Talk to most HR commentators about workplace bias (particularly gender bias), and the prevailing perspective they’ll give is typically the same: that it is men who persistently get more favorable treatment for exhibiting strong male characteristics.
Meanwhile, females who are career-driven or single-minded, or go-getting are labeled ‘Queen Bee’ like (or worse).
Observations like these all tend to add to a body of work that says females are discriminated at work, and are negatively treated against their male peers.
For many years, in fact, this narrative has been what many gender bias campaigners have been seeking to address.
But… could it actually be that this is less the prevailing situation than we might all think?
In fact, could it be that the very opposite is actually true – that females get an easier ride in the workplace (and tend to be talked to less critically) – just because they’re women?
Female favoritism
This has been a question that has been on the mind of Leah Williams, associate professor of management and associate dean for equity and Inclusion at Washington State University’s (WSU) Carson College of Business, for some time.
And according to new research she has published on the specific topic of performance reviews, Williams argues that – in actual fact – leaders might be giving women inflated (and inaccurate), feedback in performance reviews.
In a clear case of HR professionals being careful for what they wish for, she asserts that feedback providers feel so much social pressure to avoid showing bias, that they tend to “over-correct” when delivering performance feedback to women – which comes with its own set of problems.
She suggests that rather than correcting bias, this behavior has the potential to exacerbate workplace gender inequities if women are routinely not receiving the feedback they need that identifies areas for improvement.
It’s all down to Rolling Stone
The journey to making this discovery can be put at the foot of an unsuspecting magazine: Rolling Stone.
“I started this research by trying to seek out instances where there might be evidence of women not getting the critical feedback they should be getting,” she adds.
“I was obviously not going to be able to go into workplaces, but the idea came to me of looking into album reviews. I wanted to find out whether female artists were receiving more in-article written praise than their album’s overall star-rating might otherwise suggest.”
Speaking exclusively to TLNT she says: “What was apparent, was that if the artists was identifiably female, then they would indeed get more positive feedback than their star rating ought to have suggested.”
She adds: “Looking at the ratios of positive and negative words used, it was around a 10% greater positive appreciation of their work than their star rating would have expected to give them,” she confirms.
Why are women not being criticized?
The obvious question this raised, says Williams, is ‘why?’ – and perhaps more importantly for CHROs, what impact this is happening in the world of work if this behavior is being played out at a consistent, national level.
“This first study kick-started a second invesigation, into looking into the reasons for this, and we found that managers feel there’s external pressure on them to avoid anything that might be deemed as being prejudicial behavior, and the result of this is that they over-correct,” she says.
The term for this, claims Williams, is ‘benevolent sexism’, where inflated (positive) feedback is given, to protect both the person giving the feedback, and the person receiving that feedback.
The dangers of not being honest
This behavior was consistent whether it was men giving women feedback or women giving women feedback, and according to Williams, it’s inherently dangerous, because – quite evidently – recipients are not being told the news they need to hear: that their performance needs to improve [and what can be done to achieve this].
She says: “We found men giving feedback didn’t want to be seen to be being prejudicial, while women giving feedback also wanted to avoid the accusation that they were protecting other women.”
She adds: “This behavior is less about leaders not wanting to hurt the feelings of the person receiving feedback as it is about the external pressures they feel they are facing.”
What can organizations do to be more honest?
According to Williams, the need for more honest and accurate assessments of an employee’s actual performance is paramount.
“It’s highly likely this sort of thing has been going on for longer than most companies have had DEI policies,” she says.
“But I think this definitely speaks to the current moment too. There is fear from leaders of marginalizing certain groups – particularly women – and now, post #MeToo, they are finding themselves treading more carefully, so as not to be accused of doing anything deemed prejudicial.”
She adds: “The consequences of this can be quite serious though. Men are already wanting to mentor women less, especially if there’s a fear of the blowback of criticism.”
Most staff ‘do’ actually want honest feedback
The irony in all of this, claims Williams, is that women do, actually want honest performance-based feedback, and they are much more resilient to being told what they need to do to improve than most leaders think.
“If feedback providers are worried about causing offence, then they’ll avoid giving honest feedback, which defeats the object,” she says.
“I’m not saying leaders have to be more blunt; rather that they should better follow best practice for giving performance reviews. This is best practice that says reviews need to be broken down into individual facets, to give an unemotional structure to discuss things being done well or not so well.”
The best performance reviews, she argues, are those that follow a structure of discussing what an employee needs to progress their development – in a non-accusatory way.
She says: “I think performance reviews have always been awkward – both for the person giving them, and the person receiving them – but the process can be managed better if it’s depersonalized.”
And she says it must be improved.
“If leaders have spent years telling a female employee that her work is great – when it hasn’t been – that’s going to be very uncomfortable, legally, if they then want to terminate that person’s employment.”
She concludes: “We all need interactions with each other be the truth, and not vague.
“Yes, being told about poor performance can temporarily hurt, but after a few minutes, this emotional response normally recedes, and both parties can start to work together to think about ways they can address things.”