Streamline Training & Documentation: Turnover Due to Unfairness in the Workplace

Friday, August 31, 2007

Turnover Due to Unfairness in the Workplace

The San Francisco-based Level Playing Field Institute (LPFI) has published an important report concerning the role of workplace unfairness in precipitating a manager's or professional's decision to leave a job. "The Corporate Leavers Survey: The Cost of Employee Turnover Due Solely to Workplace Unfairness" inquired about "every-day inappropriate behaviors such as stereotyping, public humiliation, and promoting based upon personal characteristics."

LPFI extrapolates rather dramatically from their survey of 1700 managers and professionals to arrive at an estimated $64 billion annual cost to employers of turnover due solely to workplace unfairness. This $64 billion is net of costs due to decreased sales and damage to the company's reputation when the aggrieved parties deter friends and acquaintances from buying their ex-employer's products and services and from seeking employment there. The $64 billion also leaves aside any costs incurred to replace managers and professionals for which workplace unfairness, while not the sole consideration, was a major contributing factor to the decision to resign or volunteer for layoff.

According to the executive summary (pdf), other survey findings include (slightly edited):

People of color are three times more likely to cite workplace unfairness as the only reason for leaving their employer than heterosexual Caucasian men and twice as likely as heterosexual Caucasian women.

Gay and lesbian professionals and managers are almost twice as likely to cite workplace unfairness as the only reason for leaving their employer as heterosexual Caucasian men.

Among the specific types of unfairness the survey inquired about, the behaviors
most likely to prompt someone to leave were: (1) being asked to attend extra recruiting or community related events because of one’s race, gender, religion or sexual orientation, (2) being passed over for a promotion due to one’s personal characteristics, (3) being publicly humiliated, and (4) being compared to a terrorist in a joking or serious manner.

More than one-fourth (27%) of respondents who experienced unfairness at work within the past year said their experience strongly discouraged them from recommending their employer to other potential employees; 13% said their experience strongly discouraged them from recommending their employer’s products or services to others.

Responses concerning what employers could have done to keep them varied across demographic groups. For example, almost half of gay and lesbian professionals and managers said that if their employer offered more or better benefits they would very likely have stayed; 34% of people of color said they would very likely have stayed if their employer had offered better managers who recognized their abilities.

When considering what type of training could help reduce workplace unfairness, it is important not to think simply in terms of training people about behavior they must avoid in order to protect the company from lawsuits. Training must also cover behavior that, if roles were reversed, would come across as unfair even though not illegal or provable in a civil suit.

The full LPFI report, which I have not read, is available for purchase for $200 (with discounts for volume orders).

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Labels: Organizational culture, Professionalism, Respect, Rewards and recognition

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