Addressing discrimination

While it’s ultimately your organisation’s responsibility to address discrimination at work, there are some things you can do to protect yourself and your well-being. First, know that you’re not alone. When you’re a person of colour in a workplace that is predominately white, your work may be carefully (and unfairly) scrutinised. Data has shown that the performance of Black workers, specifically, is examined more closely than their white peers. Your experiences are valid and worth addressing. Second, write everything down. Logging your experiences provides you with hard evidence that you can present to HR or management. It also shows the existence of a pattern, which can be important in proving harassment. When discussing your concerns with your manager or HR, talk about what you’ve been experiencing and bring the notes and documentation you’ve written. If allies are willing to come and talk about the discrimination they’ve witnessed or similarly experienced, bring them. This will strengthen your claims.

(Adapted from “Ask an Expert: How Do I Deal With Microaggressions at Work?” by LeRon L. Barton, published by HRB Ascend)

Limitations of LLMs

Large language models (LLMs) are a paradigm-changing innovation in data science. They extend the capabilities of machine learning models to generating relevant text and images in response to a wide array of qualitative prompts. While these tools are expensive and difficult to build, multitudes of users can use them quickly and cheaply to perform some of the language-based tasks that only humans could do before. This raises the possibility that many human jobs — particularly knowledge-intensive jobs that primarily involve working with text or code — could be replaced or significantly undercut by the widespread adoption of this technology. But in reality, LLMs are much more complicated to use effectively in an organisational context than is typically acknowledged, and they have yet to demonstrate that they can satisfactorily perform all of the tasks that knowledge workers execute in any given job.

(Adapted from “Will Large Language Models Really Change How Work Is Done?” by Peter Cappelli, Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe, and Valery Yakubovich, published on March 04, 2024, by MIT Sloan Management Review)

A new corporate playbook

Bayer Chief Executive Bill Anderson is throwing out the management playbook to renovate the 160-year-old German company known for inventing aspirin. With share prices down 50pc from a year ago and investors demanding a turnaround, Mr Anderson’s plan will trim costs by €2 billion, equivalent to $2.17bn, in conventional fashion. A yet-to-be disclosed number of Bayer managers will be cut. The plan’s grand novelty is Anderson’s worker deployment scheme: employees from various departments will be recruited to teams that decide on projects and work together for 90 days. Then, workers regroup in different configurations for their next undertaking. The 57-year-old chief executive estimates that Bayer, in coming years, will operate 5,000 to 6,000 self-directed teams, a transformation that could blow up like other corporate experiments — or become a business landmark.

(Adapted from “One CEO’s Radical Fix for Corporate Troubles: Purge the Bosses,” by Chip Cutter, published on March 22, 2024, by the Wall Street Journal)

The lure of a Birkin bag

The opulent, French-crafted Birkin handbag is a status symbol for rich people around the world and can fetch more than $100,000. But two shoppers in California claim it has become so exclusive that its maker, Hermes, is breaking US antitrust law. Hermes won’t sell the rare bags to just anyone, and it requires potential buyers to purchase thousands of dollars of other products just for the chance they’ll get access to the coveted leather totes, according to a lawsuit seeking class-action status. Birkin bags aren’t available for purchase on the Hermes website or displayed in their stores, where sales staff only show them in private rooms to “chosen” shoppers who are “deemed worthy,” Tina Cavalleri and Mark Glinoga alleged in their complaint in federal court in San Francisco.

(Adapted from “Hermes Makes Birkin Bags Too Hard to Buy, Shoppers Claim in Suit,” by Ethan M Steinberg, published on March 20, 2024, by Bloomberg)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, April 1st, 2024