Why Coming Back To The Job Market Is Tougher For Women After The Pandemic

Why Coming Back To The Job Market Is Tougher For Women After The Pandemic

by | Nov 14, 2022 | DEI, STEM

Black employees had the highest unemployment rate in June 2021 with 9.2%, with Latinx and Indigenous employees following a close lead. This rate came after the job market in the US has started stabilizing a bit, but not for the people of color. Women have disproportionately been affected by the pandemic with 13 million fewer women in employment as compared to 2019. On the other hand, the men’s employment will have recovered to 2019 levels. Not to forget that this divide is exacerbated for women of color, especially black women. Between 2019 and 2020, women’s employment declined by 4.2 percent globally, representing a drop of 54 million jobs. Black and Hispanic employees faced 1.6 to 2.0 times the unemployment rates of their white counterparts. 

This goes on to show that coming back to the job market is tougher for women after the pandemic. The same job market that was already difficult for women of color. A recent report by McKinsey and Oxford Economics indicates that women may not be able to recover their jobs to the pre-pandemic level by 2024. So, what makes coming back to the job market tougher for women after the pandemic?

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The Increased Burden Of Unpaid Care:

One of the main drivers of this disparity and the high unemployment rate is the added burden of unpaid labor and care that women, especially of color, have to face during the pandemic. The disproportionate division of household chores including cleaning, cooking, managing the house combined with the added task of childcare, homeschooling, and taking care of the parents and other elders has affected women mostly. Women on average already did almost twice as much unpaid care as men pre-pandemic that the COVID-19 crisis has deepened this inequality chasm. 

The massive responsibility of being a caregiver at home and the work responsibilities was the reason that 1 in 4 women considered leaving their workplace or downshifting their careers in 2020 in corporate America. This is 40% of mothers compared to only 27% fathers who had 3 or more increased hours of caregiving in their schedule every day. This made up 15 or more hours in the week, which can be considered equivalent to almost a part-time job. Now the routine might be returning to normal with schools re-opening, but people of color have been so severely hit by the pandemic financially, medically and loss of life that finding new jobs immediately or hiring help still aren’t possible options.

Statistics on remote workers reveal that more than 4.7 million people work remotely at least half the time in the United States. 1 in 4 Americans over 26% of the American workforce were expected to be working remotely in 2021. Furthermore, it is also estimated that 22% of the workforce (36.2 Million Americans) will work remotely by 2025. Thirty-nine percent of Asian/Asian-American women indicate they think remote work will result in fewer networking opportunities. Only 25 percent of white women and women of mixed ethnicities, 14 percent of Black women, and 12 percent of Hispanic/Latina women share this sentiment. Moreover, only 35 percent of Black women, 28 percent of Asian/Asian-American women, and 25 percent of Hispanic/Latina women believe that they can be productive while working from home.

On the other hand, only one in six Hispanic workers (15.2%) and one in five Black workers (20.4%) were able to telework due to COVID, compared with one in four white workers (25.9%). These statistics prove the disparities women of color have to face when working from home. 

There Is Already A Wide Leadership Gap:

The underrepresentation of women of color in the leadership was already dominant, but the slow return of women in the workforce post-pandemic can take years to fill that gap. By stepping off the ladder due to Covid, it could take years for women of color to climb the corporate ladder again. The disparities in hiring and promotions were huge pre-pandemic but they may have become insurmountable post-pandemic. This has become one of the main reasons for women to change careers or industries

Even before the pandemic, only 1 in 5 direct reports to the CEO were women and this includes white women. The number is staggeringly low for women of color. Nearly, 154,000 Black women left the labor force in December 2020, a concerning sign of a lack of employment opportunities and overwhelming caregiving demands. There is less support for women of color to rejoin the workforce and start their careers from where they left off post-pandemic. They were already suffering from bias, discrimination, and pay inequity, now with less support, they have to fight for their positions from ground zero. 

