White male workers silently feel excluded—here's how to fix that

Petra Jenner is part of that small (albeit growing) number of women leading in the field.

Looking back at a career that spans over 25 years, Jenner, who is general manager EMEA at the software company Splunk, says she has always been one of the first women in the room—and that “was completely irritating for the men”.

Being a “first” female leader at a firm often meant that, for the men in her team, it was also their first time being managed by a woman.

She recalls that for some the notion of women taking up space in leadership was jarring enough to speak up, Jenner reveals to Fortune.

When she joined the software company Pivotal as general manager, one of the managers reporting to her commented: “I’m not sure I want to report to you, because I’ve never reported to a woman.”

Another time, while she was CEO of Microsoft in Switzerland and trying to “create an environment where everyone felt rewarded and seen” a male worker said: “It’s great to see what you do for the women, what are you doing for the men?”

Both times Jenner thanked the concerned workers for their transparency. At Pivotal, she successfully shifted her worker’s biased view on female managers, and at Microsoft, she bolstered inclusive policies like paternity leave for men.  

“Nowadays, it would be impossible to say that. But at the time, it was common sense that I was the stranger in the room and they could ask me questions, which today, no one would be allowed to ask anymore,” she says.

Although sexism has no place in today’s society, Jenner believes that male workers may still be thinking along those lines, in silence – and that the justified push on generating gender parity in the workplace may be worsening such sentiments.  

Women are getting included, but men may feel left out

It’s no secret that diversity and inclusion is a big priority for leaders today.

It’s why we are seeing an increase in dedicated D&I departments, a call for all organizations to publish their gender pay gaps and a rise in metrics being used to ensure that women (and women of color) are hired, engaged with and promoted within businesses.

And rightly so.

Even today full-time working women in the U.S. are paid just 83 cents to every dollar earned by men. Yet less than a quarter of countries are making “fast” progress toward gender equality. Worse, one in every three countries is either making no progress at all or is actually moving in the wrong direction.

Plus, any hopes that the pandemic and the global experience of working from home would be a leveler for women were quickly dampened. In fact it exposed the magnitude of inequalities women, especially working mothers, face. In 2020 alone, around 2.3 million women in the U.S. were forced to leave their careers to focus on their other full-time role: being caregivers at home. 

But Jenner believes that there’s an unspoken cohort of white men that “feel disadvantaged”.

“They would never articulate this at this point in time. But I have seen some reactions,” she says. “And if you are quite experienced, which I would say I am, you can see that there are still some concerns.”

Common fears are centered around career progression, Jenner believes. Am I able to have my career with all of these equality inclusion discussions going on? or am I second best because there’s a stronger woman, or there’s an underrepresented minority who’s going to get this role? 

It’s why she says, the messaging around stepping into leadership positions and being promoted should make it clear that “everyone has a fair chance”. 

More important than “just pushing the diversity agenda” (for example through the likes of box-ticking exercises), is creating an environment where everyone knows they have “a fair chance to pursue their career ambitions”. 

Balancing equality and transparency  

For leaders, balancing the host of initiatives to make women and minorities—as well as men—feel included in the workplace is “the dilemma” that leaders today face, Jenner says.

She thinks the key to not having men feel like they’re being passed up for the likes of promotions because of their gender, is by being hyper-transparent on how your business recruits and promotes staff.

As well as introducing gender pay gap reporting, an initiative Jenner implemented recently at Splunk, this could include mandating that new job roles must be open for anyone in the company to apply irrespective of whether they are in the same department, and that every candidate must go through the same interview process. 

Essentially, managers can’t promote a team member they had in mind for a role without publicly posting it first and interviewing various candidates.

“That’s something I really drive through with the highest level of diligence and I really check whether this has taken place in leadership or managerial roles,” Jenner asserts. 

She claims to also look into how many interviews took place before a candidate is given a role and encourages other leaders within the organization to do the same so that this approach trickles down.

Another way leaders can nip any accusations of bias in the bud and ensure everyone feels like they have an equal chance of being promoted is by looking into how performance is evaluated. 

Jenner says that, in the first instance, this should include setting out very clear expectations for your workers. 

“This means that you have to really define what success means for every individual,” she says, while adding that these metrics have “to be really fully understood from both sides, to avoid any misunderstanding.”

Essentially workers shouldn’t be unsure on which goals they need to hit in order to be perceived as performing well and in line for a pay rise or step up.

By being more “data-driven and having a clear set of objectives everyone has to fulfill, you can benchmark performance against others,” Jenner says.

“Then you can, if there are some concerns on why one person got a higher pay raise or more benefits than another person, then that [performance information] is something you can disclose.”

Taking these steps will ensure that your business is genuinely equal—and that workers know it.

So Jenner has one warning for leaders who are half-hearted in their efforts to open up the inner workings of their promotion processes for all workers to see: “You need to drive this very diligently in the organization. There’s zero compromises on doing this the right way.”