Could a corporate equality score be a way forwards?

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With black lives matter I've been thinking about how my day to day world is a bit of a small bubble, even smaller at present.

Whilst I think I'm reasonably PC, or try hard to be, I don't actively consider my actions in using organisations, who are in a position of influence.

I don't know if my bank/ insurers/ the brands I buy from barely pay lipservice to the equalities act or are proactive in taking meassures to overcome barriers people experience. I don't know how easy it would be to find that information.

So could there be a voluntary/ compulsory over a certain size, system that would allow customers to have a bit more visibility on what sort of organisation they're supporting?

Gender pay gap reporting could do this, and it will (hopefully) soon be joined by ethnicity pay gap reporting.

But I highly doubt enough consumers take notice of these things enough for it to make a difference. Except for a few outliers who make good practice part of their brand, corporate behaviour is waaaaaay down the list of what consumers care about.

Look at how well companies with really dodgy practices in all sorts of areas do (Amazon and Primark I'm looking at you).

The road to evil is paved with good intentions. I think the equality act should be scrapped as it has caused more problems than solved. I can see pc culture was well meaning but I loathe it now. I see it as 1984 thought policing and long for the non pc days in the 90s. I say that as a senior hr manager who has worked in the city for years.

@Muminabun so if you remove the equalities act as a senior hr manager in the city, what are you proposing in your position of power to ensure that your input to society is challenging / breaking down barriers and empowering your workplace?

Unless we start to actually debate and discuss things nothing will change.

So much journalism and politics appear to be hindsight knocking what has been tried you should have....

We should learn and evolve. Not everything will work but not every failure is a step back. Not change for changes sake, but change because we should be able to be better than this.

I can see your reasoning but have some concerns.

Firstly, for example, in my organisation, we have a good proportion of BaME staff in some offices, such as our central London and Birmingham ones, but a very very low percentage in more regional ones to the extent that senior management often note it and complain about it. But this isn't for lack of trying! in some areas there just isn't a BAME pool of people to apply for vacancies. According to the most recent census in 2011 (which, to be fair is probably fairly out of date now but is still cited by research as the most comprehensive data we have), there are multiple areas of the uk where the population is 96% (or more, I believe the highest was 98%) white.
I would therefore feel bad boycotting a company based in Cumbria for one of the same size based in inner Manchester solely on their % of black staff.

The second thing you'd have to watch out for is where the BaME people work in the organisation. So you could have stats that show that black people made up 3% of the local population and company x employed 5% black people so that looks pretty good. However all of those black people could be on the lowest rung of the workforce, with none in senior management positions, which could be more exploitative and less equal than an organisation with fewer black staff.

If you are good, ambitious and hardworking there is little to hold you back. This has been a fact for many years.the equalities act has increased fear and red tape to such a ridiculous degree. If you were a small or medium sized business owner would you hire a candidate with multiple protected characteristics and discrimination claims are uncapped. No bloody way is probably the answer for most and I don’t blame them.

"If you are good, ambitious and hardworking there is little to hold you back."

There are many, many things that can still hold you back.

If you are good, ambitious and hardworking there is little to hold you back

That is quite simply untrue. Explicit, implicit and structural racism and sexism are all huge headwinds.

And if you do manage to defy the odds and finally snatch an opportunity - handed out like sweets to people who fit the pervasive unconscious bias - then you are paid significantly less for doing the same work as your peers. Even though you do it better, since you are stuck at a lower level than peers with the same ability /experience (see above).

Bitter? Me? Just a bit.

The Equality Act isn't the problem. It gives us a tiny bit of recourse to get what we are due - fair treatment. A company would have to behave in a pretty scandalous way for the unlimited damages to be any kind of threat. I remember reading a case where a woman was bullied relentlessly over a protected characteristic by multiple people in the organisation over several years, her attempts to address it ignored and minimised, to the point where it destroyed her life - and she got about £200,000.

I think you should take a good, hard look at your attitude, @muminabun. Pretty sure you're part of the problem.

"If you are good, ambitious and hardworking there is little to hold you back".

Where to start....By the time your three, the amount of language variation you've been exposed to in a well educated family is significantly higher.

Then there's access to a decent education where educators have expectations of you, support from home to read, write. If you're in a poor area, we are, schools are fighting so many battles.

Drug addict parents, children being evicted, 8 different first languages in DD's class when she joined, 10 at the stage we decided to use our economic privalege to move school.

Six mums in the class had no real English. Barely litterate unengaged/ actively abusive parents/ carers, several children who were in and out of care, several children sofa surfing, children who haven't seen many hot meals in their lives.