Employers Aren’t Doing Anything To Help:

The Black and Hispanic employees had the highest unemployment rate throughout the pandemic. They had higher death rates in their families and their communities as well. So, what did employers do to offer support and help them with this transition of working from home or being “essential workers” and looking after home as well? Nothing. Workplaces did not modify their practices in order  to offer support to Black, Latina, and Indigenous women. Not only were they laid off, but for those employed they were struggling from lack of employer support.. Most companies haven’t realized the importance of optimizing the experience for women of color, offering them support, and helping them with their struggles during the pandemic. 

There haven’t been any initiatives dedicated to improving retention and helping underrepresented employees overcome the losses and disparities they faced during the pandemic. Most of the companies haven’t offered any support, help with childcare, financial assistance, or teleworking options for women of color who have been struggling. There is no surprise that coming back to the job market isn’t easy for them because the increased bias and discrimination still persist.

Impactful Tips For Retaining Diverse Women

Impactful Tips For Retaining Diverse Women

by | Nov 7, 2022 | DEI

Using data to hire and retain women of color is crucial for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Considering that post-pandemic, there is a need to actively work to not only hire but create a sense of belonging and inclusion so more diverse women stay, data is the way to go. Here are some things you should be looking for in your data to help create an impact on your organization’s recruitment and retention strategy:

Tailoring Onboarding Process:

The first ninety days of employment are when employers lose their diverse employees the most. What the companies should be focusing on the most is tailoring their onboarding processes. The easiest and most effective way to do it is to present new hires with distinctively tailored and customized items that can help them feel noticed within the organization. These could be a nameplate,  shirt, or any other company-branded item that is specific to the employee. Personalizing experiences can help create a sense of belonging.

The companies can have employees fill out questionnaires during the onboarding process that indicates their likes and preference. This can later help in offering them merchandise specific to their culture, gender, or particular conditions. When an employer does this, the new employee feels comfortable because they feel noticed, seen, and heard. Another crucial thing during the onboarding process is ensuring that everyone knows how to pronounce the new employee’s name correctly. They could be asked to enunciate their name in the first meeting, which can be recorded, and later shared with everyone else. Asking a new employee if they have a nickname or not just because their name may be difficult to others to pronounce is disrespectful. 

Finally, pair the new employee with a mentor or tenured employee who can help them during the initial days. This person can help them figure out online or digital workplace if the role is remote or work from home. The mentor would help acclimate them to the slack community, the Microsoft community protocols, and the other tech protocols specific to the team. In other settings or in the physical workplace, the mentor can identify facilities that the company provides that they can benefit from. The mentor can get help from ERGs here. These actions may help the new hire feel a personal connection and comfort with the person who is helping them figure out the new role and the company. 

Start With The Referral Rates:

The referral rates tell a lot about the companies that are interested in creating a more diverse workforce. Look at the referral pool of your current and past employees by demographics, gender, ethnicity, and race among other factors. Data still supports that nepotism is still prevalent in companies and network privilege still stands for white employees. Nearly 50% of all referrals are white; 60% of all of those are men, meaning nearly 30% of all referrals are white men. When a third of all referrals come from the same privileged background, the system can still be considered active against diverse representation.

Moreover, research has found that only 3% of referrals come from and are in favor of black employees. Look into your company’s data and it might present the same bleak picture. The chance of getting hired dramatically increases when the candidate is referred. Such is the case for white employees but not for their Black and Latino counterparts. The referrals are an excellent source of hiring talent. Ensure that you make the best use of it because they are an asset for diversity hiring and retention. Create a strong referral system for diverse employees with added advantages for those who refer strong candidates for the workforce. When you have a system in place, the data will show how easily will you be able to attract, hire, and retain women of color.

