Leaving your job because of discrimination or other unfairness? You’re not the only one, and employers are feeling the pinch. A new study conducted by the Level Playing Field Institute shows that unfairness in the workplace costs U.S. employers an estimated $64 billion each year.
The turnover being studied was that of managers and other professionals. The $64 billion estimate came from multiplying the number of respondents who left the workplace solely due to unfairness by a conservative average cost of replacing one of these employees. Additional employer costs came in the form of damaged reputation, decreased sales and less efficient services. Corporate employers are losing more than 2 million professional and management employees each year.
According to the survey, white heterosexual males are the least likely to leave due to unfairness, with gays and lesbians leaving being twice as likely and people of color three times as likely as their white, straight, male co-workers.
Freada Kapor Klein, Ph.D., founder and board chair of the Level Playing Field Institute says, “The cumulative impact of stereotyping, subtle slights and being excluded is extraordinarily costly for individuals, employers and the society as a whole. It is sadly ironic that so much money is spent on recruiting and so little attention is devoted to creating a fair and welcoming work environment. Many companies become revolving doors for people of color, gays and lesbians and women.”
Types of unfairness most often given as reason for leaving included: being asked to attend more recruiting or community events (most likely to give an air of diversity due to their race, gender, religion or sexual orientation), being passed over for a promotion, and being compared to a terrorist. While an employee being compared to a terrorist happened very rarely (only 2 percent incidence rate) it was most likely to be the sole reason an employee decided to leave.
The press release regarding the survey has this comment from an Arab professional on his experience: “One of my coworkers was buying a new house so we went to Google maps to look it up. It’s a satellite image so you can zoom in and see an image of the actual house. Another co-worker walked by and said, “What are you selecting a target?”
Almost a third of the respondents, 27 percent, said the incidents strongly discouraged them from recommending the employer to friends of family. Also, 13 percent said they would probably not recommend their former employer’s products or services. The actions employers could have taken to convince employees to stay varied widely according to the respondents. Heterosexual Caucasian men and women most often said fair pay would have been effective. Fourty-three percent of gays and lesbians would have been “much more likely” to stay with better benefits. More than a third, 34 percent, of employees of other ethnicities would have been likely to stay if management had better recognized their abilities.
Sources:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY;=/www/story/08-28-2007/0004652698&EDATE;=
http://www.lpfi.org/workplace/corporateleavers.shtml
