18.06.2020

Black women least empowered in the workforce

The annual Empowerment Research by Engaging Works reveals that black female employees are the least likely to feel empowered to make a decision in the workforce, scoring the lowest across ethnicities and gender with just 57%.

With the average being 66%, white females score below average with 61%, whereas both white males and black males score above average with 72% and 68% respectively.

Arab women top the scoreboard with 76% when asked if they feel empowered to make decisions at work. Asian men also feel empowered, scoring 71%, just below Hispanic males with 72%.

The data has been taken from the Engaging Works Workplace Happiness Survey which has been taken by over ten thousand employees globally since 2017. Founded by former Trade Minister and ex Managing Director of Waitrose, Lord Price, the research also compares industries, management vs non-management and age. Highlights from the research include:

Employees in the Architecture and Engineering, Education, Financial Services, Healthcare and Public Sector industries are the least empowered
In addition to the above industries, employees in the Automotive, Retail and Travel Industry feel their views are not heard at work
Employees in Technology, Marketing & Advertising, Fast Moving Consumer Goods and Business & Management Services all feel empowered
Non-managers and Millennials feel signiﬁcantly less empowered, trusted and that their views are not heard as much as their managers
Women score 65% when asked if they feel empowered to make decisions compared to men who score 67%
When asked if they feel that their views are heard at work, women again score below men with 63% compared to 64%

Engaging Works Founder, Lord Mark Price comments on the data: “Our annual research shines a light on the need to empower black employees, specifically black females in the workplace. Organisations must act now to help employees from the black community feel empowered and trusted to make decisions at work. This can be done by making them a key part of the decision-making process as well as listening to their ideas and integrating their suggestions to build and reﬁne business strategies.”

The annual data also compares how employees are feeling empowered, pre and post Covid-19. Results reveal that employees are feeling more empowered to make decisions whilst working from home compared to working in the oﬃce, with a score of 73% vs. 65% pre Covid-19. Managers are also feeling more empowered than ever before, scoring 80% vs. 71% pre Covid-19, however there is no change in non-managers (61%).

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