Establish Fair Performance Improvement Plan:

Most companies have unfair performance review problems with diverse employees. Only 29% of employees strongly agree that their performance reviews were just and fair. This gets worse when you start looking into the data specific to women of color. A study revealed that African Americans and women were less likely to get good ratings from reviewers from the opposite race. Another survey indicates that nearly 41% of African American women managers feel that they have to outperform their male counterparts to offset bias in the performance review process.

Performance reviews do not have to be a barrier in the diversity and inclusion process. In fact, if you look at the data and use this opportunity wisely, they can be one of the ways through which you can retain diverse talent in the long run. When used wisely and with the help of the data available, the performance review systems can help you optimize your diverse talent, enhance productivity in workflows, and discover & eliminate bias in managers’ performance reviews. They can also help you collect data and its effectiveness for DEI measures and initiatives in your organization that are otherwise very hard to track. Look into your current data set of hires, promotions, pay and compensation plans, and compare it with the data you get after a few months. In between, you ensure that there are DEI training and workshops against bias and discrimination for your managers. Furthermore, you should provide support to your diverse hires, especially those who have been recently onboarded. When you assess the data in a few months, it will help you look into performances and evaluate where your initiatives to retain diversity might be faltering and help catch bias in the managers as well. 

Track Diversity Recruitment In Management:

Most of the companies make this mistake that they only track the data from new hires especially those who are in entry-level positions. Nearly 20% of organizations are not tracking any diversity metrics in their recruitment or hiring practices. But, this is the biggest mistake you can make. If you use data and AI systems to hire and track the performance of diverse employees, it can assist in reducing bias and discrimination. A study found that 47% of organizations have implemented technology to help reduce unconscious bias in their recruiting and hiring. Although 53% of employers have not implemented such technology, one-third of them have plans to do so in the future.

It has been noticed that more often than not recruiters prefer to hire those who have degrees from predominantly white institutions colleges instead of HBCUs, HSIs, Native Colleges, or community colleges even though their graduates might have valuable experience and skills. Such is the case for Black people or employees of color who often graduate from HBCUs, community colleges, and unprivileged backgrounds. Recruiters often fail in hiring them even though they have ample experience for the position. When you use data or AI to make decisions on who to hire, who to promote, and where are the lags, there are no chances for bias and discrimination to creep in. What’s more, is that tracking the data for your management and mid-management positions helps in evaluating the performances better and helps in promoting more employees to management positions. This could probably be neglected otherwise if the process is done manually and left on the HR teams to figure out. 

 

Check out : 5 Ways to Retain Women of Color in STEM Professionals.

Related Article: Hiring Should be the First Step in Retaining Diverse Talent

Financial Advisory And Human Resource Management

Financial Advisory And Human Resource Management

by | Oct 24, 2022 | HR

Human Capital Management  

In today’s workplace, Human Capital Management is all about providing company employees with the resources necessary to accomplish the assigned tasks well. It is not enough to communicate what needs to be done but giving people the resources necessary to accomplish all that is required is the bare minimum for success. This is why Human Capital Management is so important. When a company can manage its staff effectively and also provide the tools, training, and systems for success, employees are comfortable and happy and the company grows and thrives. When company personnel feel supported, they can achieve so much more. 

As time flies in this fast-paced society institutional memory can fade. Organizations can forget how the Human Resource Departments HR used to be. In the past, HR was administrative-focused, and not people-focused. It was rules-focused, not productivity-focused This was before the internet, and how, as Seth Godin put in one of his most recent blogs: problem solutions are now crowd-sourced. This highly networked society and the workplace have caused the nature of work to be changed prolifically. This is why it is so important to understand what Human Resources means in today’s context. 

Today, HR professionals do more than payroll, on and off-boarding employees. Now Human Resource professionals are responsible for making sure that employees are clear on their career paths and company processes. HR professionals make sure that employees are getting the right tools and training necessary for them to do their jobs well—and that their needs are being met so that they can grow into leaders within the organization.

 

What is Human Capital Management?

