In her previous work as a college counsellor, Alice Choe coached first-generation, low-income (FGLI) undergraduate students to help prepare them for their professional lives. That made Choe, now a PhD student in organizational behaviour and HR management at the Rotman School of Management, interested in how FGLI students — people who are the first in their immediate families to complete a bachelor’s degree and enter professional occupations — fare in the workforce. “They’re an untapped pool of talent and an aspect of diversity that gets overlooked,” Choe explains.

In collaboration with professor Stéphane Côté, Choe reviewed existing research on FGLI individuals for a paper that was recently published online in Current Opinion in Psychology. Choe and Côté found that FGLIs are negatively affected by workforce perceptions, especially by managers and business leaders. “They're less likely to be hired,” Choe says. “They're less likely to be tapped by managers for input on important professional matters.”

Côté believes that there are negative stereotypes around first-generation, low-income individuals. “There’s a perception that being from a less privileged context is associated with lower skills, less knowledge and less competence,” he says. One study they reviewed found that, despite no differences in intelligence test scores between FGLIs and non-FGLIs, first-generation, low-income folks are still viewed by others as less intelligent.

Choe and Côté’s review highlights why it’s important for business leaders and hiring managers to be aware of biases that exist towards FGLI individuals. Choe says it’s important to not let indicators of social class — which might be apparent through the types of expensive sports individuals might have played in university — influence their decisions. “Did they golf or play lacrosse?” Choe says. “When those kinds of status symbols drive decisions, it could put FGLIs at a disadvantage since they’re traditionally less likely to have played those sports.”

To mitigate this, Côté says that interviewers and business leaders should avoid asking class-revealing questions that aren’t relevant to the job. Questions such as: “What sports did you play in university,” “What did your parents do for work” or “What neighbourhood did you grow up in” can result in responses that reveal social class. Asking questions about being part of a fraternity or sorority, or completing an unpaid internship can also lead to biased decision-making. “Interviews for people getting a job or getting promoted should focus on job-relevant attributes,” he says.

Another finding is that evaluators tend to focus on FGLIs’ perceived shortcomings than on their strengths. As a result, Choe encourages leaders to be conscious of how they make decisions on who to promote. “What is the messaging that managers are putting out there when they're looking to promote someone?” Choe asks. For example, managers might applaud traits like being a self-starter and being assertive, (FLGIs are perceived as lower in these traits), while it remains unclear whether characteristics like adaptability in different social settings and reading others’ emotions — strengths of FGLIs — are recognized by these same managers. Encouraging business leaders to focus on the strengths of FGLIs, not what they’re perceived to lack, could conceivably help usher in and promote FGLIs in organizations.
For business leaders evaluating current team members for promotions and hiring managers making decisions on job candidates, Choe and Côté underline the importance of structured rubrics that eliminate the use of biased parameters, like how polished a candidate appears. “Having a standardized, structured interview - where you ask the same questions to everyone and have a clear way of rating the answers to each of the questions - leads to better decisions on who to hire and promote,” Côté says.

While there is no formal training or frameworks currently for reducing biases towards FGLI individuals, Côté says that making hiring managers and business leaders aware of the bias is a helpful first step. Simply sharing copies of studies with decision-makers, like Choe and Côté’s review paper or the studies they reviewed, could help them become more aware of the biases that exist and help them change their behaviour.      

For companies with a strong focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, Côté says that awareness around biases towards FGLI people is all the more important. “At the end of the day, this is another type of unfairness or injustice,” he says. “All kinds of injustice are obviously important to rectify.” While gender or race biases can be more visually evident in a workforce or executive team that is all-male or not racially diverse, biases towards FGLIs can be more difficult to identify. “It might be harder to spot, but it’s still quite important to pay attention to.”

Reducing negative perceptions around FGLIs isn’t just the right thing to do from a DEI standpoint, it’s also good for business. Choe encourages organizations to highlight the strengths of FGLIs, like cooperating well with others, their adaptability and ability to read emotions. “If leaders and HR managers can actually pay attention to [FLGIs’ strengths], it can work in their favour and help drive success,” she says.

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