COVID-19 has disrupted nearly every aspect of work, forcing employees and organizations alike to rethink much of how they operate. Although the uncertainty of these abrupt changes has led many to hope the effects of COVID-19 will be short lived, the reality is that COVID-19 will have lasting effects on organizations that reverberate far into the future. In their focal article, Rudolph etal. (Reference Rudolph, Allan, Clark, Hertel, Hirschi, Kunze, Shockley, Shoss, Sonnentag and Zacher2021) offer a summary of the ways COVID-19 may alter work, focusing on 10 domains argued to be most relevant to the current crisis. However, one area of research and practice that is absent from their initial review is diversity management, or the efforts organizations make to actively foster a diverse workforce and generate a sense of belonging and acceptance for all employees regardless of their social identities (Gilbert etal., Reference Gilbert, Stead and Ivancevich1999).
In this commentary, we argue that COVID-19 has the capacity to shift views of diversity management from being an organizational luxury to being a necessity and propose both immediate and long-term practical and research needs surrounding the effects of COVID-19 on the diverse workforce. We illustrate this point by summarizing how COVID-19 has unequally affected minority employees and describing the research and practical implications of COVID-19 for diversity management. In doing so, we offer an agenda for future efforts to study and effectively manage diverse employees during times of crisis and beyond.
COVID-19 as a case for diversity management
In many ways, the emergence of a novel public health threat has both heightened and made more visible the inequities that have long existed in our society, and there is ample evidence of the unequal harmful effects of COVID-19 on minority populations. Asian Americans have reported being violently attacked, verbally assaulted, and intentionally spit at or coughed on (Ruiz etal., Reference Ruiz, Horowitz and Tamir2020; Tavernise & Opper, Reference Tavernise and Opper2020). Black Americans have suffered elevated mortality rates due to the virus (Eligon etal., Reference Eligon, Burch, Searcey and Oppel2020), likely in part because of structural barriers in the healthcare system that have led to Black patients being disproportionately denied COVID-19 testing (Farmer, Reference Farmer2020). Further, women and people of color have been more acutely affected by the economic distress and layoffs that have accompanied the virus (Kalev, Reference Kalev2020).
Rising inequalities stemming from the virus also extend to workplaces where minority employees may be facing unique barriers to performance, engagement, and well-being as they attempt to navigate working amid the pandemic. First, and as reviewed above, negative treatment of racial/ethnic minorities has substantially risen in response to COVID-19. The harm of those experiences and the fear they generate, even in people who have not experienced them directly or at work, is likely to spill over into the workplace context. For example, growing negative sentiments toward racial/ethnic minority groups, particularly Asian Americans, may disrupt or strain workplace interactions and adversely affect employee well-being. More specifically, Asian American employees may be experiencing hostility from their coworkers or customers or may proactively withdraw from work in anticipation of such negative treatment. Additionally, even if they are not being targeted at work, racial/ethnic minority employees may be experiencing heightened fatigue, distress, and other negative outcomes as a result of experiencing or being vicariously exposed to discrimination outside of work (Pascoe & Smart Richman, Reference Pascoe and Smart Richman2009).
Employees with chronic health conditions or disabilities are similarly experiencing unique challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps the most obvious concern is employees with preexisting physical health conditions physically returning to work given their increased risk for developing significant complications if they were to contract the virus. Despite concerns about physically attending work, remote work also poses unique challenges. Employees with vision impairments and employees who are hard of hearing, for example, may not be able to fully participate in work tasks that are now technology mediated or may not be able to participate in a way that is as enriching as the experiences of other employees. These employees may also lack sufficient equipment and accommodations at home to fulfill their expected job functions. Considerations of employees with chronic health conditions or disabilities are also further complicated by the fact that many of these conditions are concealable, and some employees may not have disclosed their condition or disability to their employer and/or coworkers. In some cases, then, the pandemic may force disclosure, creating a new vulnerability and stressors for these employees.
