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Purpose Racially traumatic events – such as police violence and brutality toward Blacks – affect individuals in and outside of work. Black employees may “call in Black” to avoid interacting with coworkers in organizations that lack resources and perceived identity and psychological safety. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach The paper integrates event system theory (EST), resourcing, and psychological safety frameworks to understand how external, racially traumatic events impact Black employees and organizations. As racially traumatic events are linked to experienced racial identity threat, the authors discuss the importance of both the availability and creation of resources to help employees to maintain effective workplace functioning, despite such difficult circumstances. Findings Organizational and social-identity resourcing may cultivate social, material, and cognitive resources for black employees to cope with threats to their racial identity after racially traumatic events occur. The integration of organizational and social-identity resourcing may foster identity and psychologically safe workplaces where black employees may feel valued and reduce feelings of racial identity threats. Research limitations/implications Implications for both employees’ social-identity resourcing practice and organizational resource readiness and response options are discussed. Originality/value The authors present a novel perspective for managing diversity and inclusion through EST. Further, the authors identify the interaction of individual agency and organizational resources to support Black employees.

Whiteness is a pervasive context in (post)colonial organizations that maintains its enduring presence through everyday practices such as the white gaze: seeing people's bodies through the lens of whiteness. The white gaze distorts perceptions of people who deviate from whiteness, subjecting them to bodily scrutiny and control. Understanding how the white gaze manifests is therefore important for understanding the marginalization of particular bodies in organizations. We therefore center Black women's narratives to examine the following research question: How is the white gaze enacted and experienced at work? We conducted a critical discourse analysis of 1169 tweets containing the hashtag #BlackWomenAtWork and identified four mechanisms of the white gaze whereby whiteness is imposed, presumed, venerated, and forced on Black women's bodies. We conclude with a discussion of the white gaze as an apparatus to enforce gendered racialized hierarchies vis‐à‐vis the body and how foregrounding whiteness deepens our understanding of marginalization at work.

Structural racism has been linked to racial health inequalities and may operate through an unequal labor market that results in inequalities in psychosocial workplace environments (PWE). Experiences of the PWE may be a critical but understudied source of racial health disparities as most adults spend a large portion of their lives in the workplace, and work-related stress affects health outcomes. Further, it is not clear if the objective characteristics of the workplace are important for health inequalities or if these inequalities are driven by the perception of the workplace. Using data from the 2008 to 2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a probability-based sample of US adults 50 years of age and older and the Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET), we examine the role of both standardized, objective (O*NET) and survey-based, subjective (as in HRS) measures of PWEs on health and Black-White health inequalities. We find that Blacks experience more stressful PWEs and have poorer health as measured by self-rated health, episodic memory function, and mean arterial pressure. Mediation analyses suggest that these objective O*NET ratings, but not the subjective perceptions, partially explain the relationship between race and health. We discuss these results within the extant literature on workplace and health and health inequalities. Furthermore, we discuss the use of standardized objective measures of the PWE to capture racial inequalities in workplace environment.

This study's purpose was twofold: first, to examine the relative importance of job demands and resources as predictors of burnout and engagement, and second, the relative importance of engagement and burnout related to health, depressive symptoms, work ability, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions in two samples of health care workers. Nurse leaders ( n = 162) and licensed emergency medical technicians (EMTs; n = 102) completed surveys. In both samples, job demands predicted burnout more strongly than job resources, and job resources predicted engagement more strongly than job demands. Engagement held more weight than burnout for predicting commitment, and burnout held more weight for predicting health outcomes, depressive symptoms, and work ability. Results have implications for the design, evaluation, and effectiveness of workplace interventions to reduce burnout and improve engagement among health care workers. Actionable recommendations for increasing engagement and decreasing burnout in health care organizations are provided.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to explore professional mattering in a broad cohort of nurses. BACKGROUND Mattering is a construct from social psychology that describes the feeling that one makes a difference in the lives of others and has significance in one's community. METHODS A cross-sectional survey assessing mattering, meaning, social support, burnout, and engagement was administered to nurses and nurse practitioners working in various specialties in the United States. RESULTS Higher levels of mattering at work were associated with lower burnout and higher engagement. Mattering was correlated with perceived social support from one's organization, supervisor, peers, and subordinates. Open-ended responses describing experiences of mattering at work included demonstrating professional competence, positive interactions with patients and interprofessional peers, and receiving recognition from one's organization. CONCLUSIONS A perception of mattering at work is associated with lower levels of burnout. Our data suggest that affirming interactions with other healthcare team members promote a sense of mattering.

PurposeThe purpose of this essay is to highlight the urgent need for antiracism resource generation in organizations today.Design/methodology/approachThis essay weaves together popular press articles, academic writings and the authors' lived experiences to summarize, clarify and extend the work needed inside of organizations and academia to dismantle systemic racism.FindingsWe define antiracist resources as personal and material assets that counteract systemic racism through informing and equipping antiracist actions, and identify three resources—adopting a long-term view for learning the history of racism, embracing discomfort to acknowledge racist mistakes and systematically assess how organizational structures maintain white supremacy—for organizations to address systemic racism.Research limitations/implicationsWhile there is a critical need for more antiracism research, there are standards and guidelines that should be followed to conduct that research responsibly with antiracism enacted in research design, methodology decisions and publication practices.Practical implicationsThe authors call for organizations to directly counter-racism via antiracism resources and offer examples for how these resources can inform and equip companies to create equitable workplaces.Originality/valueThis essay offers: (a) an updated, timely perspective on effective responses to systemic racism (e.g. police brutality and COVID-19), (b) a detailed discussion of antiracism resources and (c) specific implications for antiracism work in organizational research.