Project Include conducted a survey of almost 3,000 people across the U.S. between May and February 2021. Ellen Pao, who founded Project Include sued her employer for gender-based discrimination in the past and has become a leading advocate for diversity in the technology field.
Pao heard employees complaining early on during the COVID-19 pandemic about harassment at work despite no longer being in the office. She says people assumed that while working remotely, discrimination and harassment wouldn’t be as much of an issue. However, Project Include conducted a survey that appeared to show this wasn’t the case.
Increase in harassment
The survey defined harassment to include behavior like yelling, repeated or uncomfortable questions about appearance and identity, and requests for dates or sex.
Tech employees responding to the survey reported experiencing more harassment based on age, gender or ethnicity while working remotely. More than one in four respondents said they experienced more gender-based harassment.
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Gender discrimination
Under federal law, discrimination based on various categories is illegal. Gender discrimination is just one of the categories explicitly outlawed under Title V11 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In a recent study of 18 medical institutions, female doctors believed that their gender was negatively impacting their career opportunities. Few will deny that there has been progress in workplace equality, but there appears to still be a long way to go before women are fully recognized as equal to men for their contributions to the workforce. This inevitably has consequences with respect to pay, promotions etc., whether working remotely or in an office.
Racial discrimination
In the survey conducted by Project Include, women of color were the most likely to report an increase in race-based hostility.
Workplace friendships have helped to break down misconceptions about those from different backgrounds, and when people work remotely, they don’t in-person exposure. Issues surrounding race can come up in online conversations, chat threads and emails, posing a challenge for HR leaders. They will have to devise policies on how to address racial discrimination while working remotely.
Possible reasons for the increase
The survey responses suggest that there may be various reasons for an increase in harassment and hostility while working remotely. The blurring of boundaries between work and home life, more conversations where work colleagues aren’t present as witnesses and people working longer hours could be some of the reasons.
Pao said that employees were seeing more harassment on email, chat, and on video conferencing. Many of the software tools people use for remote work may not have easy ways built in to flag inappropriate content or behavior and report it. They are not designed to mitigate harassment.
Many employees reported that they were more anxious while working from home and nearly two-thirds said they were working longer hours.
Steps to take
Companies need to think about what they need to address in their policies relating to these issues and about who decides what is racist, offensive, derogatory or inflammatory. They need to identify certain lines so they know when they have been crossed.
Employees need to know their rights, find out about company policies from employee handbooks or policy manuals and follow procedures when reporting violations. It is important for them to keep a log of events and to keep any evidence in a safe place to back up their allegations of harassment.