Promotion at work: What are the psychological repercussions of lack of...

• Josie Cox
• BBC

Some workers have greater chances of promotion than others, which leaves many employees in a slump and suffers major repercussions.

Maya, 32, an investment banker in New York City, USA, enjoys her job most of the year. But in late fall, when promotions season kicks in, it always feels “weird.”

“It’s hard to describe,” Maya says. “I wouldn’t describe it as a disappointment, because it means there was hope in the first place! But it can be more described as just sadness. I kind of accepted the fact that I would never have a great position.”

Maya, who declined to reveal her surname due to job security concerns, started working at the bank where she currently works eight years ago. Since then, several colleagues who were in the same position as her have been promoted. This doesn’t mean she hasn’t progressed at all, but it has moved up at a slower pace.

Maya notes that the people who get higher positions are mostly white men, some white women and black or Asian men. But Maya – who identifies as Latina – and another black woman who joined the company around the same time have fallen behind the others in moving up the corporate ladder.

Now, Maya points out, she has come to terms with the situation, saying, “Maybe it has created my own vicious cycle, maybe I’ve become desperate because I don’t expect to get a promotion, and maybe this desperation is the reason why I have fewer chances of getting a promotion in the future.”

Statistics show that certain groups of people are falling behind while others move up the career ladder. Although anyone can find themselves stuck in a particular job, it often happens to women, workers of color, and employees from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

This certainly has a psychological impact on employees who are left behind.

There is a close relationship between career progression and motivation, as research shows that if you do a good job, your productivity, sense of self-worth, and loyalty to the company are more likely to improve.

On the other hand, there are negative effects of staying at the bottom of the career ladder, which affects the commitment of workers to the job. When a worker does not advance in their job over an extended period – because promotion opportunities are repeatedly denied or delayed – the negative effects will be even more severe.

If workers suspect that a lack of promotion may be related to a person’s identity, rather than their performance at work – as Maya predicted – the failure to advance could be a cycle of disappointment, which can have long-term effects on the employee’s career and health mentality.

We know that some people progress slower than others in the workplace. In 2020, professors Paul Ingram and Jan Oh of Columbia University in New York City found that American workers from lower social classes were 32 percent less likely to become managers, compared to people of higher backgrounds, for example.

More recently, the 2021 Women in the Workplace Report, released by McKinsey & Company and Linen, showed that representation of women of color in entry-level jobs and even those of executives has fallen by more than 75 percent.

Subsequently, women of color at the 423 US and Canadian companies surveyed made up just four percent of CEO leaders — a proportion that has been roughly flat over the past three years.

This is often due to hiring bias. Lauren Rivera, assistant professor of management and organization at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in the US, has studied the hiring processes of 120 large companies, including 40 banks. Her findings showed that personal bias significantly affected hiring decisions, which means that those in senior positions with hiring authority – often white men – generally assign people who share their traits to top jobs.

“These companies leave a great deal of discretion to the people responsible for hiring new employees, asking them for example to select people who are highly motivated to work, but they don’t tell them what that incentive means, so these people end up being known,” Rivera said in her findings. This stimulus or impulse is based on their point of view and perceptions.”

This is a big problem, according to Rivera, because the judgments we make on people during the hiring process have lasting effects. Ultimately, this perpetuates a vicious and destructive cycle of those left behind – disproportionately ethnic minorities, lower-class workers and people of color, such as the Maya.

Problems accumulate as a result of the stagnation affecting workers at the bottom of the career ladder. Mayas case illustrates how prolonged lack of promotion can lead to despair and self-blame. But job stagnation as colleagues rise to higher positions can also contribute to workers feeling outside of the company they work for.

Such is the case for Nicole, 29, the only black person and one of only two women on her team of 10 at a tech company in San Francisco. As colleagues advance to higher positions, Nicole has been left with a relatively small job since joining the company in 2019.

Nicole reported that a white man joined the team at the same time she joined the team and at the same level of seniority got a promotion at the end of 2020, while she remained in the same position.

“He and our boss, a man like him and also white, went to the same school,” she says. “They also had similar interests – mainly sports – and I have no doubt that this boosted my colleague’s chances of being promoted to a higher position than me.” .

As a result of not being promoted, as well as being an ethnic minority employee in her organization, Nicole always felt like a “stranger” about the company. This feeling undermined her self-confidence and her previous resolve to work hard for a promotion, especially as she indicated that she felt regularly excluded from social events and did not make friends at work.

“I feel that the chances of me eventually being promoted to a senior position are very slim, but I’m not sure I really want to be a representative of a company that makes me feel like I belong in the minority,” says Nicole, who also declined to reveal her title.

And a study from the Telfair School of Management at the University of Ottawa, Canada, showed that feeling excluded, ignored or marginalized — or even alienated, Nicole sometimes says — in the workplace can be very harmful.

The researchers concluded that a sense of belonging is a basic human need, and that “those who are deprived of a basic need exhibit a variety of illnesses that go beyond mere discomfort, including increased stress and tension, poor health, and decreased mental and psychological well-being.”