Dr. Jennifer (Jenn) Griffith, associate professor of organizational behavior and management at the University of New Hampshire, explores how to create more inclusive and innovative workplaces where everyone can cultivate a path to thriving. Core to this goal are three targets of research that impact workplace equity – assessment fairness, supportive environments, and talent recognition.
Pre-hire job candidate experiences can be fraught, and subsequent performance management processes can seem opaque and disconnected from outcomes. Navigating through selection and promotion systems can be frustrating for numerous reasons, but irrelevant or unfair assessment should not be one of them. Everyone deserves a fair chance to show their skills. My research has provided insights on the ways assessment fairness and accuracy can be undercut, ranging from the self- and other- imposed penalties women face during performance evaluations (e.g., undercounting leadership skills) to identifying the invisible socioenvironmental barriers (e.g., eldercare, childcare, public transportation use) to stable employment faced by working class earners. A recent project focused on the penalties incurred by veterans during the hiring process as a result of public stigma. Despite veterans scoring higher than civilians on simulation-based pre-hire assessments, they were significantly under-hired relative to the rate of their civilian peers, especially when tasks were interpersonal in nature. Across two empirical studies & in conjunction with an organizational partner, results suggest that generally, individual assessments of objective performance are impacted by identity-based stereotypes and expectations of personal characteristics and job performance (i.e., does this person align with expectations of who would do well in this role?). In other words, negative stereotypes of veterans (e.g., aggressive, mood instability) were at least partly responsible for the discrepancy between (a) veteran’s performance scores in a pre-employment screening and (b) subsequent job offers.
The elements of our work environments, whether physical or remote, play an outsized role in our ability to learn & grow; everyone needs safety and support to flourish. Jenn’s scholarship in this area has consistently found that, in environments that are unsafe (e.g., low accountability for identity-based harassment and sexual assault) or unsupportive (e.g, trust violations), colleagues are less likely to help and are more likely to engage in deviant behaviors, disengage, & quit. As part of the Research and Development team on the University of New Hampshire’s ADVANCE grant, Jenn contributed to the creation of an evidence-based training program called IncludeUÒ. IncludeUÒ is designed to enhance the academic workplace climate by providing bystander intervention training that enables individuals to effectively intervene when bias occurs. In 2022, the program was bestowed with the J. Brent Loy Innovator of the Year Award, which honors UNH faculty and staff for successfully commercializing their innovative research into products and services that have had social and economic impacts. Research conducted during the development of IncludeUÒ highlights the importance of knowing your coworkers support & respect you – solely the expectation that someone would intervene during a bias incident at work brightened perceptions of workplace climate and mitigated some of the interpersonal damage caused by the occurrence of a bias incident. This research helped guide the content, design, & delivery of IncludeUÒ.
Our expressions of gratitude and how we recognize and reward the work of others sends collective signals about what we notice and value. Everyone wants to be recognized when they do good work. My work in this area has showcased some of the various ways that gendered expectations cloud our ability to recognize the effort–performance linkage and appropriately distribute performance-based rewards. Sometimes, this comes at a greater financial and professional cost to women, such as a $500,000 gap in anticipated financial payouts as part of executive severance agreements. Across publicly traded firms in the United States of America between the years of 2006 - 2017, male executives were more often rewarded in their severance agreements when the company’s stock value increased under their leadership. The severance agreements of female executives, however, were performance insensitive; women’s leadership strategy and capability to influence firm success appeared to be undervalued while the organizational influence of male executives was, potentially, over-rewarded.
Pre-hire job candidate experiences can be frustrating, but irrelevant or unfair assessments should not be tolerated. Research has provided insights on how assessment fairness and accuracy can be undercut. Negative stereotypes of veterans were at least partly responsible for the discrepancy between their performance scores in a pre-employment screening and subsequent job offers.
Workplace safety and support are crucial for learning and growth. In unsafe or unsupportive environments, colleagues engage in dev behaviors and quit. The University of New Hampshire created an evidence-based training program called IncludeU, which enhances the academic workplace climate by providing bystander intervention training.
Gendered expectations cloud our ability to recognize and reward performance. Female executives face a $500,000 gap in anticipated financial payouts as part of executive severance agreements. Women's leadership strategy and capability to influence firm success appear to be undervalued while male executives are potentially over-rewarded.
