Facebook: Tackling microaggressions

Opportunity

Facebook is intent on building a culture where everyone can thrive and feel respected. To achieve this, it’s important to foster an environment of openness and authenticity, where every employee feels comfortable bringing their whole self to work.

Whether intentional or not, microaggressions – in the form of verbal, behavioural or environmental slights – stand in the way of achieving this. For Black people, they can often be ubiquitous across daily work and life.

Accidental statements or insensitive questions may seem small but they can compound over time, having a damaging effect on an individual’s well-being.

Initiative

Facebook wants to create a respectful workplace that is free from these types of behaviours, so  they developed a Micro-phone@ FB tool. This enables people to anonymously report microaggressions that they observe or experience in the workplace.

The information collected through this process is sensitive and kept anonymous. To create a safe space, the tool does not trigger a direct feedback loop or investigation, and it is not a substitute for the official process of reporting a policy violation.

However, for transparency, Facebook publishes an internal report that breaks down the types of microaggressions submitted, the micro-impacts they have, and the ways that they can learn from them through micro-allyships.

Impact

The insights gained from the Micro-phone@ FB tool are based on lived experiences, and it is this rich qualitative data that informs Facebook’s ability to drive awareness and action.

A core outcome of this tool is ensuring that these collected insights lead directly to action including:

• Executive Diversity Reports – Ensuring that the report findings get reviewed by senior leaders for increased awareness and supporting evidence to drive urgency of their Executive D&I Action Plans.
• Training – Leveraging examples from the report findings to revamp or update content in training material.
• People Insights – Providing additional insight for the Human Resources and Employee Relations teams.
• Communications and Campaigns – Enriching their Diversity & Inclusion narrative with lived experiences that help build empathy and inspire more action.

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