
…can reduce belonging uncertainty and improve the performance of members of underrepresented groups. When people understand that (1) questions of belonging are normal when you enter a new environment, and (2) these concerns lessen over time, they are freed from using mental energy to try to figure out whether or not they belong, and can instead focus on their work. A study with college students found that an intervention that conveyed these messages led to a 50% reduction in the racial achievement gap over the course of 4 years. Similarly, an intervention with engineering majors raised women’s engineering grade-point-average and eliminated the gender achievement gap.
Moving forward, we want to better understand the phenomenon of cliques and look for recommendations on how to lessen their exclusionary effects. We want to understand why perception of fairness in the follow-up survey did not change significant…
We also note that positive changes were accompanied by some negative data. Women, transgender men, and non-binary employees are significantly less likely than male employees to hold engineering roles or to be in senior, director, VP or C-level roles. Latinx employees and women were significantly more likely to hold low-paying roles than high-paying roles. Non-binary respondents decreased from 2% to 1% over the 8-month period.