What Black People Actually Want From Their Employers: Week One Recap — Institutional Change Isn’t Optional
- Vanity Jenkins
- Feb 5
- 3 min read
I love Black History Month. My birthday is Feb. 1st, and once people know, they say it makes perfect sense that I was born on Feb 1st, so shout out to my mom. This year, I wanted to focus on something truth-telling about workplace culture.
Over the past week, I’ve shared the first six posts in my “28 Things Black People Actually Want From Their Employers” series. While each post focuses on a specific workplace dynamic, a clear pattern has emerged.
This week was about institutional responsibility.
Again and again, the message is simple: Black employees are not asking for symbolic gestures or temporary programs. They are asking organizations to redesign systems, policies, and decision-making structures that directly impact their safety, advancement, and well-being, and like most things, making these shifts for Black employees will benefit everyone.
Here’s a recap of what we’ve covered so far.
Black employees, especially Black women, continue to earn less than equally qualified white peers due to historically rooted and systemically reinforced pay disparities. These gaps persist through negotiation bias, discretionary compensation decisions, and inconsistent salary structures. Institutional change requires proactive equity audits, corrective salary adjustments, and accountability in compensation systems.
Most bereavement policies are built around a nuclear family model that fails to reflect how many Black communities define family, care, and kinship. Chosen family and fictive kin relationships are essential support systems that traditional policies often ignore. Inclusive workplace policies must trust employees to define family and recognize that grief cannot be standardized or placed on a productivity timeline.
Many nonprofit organizations claim to value equity while maintaining governance structures that excuse harmful behavior by board members. Too often, Black staff are expected to absorb or manage that harm under the guise of board “learning.” Institutional change requires rigorous vetting, accountability standards, and consequences aligned with organizational values.
Black job seekers frequently experience performative hiring processes, including ghosted applications, excessive interview rounds, and biased screening technologies. These practices waste candidates’ time and reinforce workforce inequities. Equitable hiring requires transparency, streamlined processes, bias-audited technology, and respect for candidate labor and expertise.
Organizations regularly collect employee feedback, yet the experiences of Black employees often remain unchanged across survey cycles. Feedback without action erodes trust and signals that insight is welcomed only when it requires no structural change. Institutional progress requires treating data as a call to action and implementing meaningful leadership and cultural shifts.
The absence of Black leaders in decision-making spaces reflects structural barriers, not talent shortages. Leadership teams shape culture, strategy, and resource distribution, and exclusion leads to incomplete and risky organizational decision-making. True change requires expanding leadership pathways and ensuring representation includes real influence, not symbolic inclusion.
The Pattern We Cannot Ignore
Across every topic this week, one truth has been consistent:
Black employees are not asking organizations to try harder to be kind.
We are asking organizations to be structurally different.
We are asking for workplaces where equity is embedded in compensation systems, policy design, governance structures, hiring practices, feedback implementation, and leadership decision-making.
This is not supplemental work. It is an organizational strategy.
When institutions commit to these changes, outcomes improve for everyone — retention increases, innovation strengthens, trust deepens, and culture becomes sustainable rather than performative.
What Comes Next
This series will continue throughout the month, expanding beyond institutional systems into interpersonal culture, professional development, psychological safety, and everyday workplace experiences.
Each post is one piece of a larger conversation about what it truly means to build environments where Black professionals, and ultimately all professionals, can thrive.
If you haven’t read the earlier posts yet, I invite you to start there. Reflection is the first step toward transformation.
Because inclusive workplaces are not built through intention alone.
They are built through design.
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