Workplace diversity report reveals substantial inequalities in race, sex
Some places in the country are doing better at promoting diversity than others; California still leads the way.
Diversity isn’t succeeding in the workplace as well as it should, according to the Workplace Diversity Report 2018 from HR platform Namely.
In fact, the report says, although diversity in teams brings greater productivity and profitability, managers are more likely to be managing people of the same ethnicity and gender. Hiring patterns, according to the findings, lead to homogeneous teams.
Some places in the country are doing better at promoting diversity than others, of course. As measured by the Simpson Diversity Index, the report says, California leads the way, but ethnicities do better in the workforce in other states as well: New Jersey, Florida, Texas and New York.
Related: Diversity improving but still lagging in tech industry
Overall, black and Hispanic or Latino workers come up short in the workplace—the former make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but just 8 percent of the workforce, while the latter constitute 18 percent of the population and only 11 percent of the workforce—though they do actually make up a disproportionate number of the workforce in food services (black workers) and in construction and personal services (Hispanic workers).
And Asian workers are more prominent in architecture and in biotechnology/pharmaceuticals, where they make up 33.3 percent and 20.8 percent, respectively, of the workforce.
Companies may be working to create a gender-diverse workforce, but some industries are far more resistant to that as well, particularly when it comes to hierarchy. Not only do nearly 80 percent of male employees report to men and more than 50 percent of women report to women, with the least common reporting structure a male employee reporting to a female manager, but men make up more than 60 percent of workers in construction, energy, sporting goods and technology. They really dominate in the fields of construction and energy, constituting 88 percent of the workforce in the former and more than 80 percent in the latter.
For their part, women make up more than 60 percent of the workforce in insurance, fashion, public relations and nonprofits, and over 70 percent at fashion companies. And not only are there fewer female managers than male—16 percent of employees who are managers are women, while 20 percent of employees who are managers are men, with 35 percent of managers overall being female and 59 percent of managers overall being male—but when it comes to which peers employees recognize most, the study finds that male employees received recognition from both men and women nearly equally, but among females, nearly 64 percent of all recognition given to women came from other women.
Still, several industries come much closer to gender balance, including advertising, architecture and engineering, government, legal and real estate.
But there is much work to be done in diversifying the workplace, including within HR—which of course has so much to do with the recruiting process. And according to the report, HR needs to step up to what is “both a challenge and an opportunity.”