Report: Hispanic People Are Defined as 'Passionate' at Work More Often than Whites

Women and people of color receive low-quality feedback in the workplace, a factor that leads them to leave their organizations in larger amounts than men and White workers, Textio revealed in a new report.

According to Textio, an HR services firm, its 2023 survey shows that women, Black and Hispanic people, and people over 40 systematically receive significantly lower-quality feedback at the workplace than their coworkers.

The firm's data also shows that Hispanic people reported being called "passionate" twice more often than White people who are also reportedly called "easy to work with" more often than other groups.

Textio analyses language bias in performance feedback and for its 2023 survey it studied more than 13,000 performance reviews and interviewed more than 530 workers in the U.S.

Personality feedback, says Textio, is stereotyped in racial groups. For instance, its findings reveal that, in the workplace, Hispanics are perceived to be less ambitious than Whites or Asian Americans (14%, 39%, and 57%) and more professional than Whites (37% Hispanics, 14% Whites).

In terms of potential and pathways to promotion, performance analysis shows that leaders in the workplace have higher expectations for White and Asian men.

In fact, says Textio, these groups get the highest-quality feedback overall and are most likely to be perceived as "brilliant" and "genius."

"Managers are more likely to identify white and Asian men as possessing innate intellectual ability than all other groups," the firm says.

Regarding actionable feedback (or clear, relevant feedback), data suggests that women receive almost twice as much unactionable feedback than men. People of color get more than twice as much unactionable feedback than White and Asian colleagues.

In general, Textio says, people who receives low-quality feedback are 63% more likely to leave their workplace than anyone else.