BCLP hosted our first conference post lock down. The conference was based on the Maturity Matrix and recent findings, the conference had key speakers representing leadership, including Paul Plewman, CEO of Macquarie EMEA, James Clarry, Chief Operating Officer for the Wealth Businesses of NatWest Group and James Tatum, Chief Operating Officer, Content and Studios at Paramount UK, among many others who are keen to progress ethnicity inclusion within their organisations.
Segun Osuntokun, Ethnicity Awards Inspirational Leader Winner 2021 and Partner in Charge, UK, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) said: “BCLP is proud to host the Investing in Ethnicity Conference 2022. It is great that we are able to get together in person this year to discuss issues concerning race and ethnicity in the workplace which are now, perhaps more than ever, of critical importance to the sustainability of businesses.”
Key Findings
Since the beginning, Investing in Ethnicity has been about networking, sharing ideas and collaboration. The conference was a key example of how effective and valuable working together on this agenda really is. The below gives highlights and feedback from the conference.
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OPENING SESSION
The opening session introduced the Matrix, our six key areas of focus, and a discussion on the current state of business in the UK in terms of Ethnicity Inclusion. Guest Speakers for this session were Segun Osuntokun from BCLP, Paul Plewman from Macquarie, and Dr Yvonne Thompson CBE.
We had a number of interactive slides from the session with questions answered by the audience:
Slide 1: What did the audience want to find out more about?
We asked participants in a multiple choice poll what areas they were most interested in. Nearly 60% of the audience wanted to learn more about representation and retention (followed by Culture & inclusion – 38%, Data – 32%, Strategy – 24%, Allyship – 19%, Conversations & engagement – 16%)
What are the biggest barriers organisations are facing?
We asked the audience to tell us what the biggest barriers the organisation faced around ethnicity inclusion. The results are in the below word cloud, but as you can see Retention, Culture and Engagement are common themes.
ENSURING EQUITY SESSION
Ensuring Equity was our session covering the Employee Life Cycle and was aimed at HR professionals, recruiting managers, and DEI experts. Guest Speakers for this session were Alex Trusty from Moody’s Corporation and Shakir Khaja from Arcadis.
The objectives of this session were:
• Recruitment: How to interrupt the bias and structural processes
• Aiding belonging and improving culture
• Using equitable solutions to ensure representation at the top
We had a number of interactive slides from the session with questions answered by the audience:
What are the biggest challenges for representation?
Polling the audience showed the biggest challenges cited were Role models, Data, and Lack of appetite.
What has helped senior representation?
We polled the audience on what helped at their organisations to increase senior representation and received the following:
- Reporting that exposes the gaps
- hiring managers and senior partners
- Bad reactions to exec hires
- Transparency of data inclusive culture
- Inclusive practices – celebrating difference
- Signing the Race at Work charter
- Talent acquisition and hiring managers recognising candidate worth Culture and community
- Targets (not quotas)
- Willingness to recruit or promote someone to grow into a role
- Allyship
- Retention, specific training
- Specific programs for development
- Targets
- Targeted recruitment Pressure
- Sponsorship programmes
- Targeted recruitment
- What has helped recruitment?
- Contextual recruitment
- Finding the right partnerships
- Emerging talent, marketing campaigns, recruitment manager training
- Using diverse recruitment firms
- Early interaction
- Positive action schemes eg 10k black interns, career fairs
- Pressure (again)
- Setting goals
- School Outreach
- Geographical spread post Covid
- Willingness to invest in and grow talent Intentionally
- Targeting non-Russel Group universities
- Diverse recruiters
- Working with our communities
- Targeted recruitment
What has helped recruitment?
We polled the audience on what helped at their organisations to increase representation at the recruitment level and received the following:
- Contextual recruitment
- Finding the right partnerships
- Emerging talent, marketing campaigns, recruitment manager training
- Using diverse recruitment firms
- Early interaction
- Positive action schemes eg 10k black interns, career fairs
- Pressure (again)
- Setting goals
- School Outreach
- Geographical spread post Covid
- Willingness to invest in and grow talent
- Intentionally Targeting non Russel Group universities
- Diverse recruiters
- Working with our communities
- Targeted recruitment
TRANSFORMING ORGANISATIONS FROM THE TOP DOWN
Transforming Organisations from the Top Down was our session covering Leadership and Commitment and was aimed at HR professionals, recruiting managers, and DEI experts. Guest Speakers for this session were Dan Watkins from BNY Mellon and James Tatam from Paramount.
The objectives of this session were:
• How to ensure accountability at the top
• How to speak about race from a leadership perspective
• Board and executive sponsors roles in champion ethnic inclusion?
