IGPP Race Inclusion Event, May 2022

In May 2022, I joined the IGPP Race Inclusion Event.

According to IGPP, a BITC Report showed under-representation of minority ethnic groups in employment still remains an issue, and minority groups only take 6% of high-level positions in the public sector. Increasingly, more organisations have reported ethnicity pay gaps, with the majority of ethnic minority employees still earning less than their white counterparts overall. Furthermore, according to a Route2 study (2020), 37% percent of minority ethnic workers have been bullied, abused, or experienced racial discrimination at the hands of their employer. 19% have experienced discrimination in the form of being denied training or promotion.

The Second Annual Race Inclusion and Diversity in the Workplace 2022 event provided organisations with practical and actionable insights to determine the next steps in their race related inclusivity and diversity journey. Through a combination of policy updates and case study examples, delegates received a range of information on topics such as encouraging company-wide inclusive leadership, addressing ethnicity pay gaps, attracting, recruiting and maintaining ethnic minority talent, and developing new models of diversity practice.

Jason Ghaboos, Deputy Director of Civil Service Inclusion discussed how he wanted people from diverse backgrounds to thrive in public service. They have set up a new strategy to tackle bullying, harassment and discrimination and aim to recognise talent from wherever it comes. They also want to move away from siloed D&I to a mainstreaming approach which is evidence led and delivery focused.

The Civil service is focusing on key aspects of the employee lifecycle, using data and evidence from those areas. For example, they know that they have better representation of ethnic minority staff in lower grades than in higher grades. Their key priorities are recruitment, progression and lived experience and have found that talent programmes, sponsorship and mentoring are effective.

Embedding sponsorship for ethnic minority staff helps to remove barriers to progression, although so far this has worked best when it’s informal. They have learnt to establish clear expectations, set up good matches and track impact. Data dashboards help to understand recruitment gaps and sharing lived experience tackles myths and equips and empowers line managers.

They are keen to walk the walk, not talk the talk, and Jason Ghaboos feels that the horizon has much hope. To tackle the devastating effect of discrimination and work place culture, we must be proactive, constantly campaign and take action. They plan to embrace pay gap reporting and aim for measures that are successful and sustained.

Dr Darren Ralph, West Midlands Police, spoke about intersectionality and overlapping systems of oppression, such as class, gender and race. There is not always protection in law for intersectional identities and it’s hard to know where to start and stop with policies. That’s why we tend to put people in boxes when we formulate policy.

Shumailla Dar, Harrow Council, discussed wanting to provide a voice to ethnic minority staff – previously they had just one employee group that covered everyone. This has created a space for honest and constructive dialogue. Remote working allowed for more confidential discussions via Teams. Not all workers had devices, so they did do some face to face meetings, plus drop ins for front facing workers.

They commissioned an independent review and internal data collection exercise on workforce profile and gender and ethnicity pay gaps to identify trends, including a staff race survey plus 1:1 interviews and focus groups. The report and the response from the council was published. This has been a useful blueprint for future work on EDI to make sure the workforce represents the community it serves.

Raising the profile of black staff was very important for example by marking Black History Month with webinars, the Steven Lawrence Day and flying the Windrush flag. A listening exercise by the EDI team has led to putting new policies and interventions in place, such as a race equality action plan, guidance for managers, a zero tolerance statement and anti-racism training. They have set up a diversity talent programme to accelerate progression at all grades, especially to first leadership positions.

Bell Riberio-Addy, MP pointed out that while voluntary ethnicity pay gap data sharing is helpful, only 13 of the FTSE 100 revealed their figures. Overall, the ethnicity pay gap is about 2% but this is much wider for certain groups e.g. Pakistani/Bangladishi, black men. In his view, not providing mandatory pay gap information should result in fines.

Darrell Coker from Flair summarised where we are today in terms of race equity. He outlined some common mistakes in EDI practice and recommended four steps to racial equity. He sees a number of pitfalls that organisations fall in to when trying to address this.

Pitfalls:

• Grouping together EDI initiatives e.g. surveys
• Focusing on the wrong types of data (or no data at all) to measure progress and understand pain points. For example, diversity of representation is just one of the parts of racial equity. Some of the most diverse organisations still have issues with behaviours. How do we capture the views of those who don’t engage with focus groups?
• Poor prioritisation of solutions

For Flair, there are four key steps to addressing racial inequity.

• Discover where racial inequality exists e.g. by listening to lived experiences
• Understand what interventions are needed and how to apply them
• Demonstrate commitment by benchmarking and tracking progress over time
• Benchmark your progress year on year and how you compare to other organisations

The tools you can employ through Flair are:

• Question – using science backed surveys e.g. levels of racist behaviour
• Compare – using smart dashboards e.g. strengths and improvement areas
• Solve – drill down into the improvement areas using suggestions for actions taken by other organisations
• Repeat – track year on year

Discussing race equality at work

Equality data is not always something that people feel comfortable to share at work, particularly when it comes to mental health. Disability and faith or belief are particular areas where people feel their data might be used against them, especially if they have experienced harassment or discrimination in the past and don’t know where the data is going. Organisations need to build trust and provide strong stories around evidence based policy to support data sharing.