Women may also be disproportionately affected by the work and nonwork disruptions that are associated with the pandemic. Indeed, academia has already seen evidence that women’s productivity has suffered, as a number of journals have reported that manuscript submissions from women have plummeted during the COVID-19 crisis—a trend not observed among men (Flaherty, Reference Flaherty2020). Early speculations point to unequal distributions of household labor coupled with restricted access to childcare and school closures as the likely culprits of this performance inequity. Further, rates of intimate partner violence, which disproportionately affect women, have also skyrocketed during the pandemic, likely driven by stress related to the pandemic and conflict arising from partners spending more time living and working in shared environments (van Gelder etal., Reference van Gelder, Peterman, Potts, O’Donnell, Thompson, Shah and Oertelt-Prigione2020). The negative effects of intimate partner violence on employees and organizations have been well documented (Reeves & O’Leary-Kelly, Reference Reeves and O’Leary-Kelly2007) and may be heightened amid a pandemic that has created limited access to safe spaces.
The above examples are not intended to be exhaustive but instead serve to illustrate the differential effects of COVID-19 for employees with a range of minority identities. As such, there is a critical need for practical and research efforts to actively and effectively manage diversity amid the crisis, which we elaborate on in the following sections.
An agenda for practice
COVID-19 clearly demonstrates that diversity management is not an organizational necessity that is important only during fair weather; it is even more crucial during times of crisis. From this we can draw a number of practical recommendations for organizations that are attempting to navigate the current pandemic. Most centrally, this crisis has made clear the value of diversity management over simply diversifying one’s workforce. Many companies have made recruiting and hiring employees with diverse social identities their primary focus—a strategy that is traditionally insufficient but particularly so given current conditions. Diversity management instead takes an active approach to fostering inclusion among employees and addressing barriers that prevent minority employees from becoming integrated into the formal and informal systems of the organization (Gilbert etal., Reference Gilbert, Stead and Ivancevich1999). It is only this latter strategy that has the potential to foster positive working conditions for all members of one’s workforce under the current conditions, and organizations that have previously emphasized diversity without diversity management are urged to quickly retool. We commend organizations that have responded to this crisis by offering flexible individualized accommodations to keep employees working. This flexibility must continue and become institutionalized as part of organizations’ values and culture to effectively manage diversity now and in the uncertain future.
Organizations also need to carefully consider their performance standards during the pandemic and actively anticipate the ways adopted standards may disadvantage minority employees who are not experiencing the same working conditions as other employees. Indeed, organizations may decide to forego maintaining pre-COVID-19 levels of performance and instead devote their efforts to maintaining a healthy and happy workforce who will remain committed and productive when the storm has passed. Further, organizations should be cognizant of the increased needs among all employees, particularly minority employees, for both instrumental and social support in response to COVID-19. Organizations should correspondingly ensure that all employees are aware of employee assistance programs or other supportive resources and that such resources are equipped to respond to issues such as racial harassment, increased fatigue from trying to balance work and childcare, and other unique challenges minority employees may be experiencing.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this is a time when organizations are making difficult financial decisions, as many are faced with the need to downsize, cut resources, or otherwise offset lost profits. Although diversity management programs and efforts may seem far enough away from the core operations of the organization to be trimmed, we argue that this is a time during which organizations should intensify their investments in diversity management rather than divest from them. Without these critical programs and focus, organizations will fail to provide fair, healthy, and inclusive working conditions for a large portion of their employees who can benefit from diversity management now more than ever.
An agenda for research
There are numerous areas in need of research attention that generally cluster around two central research questions: (a) Are minority employees experiencing obstacles to working amid the pandemic that others aren’t experiencing and, if so, what are the consequences? and (b) What can organizations, leaders, or employees do to overcome those obstacles or mitigate the corresponding negative effects? Toward addressing the first question, specific research topics include documenting experiences of racial harassment among Asian American employees from both coworkers and customers and their consequences, satisfaction with technology-mediated forms of working and collaborating among employees with and without disabilities, anticipatory fears of physically returning to work among employees with chronic physical health conditions and their influence on performance and well-being, recovery among working parents and whether the gender divide in household labor has widened, and feelings of social connectedness and social support among minority employees, to name a few.