Human Capital Management or HR is a fundamental division in an association liable for exploring, screening, enrolling, onboarding new employees, and helping new employees get acclimated to the process and procedures of the company so that they are able to be as productive as possible. 

HR identifies the right candidate that can contribute for a specific role. It takes a lot of research, consultation, analysis, and budget management to identify the right one.  HR ensures that the hiring process is systematic. Starting from the interviews to onboarding and signing of documents. They are also the ones who are processing payroll and making sure everyone gets their salary.  HR make sure that the company’s policies are updated and when an employee does not abide by the company’s policy then disciplinary action will be given by HR. They maintain records of all of the employees for it is mandated by law. 

 

How Does HR Support Employees

HR supports the growth of the company by making sure that employees are constantly expanding their capabilities and that the organization is running smoothly when all team members follow the policies and procedures put in place. HR provides career opportunities to its employees.  Those who are giving their best always and putting extra effort into their work will be awarded an advancement and additional salary.  With that, training is also being conducted to make sure that every team and department is functioning well. HR also ensures the well-being of its employees.

Assisting Employees With accomplishing Company’s Goal

Bridging HR to the furthest reaches and building a feeling of having a place among them is likewise a fundamental reason for human assets on the board. For this reason, HRM completes exercises like prizes, pay, and incidental advantages to the meriting individuals. Such exercises lift the feeling of confidence for representatives as well as lead associations one bit nearer to their goals.

 

Nature of Work-Life 

The nature of work-life alludes to how favorable and unconducive a task climate could be for the representatives working in an association. It says a lot about the representatives’ view of their work and their physical and mental prosperity at work. HRM-based processes, thusly, target working on the nature of work life for representatives by working with work independence, opportunity, work acknowledgment, belongingness, and so on.

 

Compromise

Associations, whether huge or little, can’t remain detached from clashes that might emerge between little groups or greater gatherings. Such unanticipated cases are inescapable and are difficult to relinquish. HR executives is liable for figuring out such contrasts in an efficient manner and working with smooth tasks of the association.

 

Building a Corporate Image

Maintainability for associations implies keeping a revered ideal picture on the lookout. Everybody might want to connect with an organization that is conspicuous for its moral and social obligation towards its representatives. Going against the norm, organizations that consider their representatives as assets and not people are nearly losing everything.

HR stands key for associations, all things considered. Besides the fact that they have the organization’s well-being on a fundamental level, they likewise give a helpful climate for representatives to excel in their vocations. For the most part, HR experts need to manage numerous unsure issues at work, however, they take everything in their step to care for representative government assistance and fulfillment. 

If you need help with your organization’s HR and you desire to increase its diversity then contact the experts at PHbalanced.co and we will help you to elevate your HR department by giving them the insight necessary to be more inclusive, diverse, and effective

Identifying The HR ANALYTICS For Diversity Recruitment

by | Oct 13, 2022 | Uncategorized

The lack of representation of women of color in STEM or corporate America in general, cannot be simply equated to the “pipeline problem”. More than half the workers believe that their company has failed in creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. This is the reason, more than 95% of the workers are considering changing jobs. Employers need to consider employee priorities with DEI being the foremost of them. 

Some of these issues can be identified with the use of people analytics. Recent studies have suggested that taking the help of HR data can result in increasing job offer acceptance rates and compensation management among employees of color. If the employee lifecycle is studied throughout, there is enough data that can help employers retain them and recruit new ones in the long run. To diversify your workforce, use a scientific approach to find gaps  and existing biased  practices in your recruitment process:

Identify The Current Employee Population:

The first step towards bettering diversity figures in your company is to analyze the current employee population. While it might be tempting to just focus on people of color in general and hope that they will become tenured employees, it is important to realize that different positions and people will require different marketing programs to attract them. This is why it is important to take a scientific and analytical approach to build the right strategy for your diverse talent acquisition strategy.

