The key to breaking this inequality is to eliminate the earliest opportunity for discrimination.

Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “Harvard Business Review “(ID: hbrchinese) .

Text | Elizabeth C. Tippett (Elizabeth C. Tippett)

Elizabeth Tippet is an associate professor at the University of Oregon Law School. She studies employment practices and business ethics.

Translation | Jia Huijuan Proofreading | Niu Wenjing Edit | Tengyue

If your company belongs to the majority, you are likely to struggle with discrimination in the workplace without knowing it. Inequality is still a serious problem in the United States, especially for women and people of color, who have lower average wages and fewer opportunities for promotion than white or male colleagues. Although federal law has prohibited discrimination in the workplace for more than 50 years, these problems will not disappear in the short term. As I explained in my recent research: The reason why workplace discrimination persists is that the rules on the existing countertops and unintentional subconsciousness both have an impact on management.

Compliance checks focus on the most significant personnel decisions made by management—who gets promoted and who gets the highest bonuses—and ignores all smaller decisions that affect employees ’long-term performance. The gender difference in sales performance may be traced back to the management’s allocation of sales opportunities, employees’ opportunities to obtain guidance and feedback, or opportunities to reach existing customers. Similarly, differences in experience and skill levels in promotion may be due to early informal management decisions, such as who gets an important task, or gets another chance after making a major mistake.

The key to resolving these differences may come from an unexpected source: social science research on racial prejudice in school discipline. My colleagues at the University of Oregon spent years studying the long-term gaps that the school makes in daily small decisions, which they call vulnerable decision points. Their research found that school leaders are more likely to punish black students for subjective violations (such as disrespect) than objective violations (such as fights) than white students. Therefore, although fighting may be a more serious incident, it is actually because the accumulation of inequality in more frequent, lower-level incidents has led to major racial differences in school discipline.

Therefore, whether in school or in the workplace, the key to breaking this inequality is to eliminate the earliest opportunities for discrimination. Here are some ways to try:

Reverse inspection starts with salary, promotion and performance standards. If the company already has clear standards,The management discussed the decomposition of these standards into smaller goals. What steps do employees need to complete to achieve these goals? What skills, knowledge and experience do they need? Then find out the most important components and whether all employees have equal opportunities.

Note the turning point in your career. Some occupations are related to the direction of early careers. Early judgments on performance determine future opportunities. In these cases, the opportunity allocation is carefully reviewed at the initial stage to assess whether everyone has a chance to enter the fast lane. It is also worth noting whether some employees only provide some turning points, but not others-such as whether management is looking for the potential of “superstars”, or whether it gives more backward time to prove themselves.

Try focus groups and case studies. Another useful source of information comes from employees themselves and their managers. They may know that they have obtained an important opportunity that others have missed. It is also possible to collect data on employees who were promising but whose careers were unsuccessful through resignation interviews and even past complaints of discrimination.

Identify hidden decision makers. Some employees who allocate scarce opportunities may not even be in your attention. For example, in corporate law firms, intermediate and senior lawyers may be the main decision makers in assigning junior lawyer jobs. But these lawyers rarely receive management training and their decisions have not been reviewed.

Discover hidden decisions. Management may not even realize some of their most important decisions. Managers may unconsciously decide to reuse employees who are similar to themselves or similar to successful employees in the past, without realizing that this will cause other employees to miss opportunities.

Help employees control their careers. Sometimes, inequality occurs or increases because employees do not know which opportunities are important. A new investment banker is the first generation of college graduates in the entire family. If she is expected to compete with employees whose parents are bankers, she needs to know the precautions. Do n’t expect new employees to solve problems by themselves, but provide them with clear guidance about what they need to accomplish within 5 or 10 years.

Increase the rigor of subjective decisions. Subjective judgments are most susceptible to implicit bias. The same is true of making judgments when time is tight and ambiguous. Encourage management to think in empathy, when they are in the position of employees, how to view employees’ behavior and ideas based on their own objective standards.

Provide data. When management makes decisions in specific ways, they may not realize the cumulative effect of these decisions. If acquiring new customers becomes an obstacle to the promotion of certain employees, thenReport regularly to management who is acquiring new customers so they can rebalance resource allocation in the future.

Provide resources. Sometimes, management may want to allocate important opportunities more widely, but lack sufficient time and energy. Then the Human Resources Department can help. If employees need training in business development, it should be provided to all interested employees, rather than relying on managers to provide informal training.

Handling workplace prejudice is like dealing with any other complex business challenge—requiring good data, grassroots involvement, and creative problem-solving methods. Finally, by identifying the vulnerable decision points in the personnel system, it can help all employees realize their full potential.