IF YOU WANT REAL CHANGE PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS — Part 2
Recruitment
Changes need to be made to recruitment practices. Black people face discrimination in the labour market research has found. A study by experts based at the Centre for Social Investigation at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, found applicants from minority ethnic backgrounds had to send 80% more applications to get a positive response from an employer than a white person of British origin.
“It’s not just covert racism or unconscious bias that we need to worry about; it’s overt and conscious racism, where applicants are getting shortlisted on the basis of their ethnicity and/or name” — Dr Zubaida Haque Deputy director Runnymede
Adopt a blind hiring process, removing unconscious bias and focusing on skills and experience is a way to tackle this. A blind hiring process will reduce the bias behind names, race, gender and education broadening the applicant pool. This is fundamental to building a diverse workforce.
Some companies operating in this area:
Training
I have been part of some corporate D&I training programmes and they are bland, boring and do not speak to the issues of racism with some scared to mention the words racism in case they offended someone. The courses reinforce White Fragility (Discomfort and defensiveness on the part of a white person when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice), a phrase created by Robin DiAngelo in her book with the same name and it’s no surprise one study found that white men exhibited more stress and anticipated more anti-white discrimination for a company that was pro-diversity versus a company that did not mention diversity.
D&I programs should be aimed at changing behaviours, therefore, are not supposed to be comfortable. They should speak to the pain, the anguish and the issues that black people face at work.
You cannot tiptoe around racism.
Statements like “I feel uncomfortable”, “I don’t know what to say”, “I don’t want to offend”, come from a place of privilege. Racism is an uncomfortable subject, but no real change will come unless you are willing to step outside of your comfort zone to understand and discuss white privilege as well as their biases to enable you to become an accountable ally.
I have never seen any course talk about implicit bias, code-switching, microaggression yet these are part of the black vocabulary and should part of any D&I course. I recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all D&I program for any company which is why it is important to conduct a needs assessment but should be done beyond HR.
Read about an experiment to measure the impact of diversity training recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences exploring what would happen if we created a training program and rigorously tested its effects? If we used the most relevant scientific findings on behaviour change to design an intervention for increasing diversity and inclusion in the workplace, could we change employee attitudes? Could we prompt more inclusive behaviour? If so, would those changes stick?
Diversity Programmes
Corporate leaders aren’t doing enough to develop a pipeline of Black talent to promote into the C-suite, board of directors or senior management roles.
In 2019 The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in the UK released a report that found black workers were more likely to be overqualified than white workers, but that white employees were more likely to be promoted than all other ethnic groups.
The results highlight British black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people in the workplace are ambitious, but there is a lack of opportunity and a strong desire for opportunities that are not being fulfilled. This is a waste of talent, energy, enthusiasm and expertise. The UK economy could enjoy an annual £24bn boost if staff with black, minority and ethnic (BME) backgrounds enjoyed the same career progression opportunities as their white colleagues, according to figures from an independent government-backed review.
Companies can follow the example of JPMorgan Chase who has a diversity programme which focuses on black leadership called Advancing Black Leaders. It is a diversity strategy aimed at attracting, hiring, retaining and advancing black talent — from within the internal community at JPMorgan Chase, as well as across the external marketplace.
“Every employee deserves the opportunity to progress and fulfil their potential in their chosen field, regardless of which background they are from, but too often ethnic minority employees feel they’re hitting a brick wall when it comes to career progression.” — Theresa May
Pay Gap
According to the U.S. Census, on average, Black women were paid 61% of what non-Hispanic white men were paid in 2018. That means it takes the typical Black woman 19 months to be paid what the average white man takes home in 12 months.
The median annual household income for Black households in 2018 (the last year for which data are available) was $41,692, about $29,000 less than for White households and about $21,500 less than for all households in 2018.
Eliminating the wage gap would provide much-needed income to Black women whose wages sustain their households.
- More than 80 per cent of Black mothers are key breadwinners for their families, which means their households rely heavily on their wages to make ends meet and get ahead; Nearly four million family households in the United States are headed by
- Black women 19 — and more than 1 in 4 of those households live below the poverty level.20 This means that more than 1 million family households headed by Black women live in poverty, demonstrating the imperative to eliminate the wage gap.
Research shows its not just limited to black women in the US, there is a consistent gap in earnings between Black or African American men and White men. Even as Black or African American men climb the corporate ladder, they still make less than equally qualified White men. They are the only racial/ethnic group that does not achieve pay parity with White men at some level.
In the UK Black, Asian and ethnic minority employees are losing out on £3.2bn a year in wages compared to white colleagues doing the same work according to research. After taking account of differences in average qualifications and job types, the analysis by the Resolution Foundation found the gap rose to as much as 17%, or £3.90 an hour, for black male graduates’ pay.
As the graph below shows black Africans get paid less than their white counterparts even after accounting for qualifications and experience which tends to be higher than their white counterparts.
Jay Z said “You cannot heal what you don’t reveal” therefore to get to the root of the problem companies should do an internal audit of the pay gaps both from a gender and ethnic perspective and publish it for transparency. Ethnic groups should not be grouped together as there will be large variations between the different groups. It is important to look at them separately.
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Make a commitment to recruit, train and promote based on performance, merit, and credibility.
Make a commitment to understand, report and address the pay gap between men and women as well as between races.
The focus should be organisations, boardrooms and senior management teams are truly reflective of the workplaces they manage, and the measures talked about will help leaders & CEO’s identify the actions needed to create a fairer and more diverse workforce.
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