Many of those children have enormous potential but you could see the complete lack of educational progress support and ambition for them. How can they have the same ambition as a child who sees at home and has drummed in the pathway to progress?

Cost of further study beyond school when your family are strugling and over crowded and think you'll fail so not only don't support you but undermine your confidence in the guise of being realistic.

Cost of transport to get to interview, cost of a suit, ability to know how to behave entering a professional environment you haven't had exposure to.

Its not that it can't be done, its that these barriers are big and exhausting to get over and over and over. Its not any one thing, its the sum total of all of them.

Are the carers and cleaners putting in 60plus hours a week not good and hardworking? How when at minimum wage when they finish work exhausted with money that isn't even a living wage are they not held back from seeking further study/ progression/ a career?

So many of these things run in cycles, unless we break the cycle we wont move forwards.

No these are not huge problems in the workplace. I have done enough pay analysis. I have never come across any discrepancy and I have never seen evidence or figures to support this. I think that pushing a victim narrative with reference to systemic racism and sexism is for political and power gains. There are Of course isolated incidents of discrimination But I am not convinced they are systemic. If they are such huge problems then how are there so very many successful people in all jobs and all walks of life who are from very different groups. So sorry that my experience does not fit with your agenda.

@newyearnoeu You're right, we live in a diverse country. Whats right for London or Manchester isn't right for rural Shropshire. But with so many statistics produced about ethnic balance in communities couldn't some sort of proportional to the demographic of the office region be used?

I guess looking at pay brackets within organisational structure becomes far more complex.

I don't pretend to have the answers but sure as hell see theres a problem.

Quotas and positive discrimination are the only way forward here. It should be mandated that as a minimum a certain percentage of roles perhaps 30%, within every team, of every business,m in the UK have to be filled by someone of non white ethnicity. The only way to level the playing field.

Love the score idea as well.

@yomommasmomma you propose to bring into law blanket race discrimination and make it law to discriminate based on race. The % of the uk population that is non white is about 18%. So of that the working population is probably no more than 10%. To reach your target of 30% as mandatory for business owners how do you propose that is achieved?

Quotas and positive discrimination are the only way forward here

the UK have to be filled by someone of non white ethnicity

Why just non-white?
There's issue with lots of discrimination - age, women, disabilities, class, school type, LGBT plus others..some under the Equalities Act, some not..

Happy to make quota 18 and all difference diversity

18%

I recently interviewed candidates for roles in my team, We had two vacancies to fill.
We interviewed 9 candidates, 7 of whom turned out to Aisian women and 2 white candidates one male and one female. When we shortlist we do not see names or any other information which reveals ethnicity, age or sex.
The outstanding candidate was the white male, 2 and 3 on the list were Aisian, the 4th was the white female. We offered the roles to the white male and the Aisian women in turn, they both declined so the white female got the job. So despite everything, it looks like we interviewed 9 people and appointed the two white candidates, which doesnt really reflect what happened. The only diversity box we ticked is that the white male is gay.
I live within a large urban connurbation, with a high Aisan population, This is reflected in our staff, its not unusual for me to be the only white person in a meeting. In my immediate team of 12 we have 2 gay men, 2 black women and 2 Aisian women and 1 aisian man.
Where we fail is at the higher grades. But we have some very talented and ambitious youngsters coming through the ranks and I do believe we will get there.

I think some of our offices in less diverse locations would struggle to appoint BAME staff at some levels because they arent in the location to apply.

How do you go from a BAME percentage of 18% to a working percentage of 10%?

Anyway

The benefit of having targets/quotas/reporting may be lost because it will just make the average racist believe that they are being discriminated against, and unfortunately the BAME population in the Uk is too low for the "normalisation" that helps overcome sexism

Basically, if you get an underrepresented population up to around 30% in any situation, the "ism" that was previously present tends to disappear as people get used to seeing past the diversity. So forcing more women into a workplace helps reduce sexism, as we get the numbers high enough. Workplaces with high BAME populations tend to reduce racism, but there are not enough to go round

So we may need a better way to remove racism

I know there isn't a magic wand that can be waved but maybe there are ways that corporations can get involved in barrier removal that isn't employing a minority group. Talking about it has to be a start.

Natwest have a report, the Rose report, some of the stats are really upseting. The sort of stuff you sort of suspect but seeing it as fact is painful. They're doing something. They're going into schools looking to inspire teen girls and have programs for younger ones too.

Anything thats profile raising of the barriers and making moves to remove them we should encourage.

Funding of school places/ work placements not necessarily with a view to employment but looking to expose children to options and aspirations. Going into schools. More apprenticeships that lead to qualifications to remove that need to earn, post 16 qualification barrier.

Can appreniticeships exist for older workers to progress into a career from a make ends meet job?

