The coronavirus pandemic has taken a huge toll on marginalized groups. Here's how employers can use it as an opportunity to create a diverse and inclusive workplace.

• Julia Taylor Kennedy and Pooja Jain-Link are executive vice presidents and lead researchers at the Center for Talent Innovation.
• They write that COVID-19 has had greater consequences for marginalized populations.
• But employers can consciously create a more diverse and inclusive workplace in the midst of the pandemic.
• Employers should put in place sponsorship programs and flexible workplaces — and acknowledge any fears workers have right now.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

We've all seen the headlines: instead of being the "great equalizer," this pandemic has revealed that if you are lower-income, black, Latinx, Asian, or a woman, you are likely to face deeper consequences from the coronavirus and the attendant economic downturn.

In its spread, COVID-19 has revealed much more than our society's vulnerability to a persistent virus. Yes, we are still adjusting to disruptions in our day-to-day. But the depth of that disruption is a powerful reminder that when it comes to society, and the workplace, there are insiders and outsiders.

As companies prepare to reopen the economy, will post-pandemic workplaces become more diverse and inclusive? While there's great risk that they will get more monolithic and exclusionary, we think that with foresight and intentional work, employers can avoid the risks and create new opportunities.

Here are some of the potential risks that employers need to meet head on — and the opportunities they can create in doing so, as they move toward rebuilding.

Lack of visibility

Visibility is critical for all talented professionals who want to get ahead. But access to senior leaders has always been difficult for those who have battled against being excluded, overlooked, and marginalized. Research by our organization, the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI), has found, for example, that white professionals are 42% more likely than black professionals to have access to senior leaders at work. Nearly a fifth of black professionals and 15% of Asian professionals say that no senior managers know them by name.

Remote work, in some form or another, is likely become a permanent fixture in post pandemic workplace because companies have seen that it works (and requires less square footage in office space). But remote work can exacerbate visibility problems. Despite the faces flickering on video conference calls and glimpses of colleagues' messy bookshelves during company-wide happy hours, there's a high risk that many who deserve assignments or promotions, particularly people of color, are laboring "out of sight, out of mind." These already underrepresented groups can get pushed further to the edge.

Bearing the weight of additional family responsibilities

While many of us are working from home to help stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus, women are likely to carry the heaviest burdens. For example, our research has found that 60% of full-time working women routinely perform more than half the domestic chores. With schools closed, there's little doubt that women are taking on additional childcare and home education responsibilities as well. Many are working round the clock — unable to raise their hands for leadership or other opportunities and at risk of burnout.

Disproportionate impact

As the economy goes into decline, historically underrepresented groups are likely to suffer the brunt of this catastrophe. Black-Americans are dying of COVID-19 related health complications at greater rates than any other group. For example, in Chicago 70% of people who died of COVID-19 were black. The pandemic threatens not just lives, but livelihoods of underrepresented people.

Unemployment rates for people of color have historically been higher than those of white workers. For example, in 2010, in the fallout of the last recession, unemployment rates for black men and women were 18.4% and 13.8% respectively, compared to 12.7% and 12.3% for Hispanic men and women, and 9.6% and 7.7% for white men and women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As professionals of color struggle with a bigger threat to their families and communities, they will inevitably show up at work carrying these traumas with them. Will their white colleagues understand this added burden and be willing to talk about it? CTI's past research indicates they rarely are. And as a result, employees of color become disengaged when they feel they cannot speak about such experiences of bias or inequality at work.

There's opportunity to change course

Leaders can and must ensure sure that this crisis doesn't exact a toll that will take a decade (or more) to reverse. Here's how:

Sponsorship or senior-level advocacy

To counter the "invisibility effect," we recommend sponsorship. Mentors give advice, but sponsors advocate for their protégés behind closed doors. Sponsorship is a proven tool to bolster the careers of and provide visibility to women and people of color. During this COVID-19 lockdown, inclusive leaders have the opportunity to be intentional about who they sponsor.

However, our research shows that unless prompted to do otherwise, sponsors tend to choose protégés who look like themselves in terms of race and gender — e.g., white and male. Now is the time for all senior leaders to make an effort to intentionally connect with those who are different than themselves and can bring diverse skills, perspectives, and experiences on the ride to the top.

Flexible workplaces

Women in particular have long sought more flexible arrangements when they juggle family responsibilities, household tasks, and children and elder care. They'd like to be able to leave for an hour during midday to pick up children or take a family member to a doctor's appointment, then make up the time later. (Many men would like this too.)

Right now, we have an opportunity to destigmatize remote work. We are in the midst of learning how remote work can help us collaborate better with each other and get things done. Let's keep the momentum going and find the right work-life balances in the months and years ahead. Employers will be the winners from enhanced flexibility, retaining and maximizing female talent that might otherwise walk out the door.

Belonging

Finally, let's embrace a sense of belonging in the workplace. We see companies making public declarations of how much they care about their employees and customers in these difficult times. Underrepresented groups already feel like outsiders, and now they are facing a disproportionate blow to their livelihoods due to COVID-19. Now more than ever, this population needs to feel accepted and supported. They need to feel like that can talk about their experiences at work.

We all are going through it, yet each story will be unique. Acknowledge employees' fears and anxieties. Use this moment to be vulnerable, build trust, and connect with your employees. Otherwise, companies will pay in terms of retention, disengagement, loss of morale, muted productivity, and dimmed loyalties. Employees will not forget how their companies behaved in this upheaval.

This is a time when many people are rethinking their priorities, vowing to break bad habits and behave better. Companies too can seize opportunities to polish their values and improve the workplaces of the future — rather than allow old habits and inertia to disengage employees and deepen exclusion.

As work is reinvented for a post-pandemic world, it's up to business leaders to make the choices that will shape workplaces of the days ahead, rich with a diverse, driven, inclusive, motivated, and proud workforce. This is the workforce that will engender dedication and contribution from every employee, galvanizing them to pull our organizations out of crisis and back into solid performance.

Julia Taylor Kennedy and Pooja Jain-Link are executive vice presidents and lead researchers at the Center for Talent Innovation, a nonprofit think tank that conducts research and advises companies on diversity and inclusion in the workplace.