Karlyn Percil spent 22 years in Canada’s banking industry constantly hearing comments about her race and being questioned by colleagues about how she got her job and where she was from.

The Toronto woman, who is Black and hails from St. Lucia, found herself so disappointed by the incidents that she was unable to sleep and often made teary-eyed trips to the office washroom. She thought about switching to another bank, but friends elsewhere told her “it’s not any better here.”

“I used to have panic attacks at work … I was crying myself to sleep and I remember there were some days when I didn’t want to come to work,” remembers Percil, who has since left Bay Street and started her own women’s leadership group called SisterTalk.

“A few of us used to call it functioning depression.”

The feelings she experienced are not unusual, according to a new study of 700 Canadian men and women identifying as Black, East Asian and South Asian that was released Wednesday by non-profit women’s advocacy organization Catalyst in association with Ascend Canada, which develops and advances Pan-Asian talent.

The study, conducted between February 2016 and April 2018 through surveys and interviews with members of the public, found Canadian people of colour carry an extra weight at work that’s so significant that it impacts their health and often causes them to contemplate quitting.

The weight is known as an “emotional tax” — a feeling of being different from peers at work because of gender, race or ethnicity, which can affect a person’s well-being and ability to thrive in their job.

Between 33 and 50 per cent of the study’s subjects reported feeling “on guard” against potential workplace bias and 50 to 69 per cent said it produced a high intent to quit. Another 22 to 42 per cent of the people surveyed also reported sleep problems.

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“The experience of people of colour in our workplaces is substantially different and there is this putting on body armour in the morning for fear that they might be treated differently or perceived differently or that people may not value the contributions they have or the past experience they have,” said Tanya van Biesen, the executive director of Catalyst’s Canadian operations.

“I think most people aren’t aware of that. They take for granted their own experiences.”

Those surveyed felt “on guard” for varied reasons. Forty per cent of women and 38 per cent of men said the feeling was tied to anticipating racial or ethnic bias. Thirty-eight per cent of women and 14 per cent of men attributed it to gender bias.

Forty two per cent of Black men said they are “on guard” to protect against bias based on their physical ability (the report said the response may be due to “cultural and societal expectations for Black men and stereotypes about their physical and athletic ability”), while 26 per cent of South Asian men and 19 per cent of South Asian women tied the feeling back to their spiritual or religious beliefs and 25 per cent of East Asian women and 23 per cent of East Asian men connected it to their age.

The study reported people of colour try to downplay aspects of their identity to shield themselves from bias. Some said they avoid wearing cultural clothing, make an extra effort to temper their language or try to appear older to counter the emotional tax.

Andrea Gunraj, the vice-president of engagement at the Canadian Women’s Foundation, said the burden and impact of an emotional tax can double or triple for women, those who are Indigenous, identify as LGBTQ or have disabilities. On top of the tax, they often face hiring biases, a wage gap, lower levels of employment, and less representation in leadership and executive positions.

She would like to see the emotional tax reduced and believes employers are key.

“Workplaces can better train their staff, who are perhaps not facing this emotional tax, to be better allies to the people who might be (and) look at things as deep as addressing implicit bias implicit and complicit bias in hiring and promotion processes so that … people are not feeling like the single or the two people of colour or women in the workplace,” she said.

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The study points to a handful of solutions workplaces can use, including measuring representation and prioritizing diversity at offices and in leadership roles. Both have long been called for by advocates, but progress has been slow.

“If I can’t see someone that looks like me or has experiences like me further down the road it is very difficult to aspire to those positions further down the road,” van Biesen said.

“We need to see more people represented at different parts of the workplace and at different levels of the workplace. The need to push for diversification is critical.”