To Make Your Workplace Fairer, Take Charge of Its Norms

Harvard Business Review

02-05-2025

Think of all the times you started a new job. You probably learned about key policies and formal processes around things like vacation time. But employee manuals don't teach other things, like whether you should advocate for a promotion or wait to be asked, how quickly colleagues expect email replies, or if meetings start on time or three minutes after the hour.
Norms shape both individual and collective behaviors and serve as symbols of organizational culture or 'how we do things here.' Employees pick up on these norms over time by noticing what people around them do and inferring what would be acceptable (e.g., 'Is it okay to disagree publicly with colleagues?'). Being intentional about setting and collectively valuing norms is key to removing ambiguity for employees—and it's especially critical for leaders in times of uncertainty and upheaval when employees need a North Star at work.
Fostering a fundamental norm of fairness—where all employees play on a level field where they can succeed, support is offered equitably, and rewards are allocated justly—can create a virtuous cycle. As fairness breeds fairness, with employees reciprocating with higher productivity and a stronger commitment to their employers, fairness is a norm that builds on itself and grows stronger over time. Of course, the reverse is also true, and unfairness can lead to a self-perpetuating cycle with bad outcomes, which is why it's crucial for leaders to foster the norm of fairness.
To do it, you can become a 'norm entrepreneur' for fairness—and create an environment where employees can do the same. Originally coined by legal scholar Cass Sunstein, norm entrepreneurs shape what we perceive to be normal, acceptable, and expected. Norm entrepreneurship is a potent tool in leaders' toolboxes because, in some cases, norms trump formal policies and processes as influencers of behavior. For example, a corporate policy such as unlimited vacation time isn't worth much if employees don't feel empowered to make use of it in practice because long leaves are frowned upon. Likewise, organizations proclaiming a 'speak-up culture' will not succeed in encouraging employees to raise concerns if they see colleagues sidelined, discredited, or penalized when they do. To create truly fair and high-performing workplaces, we must work on what we want to accept as normal.
Here are three ways leaders can influence workplace norms and encourage employees to act as norm entrepreneurs to build a fairer environment for all to thrive.
Change perceptions of 'how we do things here.'
Our perceptions of what others around us think and do are not always well calibrated, leading to inaccurate beliefs about what is acceptable or desirable—in other words, what the social norm is in a given context. For example, recent research reveals that a majority of Americans are in favor of diversity and inclusion initiatives, but they tend to underestimate the level of support among others.
At work, such 'pluralistic ignorance' often happens because we don't have complete information about people's private beliefs, and the information we do have—observations of other people's outward behavior—is not necessarily reflective of how they truly feel. However, mistaken beliefs should not keep people from utilizing opportunities at their disposal, so fairness entails providing the information people need to act.
Take parental leave, something that has only relatively recently become available to men in some countries. As such, the social norm regarding uptake is still evolving, and men might not avail themselves of the parental leave they're entitled to because they fear negative reactions from their colleagues. At Santander bank in the United Kingdom, for example, a survey revealed that only 65% of male employees expected their colleagues to be supportive of flexible work—even though when asked about their personal opinions, almost every man at Santander was in support of flexible work.
When some men were informed in an experiment of their peers' support for flexible working, their intentions to take between five and eight weeks of parental leave increased by 62%, or nearly 13 percentage points, compared to men who did not receive the information. Correcting inaccurate beliefs through information helped many men to behave more in line with their personal values and preferences. Because humans have an innate drive to fit in and go with the herd, correcting inaccurate beliefs in this way is a potent lever for changing behavior and keeping flawed norms from taking hold.
In addition to informational interventions, norm entrepreneurs can decrease ambiguity by role modeling desired actions to show they can be done successfully. Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian are examples of norm entrepreneurs who took parental leave and were vocal about their positive experiences, helping to dispel the myth that men do not or cannot take leave, at least in organizations where parental leave is available.
While senior leaders may have more privileges, influence, and power to make change, employees don't need to be in the C-suite to change norms in the workplace. Often, the people who shape our expectations the most are the ones closest to us, as equities sales trader Ronak Patel explained about his 16-week parental leave: 'The more men that do it, the less of a big deal it becomes.'
To change perceptions of prevailing norms, ask yourself:
What data might you be able to collect or share that could challenge employees' existing beliefs about an issue?
What behaviors can you role model that will shift your organization's culture in a positive direction?
