Succeeding in the workplace: is hard work and talent enough for minority groups?

After reviewing 337 journal articles examining career success disparity among minority and non-minority groups, Melika Shirmohammadi, assistant professor of Human Resource Development, reports that being in the minority often places individuals in the role of an ‘outsider.’ Also, that outsider status makes them more susceptible to complex visibility, which can shape how they can access and use career advancement resources like networks, mentors, role models and training and development opportunities.  

"Career success isn’t just about hard work or talent; people also face challenges like being judged unfairly, overlooked or pressured to hide who they are,” reports Shirmohammadi in Journal of Management. “These disparities in access to and use of resources contribute to lower career success outcomes for minority groups.”  

Shirmohammadi research focuses on career success among four historically marginalized minority groups: women, racial and ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities, and the LGBTQ+ community. She created a framework of complex visibility which refers to how minority groups are seen or perceived and how that visibility is often complicated, contradictory or even burdensome. Complex visibility includes hyper-visibility, invisibility and managed visibility. 

For instance, a person might feel hyper-visible if they are the only Black employee in a work group, yet at the same time they might feel invisible in terms of voice or influence. An example of managed visibility is when someone tries to change their appearance to “fit in.” 

“Our framework provides a tangible way to understand being seen and heard in the workplace and enables future researchers to quantify and compare their impact on career advancement across different minority groups,” said Shirmohammadi. 

By the numbers 

Shirmohammadi found that minority groups are significantly underrepresented in senior and leadership positions. Based on statistics collected across Europe and North America in 2024, women represent only around 9% of CEOs and 30% of board members, despite raised awareness and efforts to increase these numbers.  

In politics, only 29 countries have women heads of state and/or government, and only 23.3% of cabinet members and ministers are women. For ethnic minorities, these percentages drop further. Although racial and ethnic minorities constitute around 40% of the population in the United States, 18% in the UK, and 26% in Australia, their representation in the corporate boardrooms is only 19%, 12.5% and 9%, respectively  

There is no precise account of these percentages for individuals with disabilities or the LGBTQ+ community, because many do not feel safe to disclose such identities when not visible, according to Shirmohammadi. 

For the future  

To facilitate career success equality in workplaces, Shirmohammadi advocates for an approach that raises awareness.  

“Organizational decision-makers should develop a comprehensive understanding of the complex visibility influencing access to career advancement resources in their context and intentionally facilitate access to networks, mentors, role models, training, development, and workplace support for minority groups through planned interventions,” she said. 

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