Beware the inequities of ‘neutral’ management practices

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Incentives and monitoring are common management tactics to improve employee productivity. But if managers aren’t careful, these practices can exacerbate gender inequities in the workplace, according to a recent study by Roman Galperin, Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour at McGill University.

“When a worker is promised more pay, men are much more likely to respond than women,” he said on the McGill Delve podcast.

“Women seem to be much more sensitive to the quality of their output being watched by managers, peers, or an algorithm.”

These findings speak to the different pressures men and women experience in life and work, he said. They also reveal how simple management practices can entrench workplace inequities – even if the intention was to do the opposite.

Same incentives, different responses

Galperin’s study looked at how increased incentives and monitoring affected patent examiners at a United States Patent and Trademark Office. Patent examination is a highly technical role that requires close attention to detail and subject matter expertise. It’s also a high-volume job, with a constant stream of cases requiring examiners’ attention.

To process patents more quickly, managers offered a cash incentive to examiners who hit certain quotas. Managers also applied more scrutiny to the examiners’ work, to ensure quality doesn’t drop with their increased output.

Men and women reacted differently to these management tactics, explained Galperin. On average, men had no problem increasing their output to reach their quotas, often to the detriment of quality. Women were the opposite: they tended towards quality, often forgoing the potential rewards of increased output.

These differences are not a reflection of talent, ability, or ambition, said Galperin. Rather, they spotlight the social and cultural expectations that shape men and women’s approach to work. For example, women are more likely to face harsher punishments at work, even when they make the same mistakes as their male colleagues. That’s why, in the current study, women patent examiners may be less tempted to sacrifice quality in pursuit of rewards, said Galperin.

This creates a situation where men are more likely to earn rewards for meeting their quotas. They are more willing to risk quality in favour of higher output, because they historically faced fewer consequences for it. This gives them more chances to hit their quotas, and thus earn more rewards, further entrenching workplace inequities such as the gender pay gap between men and women.

“These incentives and monitoring policies are put in place to create an equal playing field,” said Galperin. But they can have uneven impacts on workers because of long-standing cultural norms and expectations.

“Not having an intent to create gender difference does not insure you against that kind of outcome.”

Turning equality into equity 

Monitoring and incentives, even if applied equally to all workers, can have unequal impacts on men and women. This is due in part to cultural expectations imposed on each gender throughout their lives and careers.

That doesn’t mean these management tactics are inherently sexist or discriminatory. But managers should be mindful of how their policies land on people of varying identities. To that end, Galperin made some recommendations:

1. Data gathering. When instituting a new incentive structure, managers should investigate whether it impacts some demographics more than others. This will help clarify whether policy tweaks are needed.
2. Be transparent. If differences exist between genders or other demographics, managers should let the workers know. They may find ways to adjust on their own, said Galperin.
3. Peer support. Management can also promote knowledge exchange between workers. How do they respond to pressures to produce more? How do they balance quality and quantity? This can help all employees meet managers’ quality and quantity expectations, and benefit from the extra incentives.

Galperin’s study demonstrate how seemingly neutral management policies can have uneven effects. Even if all workers are given the same pressures and incentives, they will respond differently depending on cultural gender expectations and other variables. This doesn’t mean incentives and monitoring are inherently sexist. But they can layer onto already-existing cultural dynamics that negatively affect one group over another.