Diversity in the workplace - why am I not included?

[FayCarew]

As I watch a new set of corporate videos, I realise that I am not represented in them. They are full of young attractive smartly/business casually dressed people of a range of ethnic diversity.

Yet my colleagues are generally 50+ white and grey and wear WFH clothes. As am I. We are not board level.

AIBU to feel invisible?

but ageism is one of the hardest to crack I think (social mobility being the hardest,

This.
I'm not sure if disability isn't harder though, I haven't worked with many who had a disability. Maybe about four, in my whole lifetime, although there may have been ones with disabillties I wasn't aware of

If you have a condition that isn't severe enough to be considered a disability e.g hard of hearing, you will likely be discriminated against, and it is something that can affect you as you get older

Corporate presentations now have to show people of colour much more prominently so I find myself looking up things like 'confused looking middle aged black man' or 'Asian looking stressed' on the stock photo sites because diversity is apparently more important than representation.

But surely corporations are now encouraging you to show a range of diversities, so that you can encourage a more diverse range of people - not just to put out videos that show the lack of diversity you currently have.

And to show people from a range of ethnic backgrounds, you are inevitably going to end up showing more people from ethnic minority backgrounds, than is representative of the country -otherwise in a video with 10 people you'd only have 1.5 such people which isn't really sufficient to show a range of ethnic minority backgrounds. Also, ethnic diversity varies a lot by area - it's substantially more in London, than the rest of the country for example.

This is a painful read.

only a white person would claim that ageism is the hardest prejudice to crack

Well black and brown people don't get old and so don't have to deal with ageism at work....

Didn't you get the memo?

@FayCarew plenty of people you work with will have hidden disabilities.

You simply won't know they have a disability as they won't tell you.

Isn't that some sort of sexual harassment?

@RedWingBoots , I'm not expecting people to tell me, and sometimes they won't even know.

The case that I was thinking of was a person who was IMO hard of hearing to the point that it should have been treated as a disability. He had a speech impediment which was almost certainly related to the lack of hearing. He was intelligent and capable but as no allowance was made for the fact that he needed clear written instructions, he messed up a few times and was generally treated as a bit useless.

I agree with you OP to feel it is not representative, and people over 40 especially women are often overlooked. And before anyone says, the Windrush generation and those who moved from the Indian sub-continent in the 70s are now in the second half of life, so it is not somehow a way of making sure everyone portrayed is white.

@cath
100% this. ^ I saw 9 adverts in one commercial break yesterday, and 8 of them started with a non-white face. ALL 9 had mixed race families/couples in. If the commercials on TV this past 3-4 years were to be believed, you would think white people were the minority in this country.

As for the OP. Completely agree. People (women especially)are largely ignored by society when they get past 50. It's disgusting tbh.

True. Not everybody portrayed in commercials has to be white, but it's pure box-ticking tokenism, when 80-85% of faces on commercials are non-white.

It's not just the corporate videos, it's pretty much the photos on websites and the videos for products that pop up in the adverts.

They are all youngish and attractive, and although there is ethnic diversity, there is only ethnic diversity within the young attractive people.

Where I do see people who look more like me is in promotional material for elderly or retired people, only the people look a darn sight more attractive, and generally, they represent a largely white demographic

**attractive meaning healthy, fit and slim. My shorthand and sorry if it is clumsy because I'm well aware that you can be attractive if unwell, with a disabilty, or overweight

On the corporate advertising point, most companies have no trouble attracting white applicants so it follows that their promotional material would be aimed at the demographic they do not attract.

If they do not do this, they miss out on talent because people's feelings matter in regards to the jobs they choose to apply for and stick with and largely homogenous organisations can end up being passively hostile which affects retention.

I've worked in financial services for over a decade at this point and I've genuinely never been on a team with another black person.

That is until I landed the role I started a couple of months ago, which had one other black new joiner. My first day in the office I was introduced to a member senior management who said she'd come find me later for a catch-up. No more than 2 hours later, she walks straight up to the only other black person in the vicinity and addresses them as if they were me. We look different, sound different and likely have something in the region of 10 years separating our ages.

If I get a message on LinkedIn from another recruiter, these are the sorts of incidents that will stick in my mind and I will prioritise workplaces where I believe that such things will not happen. In theory, these will be the ones attempting to build more diverse workplaces.

And hopefully you explained to your DS that this was a very belated attempt to combat the massive over representation of white familes up to this point? And it's not as though there are no white families on TV!!

I think I was well into my 40s before I saw any TV portrayal of a family like mine. Your DS will doubtless see one tomorrow.

