Adia Harvey Wingfield, professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences
It’s common today for organizations and industries to state their commitment to attracting workers of color. In the tech industry, for instance, companies like Google and Apple say that they want to increase diversity, and leaders in health care are slowly starting to grapple with the need for more black doctors given demographic changes.
But change has happened slowly, if at all. Much like medicine, black workers in particular are underrepresented occupations like law and finance, and it’s not because of their own shortcomings or “pipeline issues.” I’ve been studying black workers for nearly 15 years, and the research and data in this area show that organizations are failing black workers in three key ways, especially if they are employed in professional occupations.
It starts with how employees are hired in the first place.
Read the full piece in the Harvard Business Review.
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