About Us

Workplace Empathy Website

Eight to ten billion dollars. That is the estimated amount of money companies spend each year on diversity trainings and programs.*

Over two million employees. That is the number of managers and professionals who voluntarily leave their jobs every year due solely to unfairness at an annual cost of $64 billion to Corporate America. **

In summary, that’s a lot of money wasted for a rather undesirable outcome! Think your company or organization is a true meritocracy? Workplace research data and personal anecdotes from thousands of employees beg to differ. Workplaces all over the country, across industries are in need of help. While there has been some progress in the way of diversity over the past decades, the same tired approaches are clearly outdated and ineffective in today’s workplaces. Could it be that we’re looking at the wrong things? What’s evident is that it’s time to innovate, refresh, and reframe the conversation around fairness and inclusion for all employees. May the formal HR policies and employment lawyers continue to handle illegal and overt forms of discrimination on the job.

What we’re talking about is taking a closer look at how to effectively mitigate implicit bias and the everyday more subtle yet insidious barriers in the workplace—bullying, exclusion, and inappropriate behaviors to name a few. These are the real culprits that more commonly lead to unfair advantage for some and negatively impact others, especially people of color, women, gay and lesbian, disabled, and older professionals.  If you’re an employee, you know how frustrating it is to feel like you’re working twice as hard and not getting a fair chance or that no matter how much you try, you’re still an outsider in your own workplace. Employers, if you don’t already know, these subtle biases and barriers are chipping away at employees’ morale and productivity,  your organization’s competitive advantage in the global market, and uh-oh—the bottom line.

The Workplace Empathy website features informational resources and interactive tools for employers, employees, and diversity specialists to tackle these issues of unfairness in the workplace.  The site also serves as a social networking hot-spot to engage individuals, groups, and companies in productive dialogue and information-sharing. We encourage you to contribute your ideas, stories, best practices, and questions. Please encourage others to do so as well. The workplace conversation starts here!  This website is produced and maintained by the Level Playing Field Institute (LPFI). For more information about this site or any of the materials presented, please revealingbarriers@lpfi.org

Level Playing Field Institute

The Level Playing Field Institute, a San Francisco based nonprofit, promotes innovative approaches to fairness in higher education and workplaces by removing barriers to full participation. Through our Summer Math and Science Honors (SMASH) Academy for high school students and our Initiative for Diversity in Education and Leadership (IDEAL) Scholars Program at UC Berkeley, we help to reveal and remove barriers for students of color in education. Through academically rigorous research and the development of tools and resources, we help to identify and eradicate the subtle, day-to-day biases that make workplaces unfair and unwelcoming, especially for people of color, women and GLBT professionals. We believe fairness matters and that no one should have to work twice as hard to get half as far. For more information about the Level Playing Field Institute, please visit www.lpfi.org.

*Thomas A. Kochan, MIT Sloan School of Management professor
**2007 Corporate Leavers Survey, conducted by the Level Playing Field Institute

© 2010 MK Level Playing Field Institute — All contents are the intellectual property of the Level Playing Field Institute, unless otherwise indicated, and may not be reproduced or distributed without the express written permission of MK Level Playing Field Institute.