Coronavirus Means Layoffs by the Millions — Here’s How Bias, Not Merit, Determines Who Goes

Meet Brad, a white man, and Keisha, a black woman. They both work for your company. Let’s have you play the role of their manager. You’re going to decide who stays and who goes. Will your decision be a fair one?

We are in the midst of a pandemic and it will be a long recovery from COVID-19. Among the many issues we will grapple with is the reality that companies will lay more and more people off. How do we make sure those decisions are fair?

As the Founder & CEO of Inclusion Nation, I consult with organizations across industries on diversity and inclusion. Fairness is often the issue that arises. Fairness in who is hired, who is promoted, who is laid off. No one should get a leg up, my clients say. No one should play on an uneven playing field. No one should be chosen on anything other than merit. It’s not fair.

So I ask them a different question. What is fair? As they answer that, I ask them to think about unconscious bias. Because bias means that the even playing field you think you have, the one that is solely based on merit, is not as fair or even as you believe it is. Especially when it comes to layoffs.

Let’s try this scenario. You work for a company with a predominantly white male leadership team, as many companies have. These white male leaders have to decide who to let go and who to keep. Let’s pick two people: Brad, a white man, and Keisha, a black woman. And let’s have you play the role of one of those white male leaders who decides their fate.

You look at reviews, hours worked, quality of work, customers and clients, cultural integration. Often we talk about bias related to those macro issues — in terms of who has access and who doesn’t. But that’s not where bias starts. It starts with you.

You look at Brad. Brad does great work. Brad is wearing clothes that you would wear, he’s from a town like you, he went to a similar school as you, and when you look at Brad, you know this is someone you can hang with. Someone you can talk to and give work to. Because Brad’s a good guy. The conversation flows smoother with Brad. So Brad gets your very best recommendation. Brad is the “right fit.” And in your company, your subjective conclusion that someone is the “right fit” carries all the weight at the end of the day. Because nothing, and I mean nothing, is as powerful as saying someone is the “right fit.”

Because Brad is The Guy. Brad has been The Guy in leadership. Brad has been The Guy in positions of power. When you search for manager or CEO in Google, or when they’re typecasting for, you know, 90s superheroes, Brad is who comes up. The Guy.

So Brad gets something else. Not just the “right fit.” He also gets “competent.” Because he’s a “natural leader.” When Brad does really good work, quality work, it’s because he’s good at his job. He’s smart, he’s diligent, he’s hard-working. It’s easy to believe that Brad is good because people who look like Brad have been, in every space in this majority-white nation, the exemplar. In the top grossing movies that are all written and directed and starring white men, in our literary heroes, our CEOs, our presidents, our senators, our judges, our congressmen, our history, our street names, our buildings, our company names, our statues, our money. Brad, by virtue of his birth as a white man in the United States of America, is already an heir to that legacy.

But Keisha isn’t. In the corporate America ladder that Keisha is trying to climb, she is often the first and the only. So when you are considering who to keep, the bias and the stereotype that you call readily to mind isn’t the long history of success that people who look like Keisha have had, but instead the spaces where people who look like Keisha have typically been allowed into. If they are in companies, they are often not in the C-suite or in positions of leadership, particularly in line roles. There is no positive bias that people who look like Keisha are competent to be in the space that she wants to rise to. She is assumed to be “less than” not “equal to,” even if that assumption is only made unconsciously.

So now you’re deciding who to keep and who to let go. You remember when Brad did something good or smart. You have a positive bias that people like Brad are often competent and smart so you’re inclined to believe the best about him.

But when Keisha does something competent or smart? Well, you don’t have a positive bias for competent and smart people like Keisha. So instead you think, that’s because she got lucky that time. She had help. She managed to figure it out. Then you remember when Brad and Keisha both struggled. You can brush it aside for Brad because people like Brad stumble but they get back up. Keisha however? Well, it just shows that “people like her” aren’t “ready”. That she’s “under-qualified,” “unprepared,” or “needs extra help.”

And because you know that Keisha isn’t really the right fit, you’re going to remember that time she was five minutes late for the meeting. Or you know that “people like her” don’t speak up so you’ll make a note that she’s too quiet in meetings. Or she does speak up and you think she was too loud and brash because that’s what “people like her” are like. Or she had to miss a meeting because of a family crisis and you know that’s just going to happen again and again because “people like her.”

But Brad? Brad was running late for the meeting because he was working hard on some client matter. Brad doesn’t talk much because he’s “a man of few words.” Brad speaks up because he’s self-assured. He’s confident. Brad has had family challenges this year but “he manages to keep his personal life separate from work.” That’s what people like Brad do.

Over and over and over and over again. Brad gets the halo. Keisha gets the horns. And it’s a huge part of what keeps the Brads of the world rising, and the Keishas of the world, not.

So do me a favor. Over the next year as you decide how to tackle this crisis, who gets to stay and who has to go, think about biases. Who had access to the good work? Who had growth-oriented evaluations and who did not? Who had a champion speaking up on their behalf and who did not? Who got to go to happy hours, and golf games, and to customer events, and to speak on stages, and to do pitches, and to inherit clients and customers, and who did not?

That’s what we mean when we talk institutional bias — the various ways our companies are structured that privilege certain groups over others. But institutional biases still need individuals to perpetuate them. Think about how you as a decision-maker evaluate people. Think about what impact their race, ethnicity, gender, and the many other intersectional identities that they have, play a role in your perception of their likelihood of success. Who gets to stay and who gets to go? Think about whether your decision, after all that we have discussed, can truly be a fair one.