My background is being a women Engineer and I've faced discrimination thats made me leave jobs - my promotion track was faster than many male colleagues, but I earnt it. I worked 7 day weeks. I went on every course, traveled where ever I was sent. I was in construction on a management conference. A senior member of staff let himself into my room in the middle of the night. I was a young married 20 something on a good hard fought for career path. I'm not flirtatious by nature nor do I wear alluring clothes, not that that should be relevant. I could have gone to HR, but he was the HR director. But its okay because several of the directors thought it was hilarious at breakfast, the whispers from colleagues suggesting my success was due to letting people into my room were the worst.

I'm motivated and reasonably talented. I moved out of the area of industry that involved staying away from home, it didn't stop the discrimination. I'm not a victim. I'm rather independant and plough my own furough. Having a disabled child ended my career. Thats a whole other area of discrimination. Disibility discrimination is bad, so is carer discrimination - talk about feeling like being a third class citizen.

I don't know about being BAME. I do know a little from one tiny angle about discrimination and it goes way beyond equal pay.

As someone who is BAME in a none diverse area and has been on the receiving end of postive action (being offered jobs because I 'ticked boxes' ) as well as workplace discrimination (being told my English wasn't good enough despite holding a Law degree and 2 Masters degrees), I would suggest that the best person for the job should get the job regardless of their characteristics. I wanted to be employed because I was the best and right person for that job not because I met the organisation's quotas or targets therefore declined numerous opportunities as they were explicit in telling me why I was successful in my interview.

Someone in another thread has suggested education, education, education as a way to address race bias issues which I fundamentally agree with.

OP your post at 15:44 is a reflection of poverty not skin color.
Speaking a variety of languages is usually an asset.
What is unfair is allowing new immigrants into the country with little to no education and expecting them to get on with raising healthy well rounded children. The older generation will be forced to take on unskilled low wage jobs, this in turn often breeds resentment in the younger generation and risk taking behaviors to earn additional income.
Plenty of poverty in the non colored population.
Better education is the only way forward.

Education is tricky though, didn't someone find that when bosses had been given diversity training they became more discriminatory because they felt that they had been cured / they knew it all.

@Muminabun I'm sad to hear that you work in HR. I sincerely hope you're not advising people to hire white men to avoid the annoyance of claims against discriminatory behaviour.

There is evidence of ethnicity pay gap and systemic racism and discrimination are in fact a problem. It's complex, it's different depending on racial background and the pay gap is particularly pronounced when gender is added in. www.ft.com/content/fd47bc10-a238-11e9-974c-ad1c6ab5efd1

@edwardson what a silly and sanctimonious post. It may be a surprise to you to know that managers tend to look to hire people who are capable of doing a job very well and it may surprise you even more if I told you that a lot of senior people are from BAME backgrounds. I have never come across systemic racism. I have however come across lots of positive discrimination sometimes at the detriment of the business need.

@fallfallfall It is about poverty. An area that is a disproportionate to population percentage in minority groups.

From the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, :

The income poverty rate varies substantially between ethnic groups: Bangladeshis (65%), Pakistanis (55%) and black Africans (45%) have the highest rates; black Caribbeans (30%), Indians (25%), white Other (25%) and white British (20%) have the lowest rates.

I love languages, grew up with a Grandmother fluent in 7. Critically, English was one of her 7. Its an advantage so long as you can access the education in the primary language you're being educated in. In neither of your parents read English how can you manage phonics lessons, reading notes from school?

There are lots of corporate equality indices that are primarily used by investors to get companies to act. Whether they are working or not is another thing!

They mainly apply to large FTSE (and other county equivalents). If you want to look them up they include the Corporate Equality Index, Bloomberg GEI (gender), the Workforce Disclosure Initiative (mainly labour rights, but includes ethnicity, age and gender elements), Equileap, Hampton Alexander (women in corporate leadership roles) and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. There are tonnes more but I'm being a bit lazy- you can search for ESG investing for more information.

The UK government has also been consulting on bringing in Ethnicity Pay Gap reporting in addition to Gender Pay Gap reporting. It's a struggle for most corporates though because ethnicity data is self-disclosed and not nearly enough companies have cultures where people feel it's an advantage to do this.

There are issues with all of these though. First, they do quite well at capturing gender but they struggle with intersectionality. They don't focus nearly enough on encouraging racial diversity or people with disabilities. They also tend to capture employee mix and need to focus more on the hiring mix and voluntary/involuntary leaver mix.

Also, they just don't apply to SMEs which employ the bulk of people, I don't think they apply to public sector either. That's why I'm supportive of pay gap legislation and enforcement, but it needs to go beyond gender.