general counsel of the corporation came down to greet me. The sound of his Berluti shoes against the marble floors heralded his arrival long before we shook hands. He quickly escorted me past security and up to the 34th floor, where I would meet three of the CEO's most trusted advisers. Going from office to office and from pinstripe suit to pinstripe suit, I began to sense the unspoken dynamics of this company. After decades of advising international law firms, major financial services institutions, and other multinational conglomerates on organizational development and diversity issues, I've developed keenly astute antennae for detecting the kind of subtle issues that aren't addressed by typical diversity protocols. The uniformity of these offices and the senior managers in them were disturbing. Each one felt exactly the same as the next: impressionist style artwork on the walls, deep mahogany furniture arranged in identical fashion, and one family photo placed at the upper-right corner of the desk. By the time I was introduced to the last executive, I was convinced that this company had a complex, systemic problem, but it was not the problem the firm had called me to address.

These are the types of companies that highly paid diversity consultants visit every day. Usually, management calls in the consultants because an "incident" has occurred. The consultants are often afterthoughts, contacted only when a potentially litigious problem surfaces. And the solutions offered by the majority of diversity gurus are mostly superficial, cookie-cutter programs that don't address the root issue: unearthing and removing hidden bias in organizational structures. They can offer boxed solutions for the blatantly obvious, but nobody is checking for the subtle signs of hidden agendas. This is the disturbing void in current diversity methodologies.

A Contradictory Picture

Even as corporate America applauds its diversity efforts, hails the triumph of a true meritocracy in the workplace, and parades its principles of fairness, decades of research documenting thousands of workplace experiences of people of color, women, and gays and lesbians paint a nettlesome, contradictory picture. The quantitative and qualitative findings lead to one sobering conclusion: the twenty-five-year diversity crusade by corporate America has been a costly failure leading to stunted careers, wasted money, and disillusioned observers.

This unfortunate reality exists despite the estimated $8 billion spent annually on diversity efforts-including advice on recruitment, diversity training, career development, and community outreach-according to Thomas Kochan of MIT's Sloan School of Management (Hansen 2003). Further, a recent study by researchers at the University of California, Harvard University, and the University of Minnesota concludes that diversity training may, in fact, increase managerial bias (Kalev et al. 2006). Often the end result is even more damaging and leaves employees dissatisfied. A two-year study released in 2004 by the National Urban League found that only 32 percent of 5,500 American workers surveyed believed that their employers had an effective diversity initiative (Peoples 2004). Why? Because corporate America and much of the diversity consultant industry has operated, and continues to operate, under some fundamentally flawed assumptions about what works and what doesn't.

Consider these faulty assumptions:

The most qualified person for a job can be clearly determined.

Businesses hire the most qualified people.

Most managers aren't biased.

Objective performance criteria can be easily established for any job.

Once a person is hired, everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed, limited only by individual abilities.

If a person works hard enough, he or she will be recognized and rewarded.

Each of these assumptions undoubtedly harbors an element of truth, and we more readily recognize experiences that confirm these assumptions rather than those that raise questions as to their validity. Yet each contains a substantial helping of subjectivity. (More information about how the brain works and the "brain-hidden bias connection" is presented in Chapter Five.)

For example, at many companies, employees are evaluated by their ability to bring in new customers or clients. Sounds objective, right? But what about those customers or clients whose experiences and comfort zones may put women, gays and lesbians, and people of color at an unfair disadvantage? Consider these scenarios:

An older male client might not be comfortable dining out alone with a young female salesperson. He may worry about appearances at least and temptation at most.

If a client has never worked with or befriended a person of color, would the client feel comfortable placing a major order or signing a hefty services contract with a person of color?

Suppose a prospective customer is expected to socialize with a gay vendor but can't imagine bringing her spouse to dinner with the vendor and his partner.

A Caucasian child of privilege walks into the new job with a Rolodex full of wealthy and well-positioned family friends. Is it fair to compare this worker's business development or sales results with others who do not have privileged access?

Despite such challenges, "Bringing in business is an objective measure of performance" is a frequent refrain of companies' senior managers responsible for hiring, promoting, and firing.

