‘Halo effect’ contributing to bias against female black professionals

Black women continue to be underrepresented in leadership roles across the UK workforce and the so-called ‘halo effect’ is one of reasons for that. 

Last week we highlighted the report by LSE which indicates that managers are stifling the careers of black professional women by hiring candidates based on their own image. The research found evidence that managers’ adopting a biased approach to recruitment is disadvantaging black women in what has been dubbed as ‘mirrortocracy’. The report calls for greater transparency on pay and promotions for black women working in big tech, financial and professional services to counteract managers’ negative biases.

The research was commissioned to better understand the barriers black women face in the workplace and involved in-depth interviews with 38 black women in those sectors. They found that 7 in 10 believed they were being paid less than their comparable peers, with more than 10% reporting pay gaps as high as 30%. Almost two-thirds reported difficulties being their authentic selves at work, and felt forced to change their persona to fit in with their company’s culture. 45% said that despite attempts to conform to their firm’s standards of dress and hair, they still experienced negative encounters with colleagues. Almost all of the women, 92%, said they wanted to see systemic change within their workplaces.

The women who reported difficulties being their authentic selves were questioned by the researchers. They said they felt the need to switch between different cultural norms, language, values, and behaviours in order to fit in – something the researchers called ‘code-switching’. For the black women, code-switching involved ‘conformity to the dominant culture’s form of dressing and hair styling to minimise their perceived differences, make their co-workers feel comfortable and to get ahead, then switching to a more authentic self when around friends and family. The root cause of the problem? The ‘halo effect’. A cognitive bias resulting in an overall impression of a person being overly influenced by a single trait, such as an Afro hair style. So one aspect of an individual becomes the foundation of the analysis of the individual and, the report concludes, that is resulting in the underrepresentation of black women in leadership roles and it is a problem that HR needs to be alive to.

The LSE’s report has been covered by the CIPD’s People Management in their article ‘Mediocre’ managers stifling black professional women's careers’ which carries the message that businesses need to embrace inclusive leadership style at all levels to avoid ‘mirrortocracy’, the tendency of managers to hire people based on their own image.

We are returning to this to flag the problem that is the Halo Code and how it leads to ‘mirrortocracy’, discrimination and exclusion of black females. The issue affects both children and adults and has led to the Halo Code, a campaign pledge, signed by schools and businesses, that promises members of the Black community that they have the ‘freedom and security to wear all afro-hairstyles without restriction or judgment.’ Head teachers and business leaders can choose to sign the code which means everyone in the organisation recognises and celebrates every individual member and accepts their identity.

The Code is something a number of our clients have already signed up to. Kate Dodd is a diversity and inclusion specialist and she joined me by video-link from Manchester to discuss the issue. I started by asking Kate how she explains the Halo Code to clients:

Kate Dodd: “The Halo Code is about understanding this kind of unspoken discrimination that takes place. It’s recognising that people of colour working in the UK often feel that they have to leave parts of their identity behind, whether that be that they change the language that they use, whether they change their accent, and also there is a big issue around hair, and what is really quite clearly hair discrimination. Whereby, possibly on an unconscious level, somebody has seen not to be professional, potentially, because of their hair cut, their hair style. Thankfully, there has been a real pushback against this to say, why is Afro hair not professional? Why should people with Afro hair, or other kind of natural hair styles, not seen as professional by Western standards? Why should they change their hair for the workplace? There are countless examples of people who have come forward and have been told that their hair isn't professional, that they need to change their hair for work, or told in an interview situation, oh, you should wear your hair differently. Actually, this is just people's natural hair so why should they be forced to feel that they have to change just because it doesn't necessarily fit with their kind of the Western standards or western ideals of what professionalism is?”

Joe Glavina: “So what can HR do to about it Kate?”

Kate Dodd: Well, I think signing up to the Halo Code is a really good start. That involves changing your dress code to make sure that you mention the Halo Code in that. Lots of business, lots of our clients, have joined us and signed up to the Halo Code which I think is excellent. Also, of course, it's about just recognising unconscious bias in yourselves and in your managers, looking at your staff, considering whether or not they appear to be safe to be themselves, and talking to people. We have to be really careful not to single somebody out and say to them, well, you're black so you now need to speak on behalf of all black people and tell us what we should be doing. There is a difference between that and inviting people to share their experiences with you and you need to do very much the latter, rather than the former. Open a dialogue and talk to people and, hopefully, you'll have some sort of employee network group that focuses around race and ethnicity and it's a conversation to be had with those individuals to say, do you feel able to be your authentic self at work and, if not, why not? What can we as a business do to change that? So, again, you're not looking to people to make the change themselves, but you are opening up a listening exercise with the intent to do something about it.”

That report by the LSE is called ‘Transparent: Creating Organisations Inclusive of Black Women in Finance, Professional Services and Big Technology’ and we have put a link to it in the transcript of this programme. We mentioned People Management’s article: ‘Mediocre’ managers stifling black professional women's careers’. Kate talked about that to this programme in some detail last week. That is: ‘Mirrortocracy’ at work is disadvantaging black women, study shows’. That programme is available for viewing now from the Outlaw website.

LINKS
- Link to LSE’s report: Transparent: Creating Organisations Inclusive of Black Women in Finance, Professional Services and Big Technology
Inclusivity-of-Black-Women.pdf (lse.ac.uk)