The fear of being impolite can get in the way of discussions, particularly about identities that you don’t share yourself. It helps to give managers a framework on how to do this so they can create psychological safety where difficult conversations can take place.

Others urge being realistic about target setting – only try to ‘eat the elephant’ in small chunks! Set up milestones on your way to the big targets. For managers, the top priority for recruitment is often speed and then they will then lament the resulting lack of diversity later. Be wholistic and strategic in your approach, rather than flip flopping between priorities from month to month.

The panellists recommended prioritising your actions based on evidence and don’t wait for platinum data before you start. Lead by example, be the change you want to see because this can lead to a ripple effect. Be brave!

Race in Higher Education – Why does it matter?

Gary Loke of Advance HE visited the Wellcome Genome Campus on 20 May to pose the question: Why does race matter in Higher Education? Gary Loke is the Director of Knowledge, Innovation and Delivery at Advance HE, a UK higher education sector organisation which aims to advance the professional practice of higher education, in the UK and globally. Advance HE operates the Athena SWAN charter which recognises the advancement of gender equality in academia in the UK, Ireland and Australia, as well as a Race Equality charter in the UK. Gary is currently a member of the gender equality commission of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

“Diversity is good for business and good for research,” he told us. “What you need is diversity of thinking.” This is borne out by research – Freeman and Huang’s Nature article described how they analysed 2.5 million research papers and found that greater ethnic homogeneity among author names is associated with publication in lower-impact journals.

There is unfortunately plenty of evidence of racism in society at large. “Universities may claim to be colour blind, but if racism exists in wider society, then universities are unlikely to be immune,” warned Loke.

Advance HE statistics from 2016-2017 showed that the BME population in higher education decreases from 23.9% of those studying for a first undergraduate degree to only 8.4% of professors. In 2016-2017, there were 90 black men among 19,000 professors in the UK and just 25 black women.

Chris Skidmore, UK Science Minister reported that 70% of postdocs in STEM are on fixed term contracts, which means that their employment is described as ‘precarious’. This precariousness seems to affect groups disproportionately. For example, 32% of BME post-doctoral researchers are on fixed term contracts, compared to 28% of white postdocs. This mismatch is also true for women, where a higher percentage are on fixed term contracts compared to their male colleagues.

The Race Equality Charter (REC), established in 2012, aims to support the higher education sector in improving these sorts of imbalances. So far, the REC has not seen as high a take-up rate as Athena SWAN, which targets gender inequality. The REC has 55 members and a few Bronze award holders, compared to over 160 Athena SWAN members holding 815 awards between them.

Universities often see variations in student attainment across different ethnic groups. There is a wider attainment gap between black and white students compared to Chinese or Asian groups. There is also an unexplained gap when you compare entry tariffs, where black students achieving top grades at school do not do as well at university as their white counterparts. This is a disparity that is clearly due to the system, not the individual. “Where does this differential outcome come from?” asks Loke.

Loke points to a number of possible causes. “Overt racism does happen in society,” he said, “but there is also plenty of covert racism as well in everyday situations and behaviours. Micro inequalities may be small, but they add up day to day.” Micro inequalities include actions such as checking emails or texting while someone is speaking, interrupting them, mispronouncing their name, passing over someone’s idea in a meeting, avoiding eye contact, taking more questions from some people than others and confusing people of the same ethnicity with each other. “These are actions that it can be difficult to complain about,” explained Loke.

Stereotypes may also have a part to play in fuelling unequal outcomes for different ethnic groups. Asian stereotypes can provide an uplift for those wanting to study STEM, for example, but pose a threat for black students. This is described in McGee’s article, “Black Genius, Asian Fail” from 2018. These unhelpful stereotypes can feed into existing unconscious biases about what a high achieving STEM student ‘looks like’ and can become a vicious circle of reinforced pre-expectations. “Higher education cannot reach its full potential until individuals from all ethnic backgrounds can benefit equally from the opportunities it affords,” asserted Loke.

Loke brought us back to what we can do as allies in research and STEM. He advised us to look at our own evidence, through data, of pay or achievement gaps or under-representation in senior management roles. We should also pay attention to the lived experiences of staff, especially when they may be in a very small minority and there is little concrete data to point to. Loke noted that events with high proportions of BME and female participants can be very empowering, as are employee networks and action groups.

‘No platforming’, where a person who has views regarded as unacceptable or offensive is prevented from contributing to a debate or meeting is a particularly challenging issue in higher education. “But if you routinely ‘no platform’ people, how do you change opinions or move the conversation on?” asked Loke.

“Have and start the right conversations. Find out what makes people feel culturally excluded,” he advised. “Be humble and open to learning about people’s experience – and don’t be afraid to say the wrong thing!”

We should certainly avoid casting someone who does speak up as a trouble maker – be prepared to listen, and most importantly, learn.

“Above all, please don’t give up trying! Being an ally is a verb, not a noun,” he urged. “If we give up trying to change things, that’s when we really fail.”