Related to the second research question, researchers should seek to identify specific leadership strategies that reduce inequities among subgroups of employees, foster honest communication surrounding the difficulties minority employees are facing, and engender strong feelings of connectedness rather than alienation for minority employees. Identity leadership, which focuses on facilitating a shared social identity among followers (Steffens etal., Reference Steffens, Haslam, Reicher, Platow, Fransen, Yang, Ryan, Jettena, Peters and Boen2014), may be a particularly fruitful path for exploration. Additionally, research efforts could also examine how preexisting efforts to manage diversity, or precrisis diversity climate, predict inequities during the crisis and subsequent longer term outcomes. Finally, research should also explore coping styles, including collective coping (Afifi etal., Reference Afifi, Felix and Afifi2012), that improve negative outcomes among minority employees during times of crisis and overcome intergroup tensions that may have arisen because of the pandemic.
Conclusion
We agree with Rudolph etal.’s (Reference Rudolph, Allan, Clark, Hertel, Hirschi, Kunze, Shockley, Shoss, Sonnentag and Zacher2021) sentiments that the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly changed the landscape of work and affected virtually all employees. In this commentary, though, we argue that minority employees are likely more acutely harmed by the hurdles COVID-19 has presented and urge practitioners and researchers to undertake efforts to investigate and address these inequities now, and for the future. The unprecedented and abrupt changes in response to COVID-19 have created numerous challenges for organizations to overcome, but they have also presented organizations with an opportunity to clarify their critical functions, needs, obligations, and, most importantly, their values. We contend that a commitment to diversity management must be among them and that the inequity of crisis has made this need even more imperative.
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COVID-19 has disrupted nearly every aspect of work, forcing employees and organizations alike to rethink much of how they operate. Although the uncertainty of these abrupt changes has led many to hope the effects of COVID-19 will be short lived, the reality is that COVID-19 will have lasting effects on organizations that reverberate far into the future. In their focal article, Rudolph etal. (Reference Rudolph, Allan, Clark, Hertel, Hirschi, Kunze, Shockley, Shoss, Sonnentag and Zacher2021) offer a summary of the ways COVID-19 may alter work, focusing on 10 domains argued to be most relevant to the current crisis. However, one area of research and practice that is absent from their initial review is diversity management, or the efforts organizations make to actively foster a diverse workforce and generate a sense of belonging and acceptance for all employees regardless of their social identities (Gilbert etal., Reference Gilbert, Stead and Ivancevich1999).
In this commentary, we argue that COVID-19 has the capacity to shift views of diversity management from being an organizational luxury to being a necessity and propose both immediate and long-term practical and research needs surrounding the effects of COVID-19 on the diverse workforce. We illustrate this point by summarizing how COVID-19 has unequally affected minority employees and describing the research and practical implications of COVID-19 for diversity management. In doing so, we offer an agenda for future efforts to study and effectively manage diverse employees during times of crisis and beyond.
COVID-19 as a case for diversity management
In many ways, the emergence of a novel public health threat has both heightened and made more visible the inequities that have long existed in our society, and there is ample evidence of the unequal harmful effects of COVID-19 on minority populations. Asian Americans have reported being violently attacked, verbally assaulted, and intentionally spit at or coughed on (Ruiz etal., Reference Ruiz, Horowitz and Tamir2020; Tavernise & Opper, Reference Tavernise and Opper2020). Black Americans have suffered elevated mortality rates due to the virus (Eligon etal., Reference Eligon, Burch, Searcey and Oppel2020), likely in part because of structural barriers in the healthcare system that have led to Black patients being disproportionately denied COVID-19 testing (Farmer, Reference Farmer2020). Further, women and people of color have been more acutely affected by the economic distress and layoffs that have accompanied the virus (Kalev, Reference Kalev2020).