@ToiletPoster2 I was visiting an office I'm not based in, and I was asked how my father was. Somewhat bemused (as a stranger asking about a random relative in a workplace setting is a rather odd question) I replied that he was fine and did they know him? Turned out another person who (I assume) looked the same ethnicity as me had visited the office a couple of week's previously and they had made the assumption that we must be related.

Why are people analysing and counting the amount of Bame/poc/minorities, they are seeing on TV?
Why are you not actually listening to what they are advertising or promoting?
Why again is there a discussion where race and sex become intwined?
As a woman I feel I am represented in all walks of the western world good and bad.
As a white human I feel I am represented in all walks of the western world, good and bad.
Black women are not
Black men are not
Asian women are not
Asian men are not
Jewish people are not.
Muslims are not.
To say otherwise is just really insincere.

OP you are aware that just because you have a disability it doesn't mean you aren't young, slim and attractive?

I've worked with people who have had kidney issues. They were young, slim and attractive and unless you spoke to them you wouldn't realise they were on dialysis.

I know and have known plenty of deaf people throughout my life. Some are or were at some point young slim and attractive. Not all wear massive or any hearing aids.

Yesterday I was reading an article which had two young slim, attractive white blonde women in it. They both had colonoscopy bags.

Absolutely. I’d like to see hearing aid wearers who aren’t all under 7 or over 70.

I think there is definitely an effort at the moment in different types of advertising or television etc to try and show diversity. But it can sometimes miss the mark.

Part of the problem is that the focus tends to be on visible diversity which is natural in images but isn't ever going to be representative, and I think there is to some extent a hierarchy of "good" kinds of diversity that gets shown.

There is kind of an over-representation of ethnic diversity in some settings, advertising can be a major one. In some cases it's logical based on the goal of the advertisement or other representation, but in other cases it's just performative attempts to look right on. The biggest downside is it means that "non-diverse" actors or models may be relatively less likely to get work. I'm not sure it will last, though, as I think people may become a little cynical about it.

‘Mild’ hearing impairment is still officially a disability. Even at this level it can still affect your social skills and change the way you process language; it can also make you tire more easily as it’s hard work for your brain filling in the gaps. Quite a lot of young children who have this level of hearing impairment before their language starts to emerge will require speech and language therapy and may not socialise quite as easily as those with normal hearing. There is really no such thing as ‘mild’ hearing loss.

We’ve been talking about the sudden change in the TV adverts too. I thought it was just us as we live in an area which is very much white. So yes was very noticeable to us as we don’t ever see any black people unless we travel to London for example.
So yes, instead of watching the actual advert, we have been counting and noticing this new phenomenon. As another poster says we were bemused by the number of black African people, as there are far more Asian people in this country and very few of those people are represented.

The other thing we have noticed is that when the advert has a white family or a white couple it invariably an American or European advert.

Well the advertisers have certainly got us all talking about ethnicity in this country, I think they probably are focusing on advertising their wares to Londoners as that’s where their head offices are.

I think there is an over representation of those from a BAME background at advert level, especially compared to the actual make up of ethnicities in this country
I think we need this given that until a few years ago there was absolutely no representation whatsoever.
I worry about people who complain about this.

Agree about hearing impairment absolutely being a disability, and the man mentioned in your post (OP) could have caused a stink if he was so inclined. The company failed to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate his hearing loss and were therefore discriminating against him on the grounds of his disability.

Agree 100%. Diversity shouldn't mean if you are not a minority you supply be hidden away. I think the meaning of the word minority has been lost. I don't care what people say about what that makes me, I actually find some advert runs offensive and patronising. I am British I am white. I didn't choose it, god knows I would rather be born into a more civilised country but I am stuck with it. It doesn't mean I should be excluded.

Agree 100%. Diversity shouldn't mean if you are not a minority you supply be hidden away. I think the meaning of the word minority has been lost.

I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of adverts/promotional material. They are not meant to reflect the current makeup of people from different backgrounds, but the aspirational makeup. There is no point a company that is 99% white putting out a recruitment video featuring 99% white people. They are not the people they are trying to recruit. Equally if a company wants more black people to buy their product, then they put black people in their advert - doesn't matter that black people are minority group taken in the population as a whole.

I'm not sure what your definition of "minority" is, but my definition of "majority" is the "main group" i.e. the ones it is really quite hard to "hide away". I doubt very much that you are "excluded" from anything.

I think the increase in mixed families is representative of changes in general. When I was little the only people in our town who'd qualify as BAME were the Chinese family that had the takeaway. So all white commercials would reflect most of us outside the big cities. Nowadays lots more BAME people around so ads reflect that.

A lot of the corporate type productions are as much about box ticking so they can be seen to be inclusive even if it doesn't reflect the actual business.