The Loss Ledger Part 2: When They’re Gone
"I'm just here for the paycheck."
"It's harder to get buy-in."
"No one's stepping up anymore."
How often are you hearing sentiments like these?
The reality is, people are showing up, projects are getting completed—but something fundamental has changed about how work feels.
This is the aftermath when something extremely unsettling happens.
In many workplaces, job security is unpredictable and the rules of workplace success are unknown, but with 300,000 (and counting) Black women gone from the workforce, things feel different.
At an organizational level, Black women are the canaries in the coal mine—signaling that when workplace conditions have become unsustainable for them, they'll soon become unsustainable for everyone.
Right now, a lot of folks at work are feeling very vulnerable and they are hugging the jobs they have for dear life.
Organizations and businesses have made cuts that disproportionately affect Black women.
Despite being the most educated and competent contributors, they have been one of the largest groups to see the consequences.
Because of this, organizations are dealing with very different workplace cultures. Ones with heavy questions like: What makes someone expendable? What are the real criteria for job security? Am I next?
Looking over your shoulder
White colleagues have become spooked.
They've watched competent colleagues disappear, knowing that they didn't do anything wrong. Not willing to put themselves in jeopardy, they've retreated into safe, minimal engagement. Having spirited discussions that may have yielded new innovative solutions has been replaced by careful, sanitized interactions.
Even more, the remaining Black employees are operating without safety nets.
One of the main systems for how many Black professionals navigate the workplace has been decimated. The informal networks that provided guidance, support, professional growth, and early warnings about workplace dynamics have largely disappeared.
We’re navigating potentially unstable terrain without the relationships that once made survival possible.
The mentors who could sit us down and tell us how to get what we need are gone, and because we feel even more visible than ever, there is a never ending dread that we will be erroneously critiqued, or even worse, have our competencies questioned.
The places where we could share those experiences with a wise ear, are now further away. And the toll is immense: "Black women often feel the pressure to manage how they express themselves at work in order to avoid being labeled as angry or too much and because of it we're exhausted."
Everyone is focused on self-preservation rather than excellence.
When the criteria for success become unclear—and job security feels arbitrary—people default to the safest possible choices.
The reality is stark: "When we are in survival mode, we are not in thriving mode. We're just enduring."
Risk-taking stops. Creative problem-solving decreases. Teams meet minimum standards but rarely exceed them.
And what’s worse is even though it is felt, it's not discussed because we have been told the problem is ourselves.
Your company’s aftermath
If this is happening in your company, I want you to know you aren’t alone, but you have to acknowledge that there is some dysfunction.
Whether we say it out loud or nod in agreement, this is what’s happening to our work cultures.
Productivity theater is everywhere.
Teams hit basic metrics while actual problem-solving capacity has collapsed. Only 7% of workers feel productive, with the average employee working effectively for under 3 hours daily. Yet organizations mistake activity for output.
Problem hiding has become standard practice.
Small issues that could be resolved quickly are concealed until they become expensive crises. Employees fear admitting they don't understand processes or tools, so they waste time figuring things out alone rather than asking for help.
Information hoarding is protective behavior.
Knowledge sharing has stopped because people view information as job security. Critical insights stay siloed while teams struggle with problems others have already solved.
Quality control has quietly failed.
The feedback loops that prevent mistakes have been silenced by fear. Work that looks acceptable on paper often has underlying issues that will surface later as costly problems.
Innovation has been replaced by risk avoidance.
Teams produce safe, incremental improvements that won't attract scrutiny rather than breakthrough solutions that require challenging assumptions.
This isn't isolated to struggling companies—it's the new baseline across most organizations.
Global productivity losses now total $8.9 trillion annually, with 79% of employees either disengaged or actively working against their employers.
But we have a chance to disrupt the disruption—by recognizing this pattern as abnormal and systematically addressing it.
While most companies manage fearful teams producing mediocre work, some of the braver leaders are working to restore trust and psychological safety that will capture both the talent others are losing and the innovation capacity others have sacrificed to self-preservation.
If you need the proof
Here's how to assess whether these dynamics are operating in your organization:
1. Trust Repair: Can your employees explain how decisions about advancement, recognition, or layoffs are made—and do they believe those processes are fair?
If no: You're running on hidden rules. The question I consistently ask leaders is: "We say things like 'they're not ready'—but what do we mean by that? Not ready for what? According to whose standards?
That ambiguity erodes trust and makes every decision feel arbitrary, leaving employees unsure whether their effort will ever be recognized.
2. Burnout & Self-Preservation: Do people feel they can take risks and still be safe in their jobs, or are they operating in constant self-protection mode?
If not: Innovation and excellence collapse into "just surviving." Burnout spreads silently and performance declines, even if metrics look stable.
3. Support Systems: The departure of 300,000 Black women removed critical informal networks that provided guidance and advocacy for many employees. What formal or informal systems now help employees feel supported, seen, and guided?
If no replacement systems exist: Isolation becomes the norm. Without connection, your talent pipeline dries up, and employees lose the guidance that makes thriving possible.
This connects to a key principle I've identified: "When black women thrive in the workplace, everybody will thrive in the workplace." Their absence signals broader systemic problems affecting everyone.
Moving Forward
The purpose of this piece was to simply say : Stop managing the symptoms slicing away at your work culture.
For your employees, the fear, trepidation and constant vigilance is sapping their energy to show up for the work that they have to do.
The productivity theater, information hoarding, and problem hiding in your organization aren't personality issues—they're predictable responses to unclear success criteria and arbitrary job security.
As I've consistently observed: It is an organization's responsibility to improve the workplace culture so that the number of stressors you feel is lessened OR to ensure that there is support in place to help you when the stress is too much.
In my opinion, that is where leadership and organizations should be right now.
The question isn't whether you can afford to address this—it's whether you can afford not to when the dysfunction has become this widespread and costly.