Rising inequalities stemming from the virus also extend to workplaces where minority employees may be facing unique barriers to performance, engagement, and well-being as they attempt to navigate working amid the pandemic. First, and as reviewed above, negative treatment of racial/ethnic minorities has substantially risen in response to COVID-19. The harm of those experiences and the fear they generate, even in people who have not experienced them directly or at work, is likely to spill over into the workplace context. For example, growing negative sentiments toward racial/ethnic minority groups, particularly Asian Americans, may disrupt or strain workplace interactions and adversely affect employee well-being. More specifically, Asian American employees may be experiencing hostility from their coworkers or customers or may proactively withdraw from work in anticipation of such negative treatment. Additionally, even if they are not being targeted at work, racial/ethnic minority employees may be experiencing heightened fatigue, distress, and other negative outcomes as a result of experiencing or being vicariously exposed to discrimination outside of work (Pascoe & Smart Richman, Reference Pascoe and Smart Richman2009).
Employees with chronic health conditions or disabilities are similarly experiencing unique challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps the most obvious concern is employees with preexisting physical health conditions physically returning to work given their increased risk for developing significant complications if they were to contract the virus. Despite concerns about physically attending work, remote work also poses unique challenges. Employees with vision impairments and employees who are hard of hearing, for example, may not be able to fully participate in work tasks that are now technology mediated or may not be able to participate in a way that is as enriching as the experiences of other employees. These employees may also lack sufficient equipment and accommodations at home to fulfill their expected job functions. Considerations of employees with chronic health conditions or disabilities are also further complicated by the fact that many of these conditions are concealable, and some employees may not have disclosed their condition or disability to their employer and/or coworkers. In some cases, then, the pandemic may force disclosure, creating a new vulnerability and stressors for these employees.
Women may also be disproportionately affected by the work and nonwork disruptions that are associated with the pandemic. Indeed, academia has already seen evidence that women’s productivity has suffered, as a number of journals have reported that manuscript submissions from women have plummeted during the COVID-19 crisis—a trend not observed among men (Flaherty, Reference Flaherty2020). Early speculations point to unequal distributions of household labor coupled with restricted access to childcare and school closures as the likely culprits of this performance inequity. Further, rates of intimate partner violence, which disproportionately affect women, have also skyrocketed during the pandemic, likely driven by stress related to the pandemic and conflict arising from partners spending more time living and working in shared environments (van Gelder etal., Reference van Gelder, Peterman, Potts, O’Donnell, Thompson, Shah and Oertelt-Prigione2020). The negative effects of intimate partner violence on employees and organizations have been well documented (Reeves & O’Leary-Kelly, Reference Reeves and O’Leary-Kelly2007) and may be heightened amid a pandemic that has created limited access to safe spaces.
The above examples are not intended to be exhaustive but instead serve to illustrate the differential effects of COVID-19 for employees with a range of minority identities. As such, there is a critical need for practical and research efforts to actively and effectively manage diversity amid the crisis, which we elaborate on in the following sections.
An agenda for practice
COVID-19 clearly demonstrates that diversity management is not an organizational necessity that is important only during fair weather; it is even more crucial during times of crisis. From this we can draw a number of practical recommendations for organizations that are attempting to navigate the current pandemic. Most centrally, this crisis has made clear the value of diversity management over simply diversifying one’s workforce. Many companies have made recruiting and hiring employees with diverse social identities their primary focus—a strategy that is traditionally insufficient but particularly so given current conditions. Diversity management instead takes an active approach to fostering inclusion among employees and addressing barriers that prevent minority employees from becoming integrated into the formal and informal systems of the organization (Gilbert etal., Reference Gilbert, Stead and Ivancevich1999). It is only this latter strategy that has the potential to foster positive working conditions for all members of one’s workforce under the current conditions, and organizations that have previously emphasized diversity without diversity management are urged to quickly retool. We commend organizations that have responded to this crisis by offering flexible individualized accommodations to keep employees working. This flexibility must continue and become institutionalized as part of organizations’ values and culture to effectively manage diversity now and in the uncertain future.
