How to overcome workplace bias & microaggressions

In this week’s guest column, diversity champion Perrine Farque explores the importance of diversity equity and inclusion (DE&I) to boost startup productivity. According to Farque, remote working has led to an increase in hiring biases as well as microaggressions, particularly in startups. She explores how leaders in charge of talent –  be they DE&I, HR, or line managers – can successfully hire and retain diverse talent remotely to ramp up productivity.

When COVID-19 hit the world economy in March 2020, startups were quick to adapt and transition to a complete remote way of working. Inspired by tech giants including Google and Twitter, startup founders are now preparing for a long-term remote-work model. As a lasting remote-working model is predicted for startups and SaaS companies, it is important to assess how this new normal has impacted productivity. Initial findings demonstrate that remote work has negatively impacted productivity in startups.

HIRING BIASES

For starters, remote work has increased hiring biases in startups. They have long been well-known for hiring primarily straight white men. A 2016 US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) report revealed that in the tech sector, 68.5% of employees are White, compared to 63.5% across the private sector when White people made up 62% of the country. Women held only 36% of tech jobs, compared to 48% across the private sector.  White people made up 83.3% of tech executives and 80% of all tech executives were men. In the UK, only 17% of UK IT specialists are female despite the fact that women make up 50% of the population, according to BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. The survey also shows that IT specialists from minority groups are more likely to be in non-permanent employment.

Since remote work was adopted by startups and SaaS companies, hiring biases have continued to push more minorities out of the tech workforce in different ways. During this remote working time, distance bias had a significant impact in many startup hires. Distance bias reflects our instinct to prioritise what is nearby, whether in physical space or time; in remote work where recruiters are physically away from people who are different from them, hiring managers have preferred candidates who were like them over candidates who were different from them. A survey carried out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that women accounted for more than 50% of the jobs lost in April this year, and unemployment reached 16.7% for Black people compared to 14.2% of White people. 

SURVIVAL MODE

MH Lines, the female CEO of Automaton, explained how the startup ecosystem excluded her since the start of the pandemic. She was set to kick off a funding round for her startup before COVID and the pandemic hit and her meetings with investors got cancelled. Female startup founders have long been ignored by venture capitalists and since the pandemic heightened stories from female founders suggest even greater hurdles because investors are turning more risk-averse.

For many startups, there was no choice but to go into ‘survival mode’ when the pandemic hit and so they froze hiring and made employees redundant. A Mackinsey report demonstrates the correlation between being laid off and having previously been on a low income, demonstrating how minority groups are more affected by unemployment during COVID-19: “Around 7.6 million jobs or 24% of the UK workforce are at risk because of COVID and people with lowest incomes are most vulnerable.”

Remote work hiring biases means lower productivity. According to a Boston Consulting Group survey, diverse teams create 19% more revenue. Another survey by Clover Pop shows that diverse teams make better business decisions up to 87% of the time, make decisions twice as fast with half the meetings and deliver 60% better results. The Center for Talent Innovation study shows that 48% of companies with more diverse management improved their market share while only 33% of companies with less diverse management reported similar growth. As supported by research, remote work hiring bias has significantly lowered productivity for startups, who need it more than ever.

EXACERBATED  MICROAGGRESSIONS

Remote work has also exacerbated microaggressions in startups. The UK workplace was already plagued with discrimination and micro-aggressions before the pandemic. According to Market Inspector findings, 32% of LGBT employees choose to hide their sexual orientation. Another survey by Stonewall revealed that 31% of non-binary people and 18% of  trans people don’t feel able to wear work attire representing their gender expression and one in eight LGBT people wouldn’t feel confident reporting any homophobic bullying to their employer.  Approximately 18% of LGBT staff in the UK have been the target of negative comments or conduct from work colleagues. It is not just LGBT employees who are discriminated against. According to Forbes, 64% of women are still exposed to gender biased micro-aggressions, with non-White women experiencing it the more than anyone else. Furthermore Perkbox research reveals that unfairness or mistreatment at work is higher among BAME employees.

Discrimination during remote-work has been widely reported. Farorelaw reported that at tech firm TeleTech, an employee posted offensive comments about his colleague on Facebook alluding to her sexual promiscuity and the employer included an extremely sexist, offensive comment. In another case reported by Farorelaw since the beginning of remote work, senior management at Richemont UK, a luxury goods company, instructed a professional surveillance company to conduct surveillance on a Black employee who had made a claim of race discrimination against the employer, on suspicion that the employee was being dishonest about her state of health. 

COSTLY REPERCUSSIONS

Remote-work microaggressions in startups can create costly repercussions. As microaggressions increase in remote-work, this leads to more employee churn due to firing employees who discriminate against co-workers. A report by Oxford Economics estimated that the true cost to replace an employee is more than £30,000. Croner estimates that the cost to replace a senior staff member can be between £40,000 – £100,000. Micro-aggressions lead to more homogeneous teams, which also create added business costs. Research by Harvard Business Review shows that the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. Remote work cases of discrimination have further accentuated tech’s already homogeneous workforce which, in turn, created additional costs to the business.

So how can high-growth startups diversify talent to boost productivity in remote work? Successful startups understand that attracting and retaining diverse talent in remote work can boost productivity. As Balderton Capital, a London-based firm, explained: “We work with startups to try and anticipate scaling challenges that come their way and for me that involves commercial priorities and fitting organisation plans into that. Diversity and inclusion is a part of that and I don’t see it as a separate part to the work we do, which is help companies build thriving teams that are inclusive.” 

High-growth start-ups must also retain remote diverse talent to boost productivity. LocalGlobe, a London-based VC firm, noted that: “It can feel counterintuitive to spend time and energy on something that may seem tangential – to invest in the culture of the company and the diversity of the team where the natural recourse would be to hire the best people as quickly as possible. This is why we make a point of discussing this early, as we fundamentally don’t believe that is a viable approach.”

DE&I INVESTMENT

Successful startups invest in diversity and inclusion. According to EQT Ventures, “Early stage startups all suffer homogeneity issues as they recruit through network, so we take an advisory role and work on hiring processes – as usually there isn’t one – and you can start to talk about how bias creeps in and not recruiting from networks to challenge that way of thinking.”

Although remote work has presented unprecedented challenges for startups and SaaS companies, it has also presented new opportunities. The most successful high-growth startups focus on attracting and retaining diverse talents in remote work, and are supported by venture capital firms. To find out more on how to attract and retain remote diverse talent and fast track your startup success, click here.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Perrine Farque is an award-winning diversity, inclusion and equity advocate in tech who was nominated in the Top 50 Most Influential Women in UK Tech. She drove the strategy at technology companies including Facebook, PagerDuty, Pivotal, Nlyte Software and AvePoint for over a decade before setting up her own D&I consultancy – Inspired-Human. During her career, Farque has spoken at many industry events including Dublin Tech Summit, WomenTech Global Conference, Women 2.0, Vault Platform conference and PagerDuty Leadership Summit. She has an extensive track-record of motivating and inspiring teams and creating a truly diverse company culture within tech companies.