Black employees face greater scrutiny in the workplace from their bosses than their white peers, according to new research published in the Oxford Economic Journal. As a result, they’re more likely to be laid off than non-Black workers before one year of seniority.
“If you’re a white worker, it’s pretty easy to stay employed if you’re not that good,” says Costas Cavounidis, a coauthor of the report. “Whereas if you’re Black, you will be monitored. And if you’re not that capable, you will be fired at a higher rate than a similarly skilled white worker…White workers can skate by in this sense.”
One might expect increased monitoring to lead to increased tenure on the job as employers learn more about their Black workers and see their capabilities. While the research found that the longer Black employees stay on the job while being monitored, the less likely they are to be fired, heavy scrutiny doesn’t come with much upside. That’s because, in most occupations, bosses aren’t monitoring workers for promotions. Instead, managers are trying to determine whether that worker should remain employed.
“For most folks, scrutiny from their employer is a bad thing,” Cavounidis says.
The higher monitoring of Black workers creates a cyclical self-sustaining effect: Bosses scrutinize Black workers more, and underperforming Black workers are rooted out more heavily than white workers. Therefore, the pool of Black workers looks worse to future employers because it has gone through greater churn.
“Theoretically, if I see an unemployed white worker as an employer, I might say, ‘This person is just unlucky.’ Whereas if I see an unemployed Black worker, I know that there’s a higher chance that they’ve been put through monitoring, scrutinized for ability, and then eventually fired,” says Cavounidis.
His team’s research, he says, is a reminder of the structural barriers that companies must address when advancing their CSR and DEI objectives and requires that they create processes to counteract these challenges.
One bright spot, however, is that the discriminatory effects of heavy monitoring become weaker the more credentialed a Black worker is. “Having an outside source such as a degree or some other qualification can do more for Black workers than for white workers,” says Cavounidis.
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