Organizations also need to carefully consider their performance standards during the pandemic and actively anticipate the ways adopted standards may disadvantage minority employees who are not experiencing the same working conditions as other employees. Indeed, organizations may decide to forego maintaining pre-COVID-19 levels of performance and instead devote their efforts to maintaining a healthy and happy workforce who will remain committed and productive when the storm has passed. Further, organizations should be cognizant of the increased needs among all employees, particularly minority employees, for both instrumental and social support in response to COVID-19. Organizations should correspondingly ensure that all employees are aware of employee assistance programs or other supportive resources and that such resources are equipped to respond to issues such as racial harassment, increased fatigue from trying to balance work and childcare, and other unique challenges minority employees may be experiencing.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this is a time when organizations are making difficult financial decisions, as many are faced with the need to downsize, cut resources, or otherwise offset lost profits. Although diversity management programs and efforts may seem far enough away from the core operations of the organization to be trimmed, we argue that this is a time during which organizations should intensify their investments in diversity management rather than divest from them. Without these critical programs and focus, organizations will fail to provide fair, healthy, and inclusive working conditions for a large portion of their employees who can benefit from diversity management now more than ever.
An agenda for research
There are numerous areas in need of research attention that generally cluster around two central research questions: (a) Are minority employees experiencing obstacles to working amid the pandemic that others aren’t experiencing and, if so, what are the consequences? and (b) What can organizations, leaders, or employees do to overcome those obstacles or mitigate the corresponding negative effects? Toward addressing the first question, specific research topics include documenting experiences of racial harassment among Asian American employees from both coworkers and customers and their consequences, satisfaction with technology-mediated forms of working and collaborating among employees with and without disabilities, anticipatory fears of physically returning to work among employees with chronic physical health conditions and their influence on performance and well-being, recovery among working parents and whether the gender divide in household labor has widened, and feelings of social connectedness and social support among minority employees, to name a few.
Related to the second research question, researchers should seek to identify specific leadership strategies that reduce inequities among subgroups of employees, foster honest communication surrounding the difficulties minority employees are facing, and engender strong feelings of connectedness rather than alienation for minority employees. Identity leadership, which focuses on facilitating a shared social identity among followers (Steffens etal., Reference Steffens, Haslam, Reicher, Platow, Fransen, Yang, Ryan, Jettena, Peters and Boen2014), may be a particularly fruitful path for exploration. Additionally, research efforts could also examine how preexisting efforts to manage diversity, or precrisis diversity climate, predict inequities during the crisis and subsequent longer term outcomes. Finally, research should also explore coping styles, including collective coping (Afifi etal., Reference Afifi, Felix and Afifi2012), that improve negative outcomes among minority employees during times of crisis and overcome intergroup tensions that may have arisen because of the pandemic.
Conclusion
We agree with Rudolph etal.’s (Reference Rudolph, Allan, Clark, Hertel, Hirschi, Kunze, Shockley, Shoss, Sonnentag and Zacher2021) sentiments that the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly changed the landscape of work and affected virtually all employees. In this commentary, though, we argue that minority employees are likely more acutely harmed by the hurdles COVID-19 has presented and urge practitioners and researchers to undertake efforts to investigate and address these inequities now, and for the future. The unprecedented and abrupt changes in response to COVID-19 have created numerous challenges for organizations to overcome, but they have also presented organizations with an opportunity to clarify their critical functions, needs, obligations, and, most importantly, their values. We contend that a commitment to diversity management must be among them and that the inequity of crisis has made this need even more imperative.