What is something you're already doing that you wish more employees did as well—and how could you make those actions more visible in your workplace?
Find the right audience.
While everyone can be a norm entrepreneur, our efforts are particularly effective when we tailor them to the right audience that sees us as credible and compelling messengers. The case for fairness can be especially compelling when made by someone who benefits from the status quo—or, on the flipside, by someone who challenges stereotypes by succeeding in spaces they weren't expected to.
'Unusual suspects' can be the best norm entrepreneurs precisely because they're counter-stereotypical. Research shows that when white male executives and top managers hired more women and people of color, they were rewarded with higher performance evaluations; women executives and executives of color of all genders did not receive the same credit.
Similarly, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan, the protagonists of the film Hidden Figures, became famous not only because they were brilliant mathematicians, but also because they were 'firsts' in many ways at NASA in the 1960s. They started to change norms by breaking glass ceilings and paving the way for others.
In both cases, people became credible norm entrepreneurs because they did something counter-stereotypical: white men hiring women and people of color and Black women climbing up the career ladder in STEM.
To find the right audience for your norm entrepreneurship, ask yourself:
In which spaces, conversations, or contexts might I be an 'unusual suspect' for a cause?
Are there people different from me whom I could purposefully support or advocate for?
What are my sources of credibility (e.g., experience, authority, ability to inspire), and which colleagues do I have credibility with?
Whom could I tap as an unusual suspect to help advocate for my cause?
Leverage collective action.
Fairness is not an individual sport but a group effort. Often, for fairness to become a norm, coordination is required. Norms spread when more and more people take them up.
A company we worked with wanted to decrease ambiguity in hybrid meetings and decided that virtual participants should speak first, before in-person participants. Like many of us since the pandemic began, they had noticed that once in-person participants got into the flow of conversation in a room, it was very difficult for virtual attendees to get a word in. These leaders also knew that the new 'virtual-first' norm could not simply be mandated from above. So they recruited a group of meeting organizers to pilot the new approach, share feedback, and serve as role models. After a while, word about the new practice started to spread, and the company could shift its messaging to say that 'virtual-first' was an increasingly popular practice.
BBC journalist Ros Atkins followed a similar approach when he started scaling 50:50 The Equality Project, which aims to equalize representation of women and men in media coverage. After honing his data- and goals-based methodology—whereby journalists count the number of women and men featured in their content, aiming for parity— Atkins started sharing his approach with strategically selected, influential BBC colleagues. Given the grassroots nature of the project when it began in 2017, Atkins had no power to compel or even incentivize anyone to join him. But he had a proven track record of equitable results on his own show and credibility as a fellow journalist to make the simple pitch: 'We've found this helpful in our work, so maybe you'll want to give it a go, too.' Seven years later, more than 750 other BBC content creating teams had joined the 50:50 Project.
You may think that one person cannot change the norms of a large organization. But these examples show that when people start with what they can control—their own daily work—and recruit a small circle of colleagues to join them, even a single individual can spark meaningful action.
This is what happened when students from randomly selected American middle schools were encouraged to publicly advocate against bullying as part of an anticonflict intervention. Reported conflicts decreased dramatically, especially when the students who happened to be part of the intervention were socially influential. These so-called 'social referents' tended to be closely watched by their peers for cues on how to behave, and when they took a stance against conflict, their actions had outsized influence in shaping other students' perceptions of the norm.
Try it. Confer with your team to create a set of norms that you collectively agree to uphold, such as starting and ending meetings on time, scheduling social events during work hours, or doing weekly feedback check-ins. Then, make those norms visible and top-of-mind, such as by documenting them on posters in meeting rooms (for in-person meetings) or sharing them in email reminders for weekly feedback check-ins to create momentum. Team members could even take turns being the 'norm champion' who helps everyone uphold the norms and steps in when violations are about to occur. If you land on an approach that works, share it with a few other teams or units and encourage them to join you.
To leverage collective action as norm entrepreneur, ask yourself:
What is a norm that I would like to spread throughout my organization?
How can I prove the concept in my own work first?
Which (ideally influential) colleagues could I recruit to try the norm shift with me?
. . .
Clarity around organizational norms can ground us and provide stability during a time of uncertainty. Even more importantly, norm entrepreneurship can help you create a fairer workplace where everyone can contribute to their fullest—and have a better time doing it.