A Guide to Workplace Inclusion for Asian American Professionals

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It’s the American dream, a path that many immigrant parents hope that their children would follow: graduating college and landing a job as a working professional (preferably in accounting, law, or engineering). But after a few months in your new job, you’re starting to wonder if Apple TV’s “Severance” was on to something. You’re realizing that maybe it is not just the frigid office temperatures giving you the chills, but rather the workplace environment that leaves you feeling like a completely different person in the office than outside of it — and not in a good way. 

It might be easy to think “it’s me, I’m the problem,” but the reality is that, among all racial groups, Asian American professionals reported feeling the least included in workplaces. And while only 25% to 30% of all employees report feeling included, only 16% of Asian men and 20% of Asian women said they felt fully included at work. 

Asian American Workplace Inclusion: Understanding the Challenges

For Asian professionals in American workplaces, racism and discrimination, microaggressions, and the “bamboo ceiling” can all contribute to the feeling of exclusion, which can lead to burnout — with women feeling the brunt of these factors. Coqual found that 36% of Asian and Asian American professionals have experienced racial prejudice, with Asians reporting microaggressions at higher rates than other professionals of color.

S. Mitra Kalita wrote in Time magazine, “To some, Asian work matters more than Asian lives. There are so many misconceptions over the Asian experience in the U.S. that create this image. It starts to feel conditional, as if the only place for Asians in the U.S. is that of work, of subservience.”

I talked to two professionals about what we can do in light of these challenges, whether we are seeking a new role, joining a workplace environment, or networking. 

Evaluating Workplace Culture: Questions to Ask Before Accepting a Job

It’s true that the job market is up and down, and sometimes you might have to take the first offer you get. But if you have the time and ability to consider your options, learn more about your prospective employer to make sure it is a good fit. Karen Hui-Saechao, a career coach for first-generation new grads and young professionals, runs her own coaching business, Made For More Coaching. She is also the learning and development manager at a nonprofit in Seattle, WA, where she provides career guidance for employees through professional development, training, navigation, and leadership capacity building.

Her number one recommendation even before applying or starting the interview process is to seek out informational interviews, which are informal chats with current employees. This is a good way of getting a close-up look at the company’s values and comparing them to your own while the stakes are low. 

During these chats, Hui-Saechao advises asking interviewees what they believe are the top three things the company values in their employees. She explains that as an Asian American woman, diversity, inclusion, and belonging are at the top of her list, so it is important that her prospective employer values various experiences and backgrounds and promotes people with those qualities to leadership. 

“The interview is the perfect place to understand [the company] and know what you’re getting into before you are in it,” Hui-Saechao explains. 

Richard Leong, a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consultant, started his career in public education as a fifth grade teacher before turning to nonprofit racial justice and leadership development work. Today, he works in the private sector — a move he never thought he’d make but is very happy with.

While Leong agrees that people should feel empowered to ask questions, he warns that asking about diversity may or may not be very helpful.

“Many organizations are still confused themselves about what exactly their own goals are around diversity — and for a lot of them, that’s where the buck stops. They’re not thinking about equity and inclusion at all,” he shares. “It’s much more helpful and much more illuminating to ask more pointed questions about equity and inclusion.”

Questions that get at equity and inclusion can include: 

• What is the organization’s strategy around increasing DEI, and how do you know if it’s working?
• Can you share a time when leaders made a choice to actively prioritize equity and inclusion over other considerations?
• What are some examples of ways that you’ve fostered equity and inclusion within your team?

Building Professional Relationships: Strategies for Asian Americans

So you’ve landed the job, and you don’t know quite what to do with yourself, other than work that is. If you are introverted, or the workforce is not as diverse as you expected, or maybe it is —  but just not in the ways you expected, acclimating to a new environment can be nerve-wracking. Being the new kid in town, so to speak, can induce flashbacks to not knowing who to sit with at lunch in school. If this sounds familiar, here are some simple ways to build relationships and get to know your new peers. 

“In my experience, I’ve always been in less diverse workspaces,” Hui-Saechao notes. “[First], see who is open to you, who is curious, because you will naturally see those relationships come towards you, rather than you needing to seek them out.”

She goes on to say that there will be people who want to connect with you on a personal level, perhaps initiating by asking where you are from — “not in a cultural or ethnicity way, but like, ‘Hey, where did you work before you came here?’” Hui-Saechao explains.

At the same time, it’s important to be open and create space, especially for those introverts out there. Often, newly hired professionals will meet with a large number of stakeholders during orientation (if you aren’t, try to reach out and get some time with folks). While this might be a harder step to take for the shy or those who are first-generation, showing interest or offering empathy toward coworkers — even if they don’t offer first — is a great way to build new relationships. 

Both Hui-Saechao and Leong agree that authenticity and vulnerability are important skills.  

“Even in organizations that are less diverse, you’d be surprised that sometimes the allies that you can find are in the spaces that you [are] already in. However, to be able to tap into that does require a little bit of vulnerability,” Leong acknowledges, adding that authentic relationships require vulnerability, though this is more challenging in less diverse spaces. 

“Don’t feel pressure to rush it,” Leong continues. “I encourage folks to step out of their comfort zone and find the moments … the facets of your identity and your story that you are comfortable being vulnerable with, to a certain extent, because the only way you’re going to be able to build a meaningful relationship is to be able to open yourself up to that.”

Another tip from Leong is to ask colleagues, “Do you have any idea who else I should get to know and that you recommend I talk to?” Building a network of people beyond your team, or even at other companies, can be helpful in a number of ways. Having a network can provide a temperature check when you are asking yourself if your situation is normal and to create more entry points for you to move into an environment that is inclusive.  

What may look like just hanging out in the breakroom or walking together to a meeting are actually the small moments that build into relationships that can sustain you and help you grow personally and professionally while being visible and authentic. Moreover, taking breaks and building camaraderie can combat the stereotypes of being only a quiet, hard-working employee. So although it might feel easier to eat in your office and work through lunch, doing so might reinforce stereotypes that Asian American professionals are valued for our labor but not our leadership. According to a Harvard Business Review report, Asian professionals might be the most educated but are the least likely to be promoted to management.  

Reimagining Inclusive Workplaces: The Role of Asian American Professionals in Workplace Change

To be clear, the onus to improve inclusivity of Asians in these spaces and to drive that change should not fall on us. Leaders and non-Asian professionals ought to reconsider the ways that they foster exclusion and enable harmful stereotypes, such as the model minority myth, in the workplace. The reality is that we live in a society in which the constructs of racism and xenophobia will be difficult to dismantle, and we might not see those changes in our lifetimes.

“The question of how do we feel included and welcome in our workspaces for me is small compared to the larger looming question of how do we achieve justice in our society, writ large,” Leong says, summing up the problem. “Many folks see those things as separate. They only work in corporate workspaces. There’s the sense of, like, I’m just gonna do what I can at my company, and then all the other stuff out there, that’s for nonprofits, politicians, [etc.]. They should do all that. For me, these are very much interconnected spaces. People are people, whether they are at work or doing other things.”