Consider another example. Most companies espouse an "Our client comes first" position. But what does a manager do when a client makes a thinly veiled racist comment? In one of the incidents recorded during research by the Level Playing Field Institute, a senior manager faced this circumstance: During a conference call, a client said, "This is a really big deal. I don't want any affirmative action hires on this one." In such a case, does the client still come first? If the manager already intended to put a highly competent African American saleswoman on the deal, would he change the assignment to suit the client? Would that be fair? At first glance, the "client first" policy sounds wholly reasonable and within the bounds of acceptable practice, but as it plays out in the context of racism and bias, it becomes problematic.

With so many nuances tied to conventional ideas of what is a fair workplace for all, it becomes even more clear that the belief that diversity efforts should be heavily focused on recruitment-getting talented people from various racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds in the door and everything that follows will occur organically-is overly simplistic and misguided. It's a pedestrian approach, devoid of any understanding of the intangible issues that dominate workplace environments, such as an unwelcoming culture, self-serving delusions about meritocracy, and the subtleties of bias.

When a senior human resource executive prefaces every mention of an applicant of color by calling her a "qualified" applicant, the unstated assumption is that most female applicants of color are unqualified, so this particular issue must be categorized differently. That's subtle bias at play. When a CEO whose company's products have a direct connection to consumers of color doesn't see the business case for diversity, it signals a willful ignorance that will surely permeate that company's culture and adversely affect employees.

Based on my decades of experience conducting workplace surveys, designing and delivering training, and consulting to employers who are concerned about issues of bias, discrimination, and/or harassment, a framework has emerged to describe the large "buckets" of issues I've encountered. The framework was further refined by thousands of conversations with managers and professionals who had voluntarily left their employers due to the cumulative effects of experiencing subtle, hidden bias. This hidden bias, exhibited (in many cases) by well-intentioned individuals, evolved into hidden barriers in companies. Often barriers were the seemingly neutral or objective systems used for hiring, assigning, evaluating, promoting, and firing employees.

Development of Hidden Barriers

For people of color, gays and lesbians, and women of all backgrounds, hidden biases can become hidden barriers in three major areas:

Commitment of the Leadership If senior managers' experiences are vastly different from those of their employees, can management really empathize? Do they really understand the experiences and perceptions of those who are different? Do their day-to-day business decisions actually reflect the laudatory diversity goals of their companies?

Mentoring, Career Development, and Feedback Who gets shown the ropes? For whom is a misstep a predictable point on the learning curve, versus a confirmation of incompetence? Who is given direct, specific performance feedback in a timely fashion so that they know what to continue doing and what to change?

Unwelcoming Environment These instances take the forms of omission and commission. Who is never considered for the "stretch assignment" or the after-work drink? Who gets peppered with well-meaning, but nonetheless offensive, comments, questions, or jokes?

People of color and gays and lesbians are further confronted with another category:

Stereotypes Can they ever simply be seen as typical individuals with quirks and strengths, or are they always representatives of their "groups"? Being African American, Latino, or gay is often a key part of one's identity and experiences in the world, but this doesn't predict all of a person's interests, traits, and abilities.

Women of all backgrounds face an additional hurdle:

Balancing Career and Family Can a woman who has stepped off the fast track ever get back on?

Every employer can benefit from auditing company practices and culture from this framework. How much do the experiences and perceptions of employees diverge by race/ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation (or a number of other factors)? In an era of fierce global competition, if businesses need teamwork more than ever, how can a well-functioning team be built to include those who traverse the same hallways but whose experiences are dramatically different?

Those who "voluntarily" leave their jobs constitute unwanted turnover for everyone: the employer who has invested in training, the employee who invested his or her education and hopes, and the society that needs efficient, well-run enterprises. Still, one breed of CEO tries to explain away anemic retention rates by saying that certain employees aren't "team players" and "don't fit in." These may sound like perfectly logical explanations, but they are subjective, destructive terms that indicate idiosyncratic, cultural norms that often exclude people of color, women, and gays and lesbians.

