How does team racial composition shape the careers of people of color?
Project Summary
Employers need a better understanding of the drivers of racial and ethnic disparities in retention to develop solutions to support racial diversity and equity. To fill this gap, we collaborated with a large private company to study how the racial and ethnic composition of one’s coworkers shape retention and promotion. Using good-as-random project assignments, we found that working on teams with a higher proportion of White coworkers reduced retention and promotion rates for Black employees, but not other employees of color. Our findings suggest that workplaces should pay specific attention to team composition and dynamics when developing ways to support and retain Black employees.
Why is this issue important?
Fostering diverse workplaces is important for addressing long-standing inequities, learning from different perspectives, and being responsive to increasingly diverse communities. Much attention has been paid to diversity in hiring, but less research has been focused on how to retain and promote diverse talent. Yet, retention and promotion are critical contributors to the racial and ethnic composition of workplaces.
What are we doing?
We collaborated with a large private company to study how the racial and ethnic composition of coworkers affects the trajectories of different racial and ethnic groups within the firm. Using multiple years of administrative records and leveraging good-as-random assignment of new hires to projects, we pinpointed the effect of working with coworkers of different racial and ethnic identities on retention and promotions. We used qualitative interviews with employees at the firm to understand the on-the-ground experiences behind our findings.
What have we learned?
Working on teams with higher proportions of White coworkers reduces retention and promotion rates for Black employees, with even larger impacts for Black women. Other employees of color do not experience the same reductions when working on teams with more White coworkers. Additionally, we do not find that working on teams with more Asian or Hispanic coworkers affects retention or promotion for employees of any racial or ethnic group. Our qualitative interviews corroborate these findings: only Black employees, and especially Black women, reported ways in which White coworkers negatively influenced their workplace interactions and professional relationships.
What comes next?
The People Lab is committed to researching the best ways to foster diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces. We will take the findings from this and other studies to explore how to better support employees of color. We hope to collaborate with employers to co-develop and test interventions to support racially equitable and inclusive workplaces.