The events of the past year and a half have put intense pressure on companies to do more to support employees and act on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. Women leaders are meeting this moment and taking on the extra work that comes with it — but they're not getting recognised or rewarded for it. As a result, this mission-critical work is in danger of being relegated to "office housework": necessary tasks and activities that benefit the company but go unrecognised and don't lead to career advancement. That's a main finding from the new 2021 Women in the Workplace report by LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company, which I co-authored.
The report on the state of women in corporate America surveyed more than 400 companies and more than 65,000 employees in professional jobs from the entry level to the C-suite. The survey found that at all levels of management, women showed up as better leaders, more consistently supporting employees and championing DEI. Compared with men in similar roles, women managers invest more in helping employees navigate work-life challenges, ensuring workloads are manageable and providing emotional support. Women managers are also more likely to act as allies to women of color by speaking out against bias and advocating for opportunities for them. Finally, women leaders are also more likely than men to spend time on DEI work outside their formal job responsibilities, such as leading or participating in employee resource groups, or ERGs, and serving on DEI committees. Among women at the manager level and above, Black women, LGBTQ+ women and women with disabilities are up to twice as likely as women overall to spend a substantial amount of time promoting DEI.
Companies are reaping great rewards from these efforts. The survey found that when leaders support employee well-being and demonstrate commitment to DEI, employees are happier with their jobs, more likely to recommend their company as a great place to work, less burned out and less likely to consider leaving. And companies purport to value this work — an overwhelming majority of them say that managers' efforts to promote employee well-being are critically important and that DEI is a key area of focus.
But this work is taxing the people who are disproportionately doing it. Compared with men in similar roles, women leaders are more likely to be exhausted and chronically stressed at work. Alarmingly, more than half of women leaders who manage teams say that over the past few months, they have felt burned out at work "often" or "almost always," and almost 40 per cent of them have considered downshifting their careers (for example, by moving to part-time work) or leaving the workforce altogether. What's more is that this work is going unrecognised. Only about a quarter of employees say that the extra work they're doing is formally recognised (for example, in performance reviews) either "a great deal" or "a substantial amount."