The UK celebrates its augural Race Equality Week from tomorrow.
The UK-wide initiative, organised by Race Equality Matters, will unite organisations and individuals through various activities to address issues affecting Ethnic minority employees. It will also shine a light on which companies and leaders are serious about race equality.
According to Race Equality Matters’ recent research, many organisations have ‘jumped’ on the race bandwagon and made empty promises/pledges in recent months without taking meaningful steps to truly create change. In reality, senior leaders and board members typically ‘overlook’ or ‘ignore’ race as a workplace issue, and are actually clueless about Ethnic minority issues/needs.
TACKLING EMPTY PLEDGES
Although many organisations, leaders and allies are appearing to ‘take action’ to stamp out racism at work, too often the reality is that it’s just “a tick-box exercise with little impact”, according to the majority of UK ethnic minority staff. They believe organisations are simply paying lip service by taking meaningless actions, as a result of a lack of executive buy-in or sponsorship. These actions include stating ‘we can/will do better’ without implementing concrete or measurable activity; unfairly placing the responsibility for creating solutions on the ethnic minority colleagues; focusing on what is easiest/cheapest/most convenient, as opposed to what will have impact; and introducing tick-box exercises, such as unconscious bias training or ‘lunch and learns’, and assuming the job is done.
So, unsurprisingly, the dial remains unchanged. Around 75% ethnic minorities continue to experience racism in the workplace, according to Race Equality Matters. And Black graduates in the UK are still three times less likely to find employment than their White counterparts.
SAFE SPACE FOR RACE CONVERSATIONS
Race Equality Matters’ research also revealed that Ethnic minority employees typically have ‘little’ or ‘no voice’ in their organisation. It also found that senior leaders and board members typically ‘overlook’ or ‘ignore’ race issues. In fact, 85% of race/DE&I experts believe that leaders actually are unaware of what their ethnic minority staff want/need, as the chart below illustrates.
Race Equality Week, however, aims to change these statistics by providing organisations and leaders with support to make meaningful change. “The global pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 have placed the ugly reality of racial inequality on the world stage and created hunger for progress. Yet many leaders simply don’t know how to achieve it,” stated Raj Tulsiani, Co-founder of diversity and recruitment executive search consultancy Green Park and Race Equality Matters. He and founding partner Javed Thomas, CEO of The Collaboratory, hope that Race Equality Week will change that by providing the right resources, insights, tools and collaboration opportunities, to ensure real change happens.
The week-long event offers a variety of guides and virtual webinars, from helping to create safe spaces to having those uncomfortable race conversations to making meaningful promises through its Big Promise initiative. Leaders can, for example, now download a guide to help create safe spaces and have those brave conversations, by providing a protected environment to help achieve meaningful change.
ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS
Race Equality Week also allows organisations to actually make meaningful promises/pledges and commit to action, not just words. Its Big Promise initiative, for example, allows individuals and/or organisations to make public commitments, which are measurable, and for which they will be held accountable to.
Getting involved is a no-brainer, according to the Race Equality Week organisers: “It’s good for business; it’s good for your employees and good for your community.”
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