Asian Americans feel they have ‘less opportunity’ to advance in the workplace: McKinsey Partner

Jess Huang, McKinsey Partner, joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss COVID-19’s impact on Asian American workers.

Video transcript

KRISTIN MYERS: Welcome back. Well, a new study from McKinsey has found that Asian-American women are feeling more stressed and taking on more household responsibilities due to this pandemic. Let's chat more about this studies' findings with Jess Huang, partner at McKinsey, and Yahoo Finance's Brian Cheung. Thank you both for joining us for this very important conversation.

So Jess, I'm going to start with you here. I mentioned just some of the findings from this study. There was also more findings on how more Asian-American women, at least when compared to their male counterparts, are stepping back more from the workforce. Curious to know what you found to be some of the more alarming findings or statistics from this study.

JESS HUANG: Absolutely. Overall, what we've seen during this pandemic in our research is that women are having a harder experience, driven very much by things like household responsibilities, childcare, increased biases in the workplace. In fact, when you look at women overall, one in four women are considering taking a step back from the workforce or downshifting and taking on less responsibility.

This is true for Asian women in particular as well. And you actually see that the gap between Asian women and Asian-American men is larger. And they're much more likely to cite that the increase in household responsibilities has been their biggest challenge during the pandemic, as well as citing that as the reason why they feel like they need to take a step back in their workplace.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Jess, it's Brian here. Great to speak with you. I wanted to ask about how much of that you expect to be permanent. We've heard some anecdotes about a lot of women across the board being unable to go back because of childcare and the statistics from McKinsey show that more Asian-American women compared to other racial groups have reduced their hours. So we're starting to see the effect of that. But how much of that do you think is going to be permanent? And what might be some of those other structural issues as we continue to reopen that might continue to present obstacles to that demographic group?

JESS HUANG: Overall, I think that the biases that exist in the workplace have always put women overall at a disadvantage. And you see in our data Asian-Americans overall also feeling like they have less opportunity to advance in the workplace. I think these two things together just make it so critical for companies to really think about how they, one, retain Asian-Americans and Asian-American women they have in their workforce and, two, if those women have had to take a step back, create an environment, and create opportunities for them to return back into the workforce.

Historically, we have found that it is tough for women to return to the workforce and to overcome some of those structural barriers and biases. So it's increasingly important after something like a pandemic and these massive effects on women for companies to take a hard look at how they're creating the opportunities for women to return.

BRIAN CHEUNG: And when we talk about biases, we know the McKinsey report also highlighted the difficulty in-- among Asian-Americans to ascend to higher roles. But even in blue collar jobs, we saw from the likes of the horrible shooting in Atlanta that low wage workers also face a lot of bias issues as well. So across the board, how do you feel like some of those societal issues, the stigmas around Asian-Americans in this country have played into some of the dynamics that you were witnessing in the report?

JESS HUANG: You're absolutely right. Even before the pandemic, we saw in our data that Asian-Americans already faced a really steep decline when it came to representation from entry level to senior levels, in particular, with Asian-American men seeing a 64% drop-off in representation and Asian women 39% in corporate America. And that was before the pandemic. We all know that the pandemic has really exacerbated some anti-Asian sentiments, racism, biases. And these are all things that have historically acted as barriers to equity.

And you might imagine that when those things carry over into the workforce, that will continue to impact Asian-American workers. And so I think very, very critical for all companies to think about their people, processes, and how they remove bias that they may or may not even know this and examine it closely, as well as think through how they can provide the right training and support to managers and other colleagues of Asian-American workers in the workplace to ensure that they have a workplace where they're included and where they feel like they can perform at their best and succeed.

KRISTIN MYERS: So Jess, we literally, sadly, only have, like, 30 seconds left sadly in this segment. But I do want to ask you, as you're going through these findings, what can companies do with some of this data and some of this information to better support the Asian-American women that are in their workforce?

JESS HUANG: I think, first and foremost, the awareness and having the data is critical. And so, looking at what the data looks like for your particular company is really important. The second thing I want to highlight is, I've been talking about Asian-American workers, women and men, as if they were one group. And they're truly not, right? Different Asian-Americans have different experiences. And Asian-Americans are not a monolith. So being able to identify specific challenges that different workers are facing is critical when you think about the solutions and what you can help them do.

And then from there, I think it goes back to what I was saying in terms of examine your people processes for biases, train people in unconscious biases and how to support their colleagues, as well as create programs where you can foster things like sponsorship, mentorship, and overall rethink sort of your workplace flexibilities, support, and norms to help Asian women in particular who are facing some real challenges on burnout, stress, and exhaustion.

KRISTIN MYERS: All right, Jess Huang, partner at McKinsey. Yahoo Finance's Brian Cheung, thank you both for joining us for this conversation.