The first step to it is to realize where your diversity gaps are. Use your current data and analytics to examine your current employee population. Examine the headcount by gender, color, race, ethnicity, and status, etc. Also, perform an analysis of a combination of these characteristics at various levels in your organization to understand how intersectionality impacts employees.  This process will help identify and bring out insights into the areas where your organization needs more diversity efforts, especially in technical roles like engineering or science where women are not often found or leave an organization. Once you know where to stand, the path to where you want to go will become a bit easier. 

Use Big Data To Eliminate Discrimination:

Using big data (talent analytics, HR analytics, predictive analysis, and human capital analytics) can be the most important solution to cutting out bias and discrimination during the recruitment process. HR analytics isn’t just about the data you have, but it is about the insights you can get through it. There are four questions that a company can potentially help find out via HR analytics to get rid of bias and discrimination especially in the hiring process:

  • What variables influence the compensation structure? 
  • What is the current gender balance and ethnicity ratio in different departments throughout the organization?
  • What are the recent trends in diversity dropouts and resignations across your company?
  • Is there behavior compatibility and will a candidate feel welcomed in your company (AI analytics and surveys can help find out the answer)

Based on the findings you have from these questions, you must do a rigorous analysis to chart out a plan that can help tackle these before you map out any plan to hire more diverse people in your company.

Remove Bias From The Hiring Process:

Women of color have to suffer from varying levels of discrimination and bias during the interview phases. With the real-time data, HR leaders and managers can recognize if the interviewer has certain biases that need to be addressed. More often than not, this data can provide insights into how certain interviewers constantly provide negative feedback against women of color. Moreover, with the help of technology and analytics, the feedback given by interviewers during the hiring process can also be submitted individually without others having access to it. Since, unconscious bias is often a cause of groupthink, using technology and tracking the data can help counter it.

Moreover, if there have been challenges in bringing women of color onboard, anonymized resume reviews and blind resumes can also be considered. When the interviewer doesn’t know about ethnicity, gender, and identity, it will be easier to focus on the skills and experience rather than the background of the candidate in question. This will help lessen the bias and discrimination during the hiring process.

Evaluate The Hiring Funnel:

If there is a diverse applicant pool but fewer hires making it to the final stages, it is time to critically look into the hiring funnel. More often than not, with women of color, a lot of the time bias and discrimination are to the extent that they do not make it to the end of the funnel. Assess the data from leads to the percentage of the candidates that make it to the final stages. The HR teams should take their time to realize where they might have lost potential candidates to biases and deficits. For example, if there are fewer diverse candidates applying since the beginning, it is time to invest more into lead generation to widen the candidate pool. Moreover, if there is a certain hiring manager constantly providing negative feedback, the funnel can help realize what kind of measures and training is required to improve the interviewing process. For companies struggling to attract diverse talent, updating job postings with impact descriptions are the first place to start. Impact descriptions are tailored more toward the expectations of the role rather than the background of the candidates, allowing a more diverse pool to feel they would be qualified for the role. 

Look at The Employee Lifecycle Data:

How your current diverse candidates are faring and have fared in the long-term can help provide significant insights into your organization’s culture. How long have the employees from a certain background or gender have stayed in your company, how was their performance reviewed by managers, what did their performance graphs depict, compensation and promotions can tell a lot about the loopholes that can possibly be responsible for increasing resignations, performance improvement plans and terminations of Black, Latinx, and women in your company. 

If you connect all your pre-hire and post-hire data systems in one platform, you can regularly analyze the performance of your diverse employees compared to the majority base of employees. This can also serve as an important indicator of promotions and the lags in bonuses that diverse candidates generally suffer from. For the successful past candidates, use the data to recreate the steps you took to hire and onboard them in the first place. You can continuously use this as a formula to attract and hire diverse and potentially high-value employees.

More importantly, is understanding how current processes and procedures in your organization are biased. Leveraging HR data, you can identify where to make changes to retain and create a culture of belonging for Black, Latinx, and Indigenous employees along with other underrepresented employees.

