What Parts Of You Are You Hiding At Work?

Deloitte’s latest report, Uncovering Culture, in partnership with the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at NYU School of Law, opens with a provocative question: “What pressure might your organization impose on people to minimize their identities?”

The answer is much higher than you might think and spans more identities than you might imagine. The official term for engaging in this behavior is “covering,” and it describes the various ways in which people feel obligated to minimize certain parts of their identity.

“We did this research initially 10 years ago, and we see that the problem of covering has not shifted substantially,” says Kwasi Mitchell, Chief Purpose and DEI Officer at Deloitte. According to the report, 60% of U.S. workers report covering at work in the last 12 months, and 63% report covering before they even begin a job.

“When we started our DEI institute, we said we’d focus on more human-centric pieces that translate into actionable things a manager can do to improve their organizational culture and this collaboration with Kenji Yoshino is a great initial product.” Professor Yoshino developed the term covering in his 2006 book Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights.

What aspects of ourselves do we cover up?

There are four primary areas that we feel the need to cover. These are appearance-based, advocacy-based, affiliation-based, and association-based. And this desire to cover manifests in many ways that fall along one of the four areas. For example, not mentioning the fact that you are a caregiver is a type of affiliation-based covering. People also cover areas such as immigration status, age, religious affiliation, socioeconomic status, education, gender, disability, race, military status, and much more.

Are there some aspects that people tend to cover more often? “Appearance-based and affiliation-based are the top two,” says Mitchell.

“But it is interesting when you talk to people about the concept of covering because they realize there are other things they are doing that they’ve just never noticed before. For example, the report talks about association-based covering. An example of this would be if I, as a Black American, intentionally covered by not spending as much time with other Black Americans at work. You see distinct aspects of that continue to evolve as people realize that there are aspects of covering so deeply ingrained in the way that they operate.”

Is covering deliberate, and who does it more

When asked if most instances of covering were subconscious versus deliberate, Mitchell acknowledges that it is tough to discern. “It’s difficult to get to that because so much of covering is self-reporting. The prevalence between what is known and what is subconscious we haven’t necessarily been able to diagnose.”

What they have been able to diagnose, however, is who does it most. One notable item from the report was the extent to which leaders reported covering, with C-suite (or other executives) and senior managers reporting covering at the highest rates, both at 67%.

“But it makes sense when you start peeling it back,” says Mitchell. “You have members of the C-suite who are highly visible, frequently speaking about different aspects of themselves. That desire to cover things such as the socio-economic status you had growing up, a potential disability, concerns with mental health, or thinking about distinct aspects such as age and how that reflects on how people perceive you. Once you start peeling that back, it makes sense that the C-suite would, in fact, be in this type of covering mode.”

“Marginalized communities also cover more,” says Mitchell. For example, Black and Asian women cover more at work, according to the report.

Where do we learn covering behavior?

“Portions of it are societal; they are things that we learn at a very young age,” says Mitchell. Organizations bear some responsibility, as well. “Some aspects of it are the covering culture that is embedded within the organizations themselves.”

Reasons respondents gave for covering include avoiding negative stereotypes, avoiding the judgment of others, for the convenience of others, and to advance in their organization.

Mitchell makes a very important point when it comes to covering — and that is that covering isn’t always harmful to an organization. “Not all aspects of covering are negative. For example, as an organization that is really focused on caring for caregivers and women in the workplace, there should be a stated expectation that people talk about their caring responsibilities.” 68% of those with a caregiver status report covering at work.

“There are also aspects of covering that tie to organizational values. Suppose your company states it believes in LGBTQIA rights and there is a person whose aspect of their identity does not accept that and has concerns with it. In that case, that’s not necessarily a situation in which we’d expect someone to bring the full version of themselves to work as that would be counter to our diversity and inclusion culture overall.”

Where should an organization start if it wants to address its covering culture?

Organizations should have a vested interest in addressing covering culture. But where to start? “You start by building an understanding with your people of the culture that you’ve established for covering within your organization,” says Mitchell. “As a leader, I should be spending time with my people asking them what are the expectations they feel that the organization has placed upon them either implicitly or explicitly that prevent them from bringing their authentic self to work.”

One great way to do this is via storytelling. “Storytelling is one of the keys with respect to helping people understand that maybe that leader in the C-suite that they had one vision of because they were covering, they now better understand their reality. It’s about unlocking and destigmatizing things of that nature through storytelling.”

Ultimately, it’s about creating a culture of allyship and psychological safety. And, we must remember inclusion isn’t a one-and-done task. As Mitchell succinctly states, “The self-awareness of organizations is a never-ending journey.”

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