Industry commentators warn that the UK Government’s measures to boost Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) employees’ career progression are set to fail unless employers choose to play ball, changing how they develop such staff, for example.
The government’s moves include obliging employers to disclose their race pay gap statistics, the Race at Work Charter giving businesses a clear set of actions to work towards to create greater opportunities for BAMEs, and consultation open until January 2019, asking employers what type of ethnicity pay information employers should report to allow meaningful action.
David Clutterbuck, co-founder of the EMCC and a key proponent of embracing diversity at work, said, “Coaching and mentoring are the key equalisers when it comes to leveraging diversity. It’s not just about helping people of colour focus on their development and career self-management. It’s also about the changes in mindset that happen in the coaches and mentors, from having safe yet challenging conversations across the barriers of difference. And this, in turn, changes the organisational culture to make it more supportive of diversity.”
Meanwhile, Rajvinder Kaur Uppal, director of Plan B Consultancy and recent contributor on diversity to Coaching at Work, said, “One does have to question how much data and analytics we need to exemplify what we fundamentally already know. Whether consciously or unconsciously, disparities exist across the board. What we need to strive for is systematic changes that impact cultural changes in organisations. Moreover, a commitment to recognising and actioning these flaws and work from the top down towards sustainable changes for employees and stakeholders.”
Recommendations for employers from Business in the Community (BiTC) included senior leaders and executive board members undertaking reverse mentoring with individuals from different backgrounds to better understand their unique challenges, as well as the positive impacts of diversity; providing mentoring and sponsorship more widely, and establishing formal networks and encouraging all individuals to participate.
Peter Cheese, CEO at the CIPD, which has welcomed the moves, said, “It’s… important to remember that ethnicity pay gap reporting will only have a positive effect if it leads to changes in how employees from a minority ethnic background are recruited, managed, developed and promoted.”
According to BiTC’s Race at Work 2018: The McGregor-Smith Review one year on report published in July, 52% of BAME employees think they will have to leave their current organisation to progress in their careers, compared with 38% of white British staff.
Meanwhile, research by executive search, senior interim management and diversity and leadership development consultancy, Green Park, finds women are still highly under-represented at senior management level in UK local government. Despite women representing 51% of the working age population, they account for just 39% of senior positions in the UK’s unitary authorities, county councils, London boroughs, metropolitan boroughs and district councils, according to the Local Government Leadership 2018 report.
Women hold less than a third (31.3%) of CEO roles across London boroughs and district councils (30.3%) – the number of female CEOs of London boroughs has declined since 2017, when women held 34.4% of the top positions, finds the report. While the figure at county council level is an improvement on 2017, up to 41% from 37.3%, it’s still not representative when compared to female representation in the working population.