Say NO To Gender Bias:

As with society in general, women of color are at a disadvantage against systematic bias and racism. Women of color face the double jeopardy of not being male or white in the hiring process. According to the National Science Foundation, fewer than 10% of STEM employees in the United States are women of color; comprising of 6.5% Asian women, 1.8% Latinas, and 1.6% black women. This confirms that gender and ethnic bias is ingrained in the hiring procedure. What’s more, is that women are less likely to be hired in the same role for STEM positions as their male counterparts even when their past performance has proved to be equal.

This means that alongside addressing the bias against women of color, it is important to make the hiring process gender-neutral. While training interviewers is important, it is crucial to start by implementing gender-neutral procedures. A University of Washington, Seattle research indicates that without any information other than a candidate’s appearance, both male and female subjects are also twice more likely to hire a man than a woman. On the other hand, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found significant discrimination against candidates with ‘black’ names, where resumes from people with white-sounding names were 50% more likely to receive an interview. By using AI tools to diversify the talent pool, the HR team can focus on hiring skills and not gender. The data can democratize the workplace and using it wisely for sustainable and equal hiring processes should be the way to go.

Big Data’s Importance in HR Analytics

Big Data’s Importance in HR Analytics

by | Sep 22, 2022 | HR

Successful businesses recognize the value of attracting and retaining excellent people. Human resources (HR) departments are serving as advisors to their firms, using HR analytics to help them develop strategies to attract and retain talent. HR departments are beginning to gain a significant competitive advantage by implementing information research to assess top performers prior to hiring, boost customer loyalty, and keep their staff happy and engaged. As innovation for dealing with massive amounts of employee data advances, this strategic strategy may soon become the new normal.The time has come for human resources departments in manufacturing to embrace data analytics.

What Does It Mean to Use Big Data for HR?

When you use a statistical model, all of your generally held assumptions are replaced by data and validation. You’re not handing over control to an algorithm; you’re trading gut instincts for success rates.

Analyzing enormous amounts of various information in today’s fast-paced environment is difficult, but it is possible. When you use big data to your advantage, you can:

 

1. Lower the number of bad hires.

HR analytics can help you see a considerable reduction in the cost of failed hiring. An employee that is hired incorrectly might cost the organization far more than their pay and benefits. It could also mean higher recruitment costs, training costs, lost productivity, and unfavorable client feedback.

2. Increase employee retention.

When you recruit someone, you invest a lot of time, energy, and money on them. What happens if he or she decides to leave? You begin searching for new candidates , and the cycle begins again. Algorithms can detect people out of work or leaving using big data technologies by analyzing their web communications, profile changes, previous employment, employee commitment, and payroll data. When the system identifies a high-value employee, you have the option of providing them with a raise, a more difficult role, or further training to keep them. This strategy has helped several organizations, like Microsoft, Lashkar-e, and Credit Suisse, raise their engagement rates by up to 20%.

3. Decide on the probability.

How do you determine if a potential new hire is a culture add  for your company’s culture or if they’ll do a good job? Going with your intuition is unreliable, and weighing all of the job requirements and comparing the candidate to your present top performers is time-consuming and  could be biased. Furthermore, integrated business management models can create a profile of top performers based on the histories of successful personnel. You’ll get a focused headhunting platform that can send customized communications to the relevant candidates.

4. Enhance your compensation packages.

Have you determined the benefits employees desire as part of their compensation package? Employers can collect nutrition-related information data on their employees and prospects by following the lead of insurance firms. As a consequence, more appealing and advantageous packages can be developed. It’s crucial to emphasize that the corporation should be open about what they’re doing in order to avoid legal concerns stemming from discrimination. This can be accomplished by disclosing how you acquire and use data.

5. Moral and constitutional concerns

One of the greatest considerations of big data is privacy. Many people are concerned that their credentials would be used against individuals, and such actions have been called discriminatory. The use of big data in personnel should be considered a risk-frame system.