Breaking Stereotypes: How Valuing Workers’ Preferences Improves Task Allocation and Performance

Firm performance depends critically on the efficient allocation of tasks across employees. Yet, task assignment decisions are often shaped not only by productivity considerations but also by managerial biases and gender stereotypes—frequently resulting in women being disproportionately assigned low-promotability, female stereotyped tasks. This paper investigates whether making workers’ task preferences visible to managers can reduce gender-stereotypical assignments and improve overall outcomes. We conduct two complementary experiments. In the first, participants act as workers, completing real-effort tasks and reporting their task preferences. In the second, a separate group of participants from the same subject pool takes on the role of managers and assigns tasks to pairs of workers under varying information conditions. In the control condition—where managers lack access to workers' preferences—task assignments are more likely to reflect gender stereotypes. In contrast, when managers are informed of workers’ preferences, stereotypical assignments decrease, and managerial earnings improve. We also find that preference-informed task allocation leads to higher managerial earnings, suggesting that reducing gender bias not only promotes fairness but also enhances organizational efficiency. Our findings highlight the potential of low-cost informational interventions to promote fairer and more effective task allocation practices.