A remarkable pattern of rewriting history occurs after employees walk out the door. The previous star performer is too often recast by management as a marginal employee, not tough enough to survive the brutal pressures of global business. This is just one example of many types of hidden barriers and psychological hazards that hardworking employees face every day. These barriers, though not the blatantly discriminatory practices that can be fought in the courts, remain the largest impediment to success for many workers across the nation.

Incivility + Unfairness = Turnover

American workplaces are increasingly characterized by a lack of civility and a lack of fairness. The gap between what is stated and what is practiced, or between aspirations and actualities, is widening. Cynicism and a broken compact between employer and employee are filling an ever-expanding space. What is the relationship among growing incivility, unfairness, and unwanted turnover?

This is what the Level Playing Field Institute, in cooperation with Knowledge Networks, recently set out to determine. We began with a nationally representative sample of 19,000 people; this, in turn, yielded 1,700 professionals and managers who met our criteria of salaried individuals who voluntarily chose to leave their jobs between 2001 and 2006. We sought to answer three questions:

1. What is the effect of unfairness on an employee's decision to leave his or her employer?

2. What is the financial cost to employers due to voluntary turnover based on unfairness?

3. What, if anything, could employers have done to retain employees who left a job due to unfairness?

As it turns out, managers and professionals from all walks of life and across all sectors are subjected to a barrage of uncivil treatment. Not only does inappropriate conduct raise questions in the minds of employees about their company's commitment to fairness, but it also affects morale, productivity, and corporate reputation. All of these outcomes have a measurable negative consequence on the bottom line.

The Price Tag

What's the impact of working while being mistreated? In one year, 5.5 percent of the managers and professionals in our survey voluntarily left their jobs, citing unfairness as the only reason for their departure. (A list of the unfair/negative behaviors that they experienced "during the past year" at their former employer is shown in Table 1.1.) A full 43.5 percent of survey respondents cited their negative experiences as having "a great deal" of influence on their decision to leave a position. And what is the annual cost to U.S. businesses for the voluntary turnover of managers and professionals due solely to unfairness? An eye-popping $64 billion.

Let's put the $64 billion in context: here are other expenditures totaling the same sum:

U.S. government's Information Technology budget for 2007

2006 combined revenues of Google, Goldman Sachs, Starbucks, and Amazon.com

Amount allocated by the United Nations in oil revenues during the lifetime of the "Oil-for-Food Program" in Iraq

India's estimated outsourcing industry's value by 2012

Cost of pollution to China in 2004

Amount the entire European Union donated in development aid in 2006, representing 0.42 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) Roughly equivalent to the 2005 GDP of Bangladesh (55th largest GDP of the 184 tracked by the World Bank)

The experiences of inappropriate conduct and unfairness that lead to voluntary turnover of professionals and managers are not evenly distributed across all groups. For example, racial minorities experience being stereotyped about twice as often as their Caucasian male counterparts. Gays and lesbians experience rudeness substantially more often than Caucasian heterosexual men. People of color receive requests to attend recruiting/community events nearly five times more often than their white male colleagues. (While this may seem reasonable, if it doesn't "count" toward developmental assignments, bonuses, promotions, or other recognition, their participation is being valued for one and only one dimension.) White women are subjected to materials they find offensive, such as pornographic photos, Internet sites, or e-mails.

Surprisingly, however, practitioners and academics have never fully "connected the dots" among the range of complex dynamics at play in these situations. These dynamics include race and gender stereotyping, exclusion, in-group favoritism, inability to fit in, and the cumulative impact of micro-insults-the daily slights, snubs, bad jokes, and omissions that pose an extreme challenge to corporations everywhere. Nor is anyone exploring the complexities of our beliefs about what is fair or looking at a comprehensive approach as a tenable solution. Companies are too focused on checklists and platitudes, add-on programs, and "Best of ..." rankings. Ironically, many companies are driving out some of their best talent due to the lack of a rigorous understanding of subtle bias and the hidden barriers that cause underrepresented groups to feel excluded or devalued. This has far-reaching business and economic ramifications.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Giving Noticeby Freada Kapor Klein Copyright © 2008 by Freada Kapor Klein. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.