We had a number of interactive slides from the session with questions answered by the audience:
What are the biggest barriers (in one word)?
Polling the audience showed the biggest challenges cited were Fear, Understanding, and Lack of Diverse Leadership.
ENGAGING ALLIES AND CHANGING CULTURE
Engaging Allies and Changing Culture was our session addressing organisational Culture & Inclusion and was aimed at everyone. Guest Speakers for this session were James Clarry from Coutts and Sharniya Ferdinand from NatWest Group.
The objectives of this session were:
• What are the barriers within organisational culture for ethnic diverse employees
• How to ensure the everyone is on board in challenging non-inclusive behaviours
• The role of people managers in creating thriving and diverse teams
We had a number of interactive slides from the session with questions answered by the audience:
What is being an ally to you?
We polled the audience on what allyship looks like to them, and had the following responses:
- Allyship should be conferred not self-appointed
- Someone who doesn’t talk about their friend or someone they’re sexually attracted to to prove why they are an ally
- Leveraging your power for the benefit of the minoritised
- Speaking up
- Amplifying the experiences of the minoritised
- Is “banter” resistant
- Will challenge anyone to be better and more human
- Sharing and comparing lived experience
- Making a difference to underrepresented groups
- Addressing inequalities faced by others.
- Being approachable to the subject
- Allies being self aware enough to leverage their advantages for improving outcomes for those disadvantaged in some way
- Challenging
- Won’t try and support others for their own ego or personal image
- Authenticity
- Highlighting performative vs true Allyship
- Showing up when no one is watching
- Is comfortable being uncomfortable
- Acknowledging their privilege
- Fixing the problem together
- Someone who naturally supports others, just does it
- Being an upstander and not a bystander
- Amplify your voice where you may not have an opportunity
- Not being afraid to learn from mistakes
- Facing the fear
- Empathy, speaking up
- Someone who has your back
- Challenging inappropriate behaviour/language when the minority is not in the room!
- Walking alongside another person and their experiences
- Understanding and supporting
- Acknowledgement
- Majority supporting minority
- Will go against the grain
- Showing up
- Being your voice & cheerleader for change
- Supporting the individual in the way they need/want
- Leadership in action
- Listening
- Sponsorship
- Advocacy
- Taking risks for those who are unable
- Listening and taking action
- Education
- Empathy
- Being bold and brave to learn
- Sharing the burden
- Not worried to rock the boat
- A voice in the business
- Using my platform to amplify voices not heard
- Active support
- An advocate
- Empathy in action
- Present
- Advocacy
- Consistency
- Supportive
How do we engage allies?
We polled the audience on what they thought the best way to engage allies was and received the following:
- Create a space for conversation about lived experiences to help explain why it’s important
- Provide time and space outside of everyday activities to learn
- Comms strategy that looks at stages of awareness
- Reverse mentoring
- Asking them to explain the why
- Providing safe space and opportunity to learn/ train on how they can support colleagues from minority backgrounds
- The why, why it is important
- We have to get better at sharing the tangible values of diverse teams and remove the tick box approach
- Getting people to understand what an ally is, how to be one and the impact of an ally
- We have a programme that’s a 15 mins online module and a 1.5 hour face to face session that build on demonstrating and understanding allyship
- Make it relatable
- Changing the mindset of someone who may have thought something from a young age
- Make it ok to get it wrong sometimes
- Recognise allyship in performance review
- Training/Education, senior leadership accountability and ownership
- Allow them dedicated time in their schedule
- Passion
- Profit
- Invitation after education sessions
- ERGs
- Explain how it benefits everyone
- This is the million dollar question
DATA AND HOW ORGANISATIONS ARE USING IT
Data and How Organisations are Using It was our session addressing Policy & Data and was aimed at data specialists, HR and DEI professionals. Guest Speaker for this session was Rowan Aderyn from Lloyds Banking Group.
The session objectives were to discuss:
• Effective communication tips to ensure good disclosure rates
• How to use data effectively
• Aligning to the new census data
We had a number of interactive slides from the session with questions answered by the audience:
Does your company collect and use Ethnicity data?
To get the session started, Rowan asked the participants to let them know where their organisations were on their data collections journeys:
What is your role in relation to data?
We also wanted to gauge what role the audience had in the data collection process at their organisations:
What are the biggest challenges in data collection?
We also wanted to gauge what some of the biggest challenges in data collection are for organisations. Overwhelmingly, responded cited Trust and Engagement as the biggest obstacles.
FUTURE PROOF YOUR ORGANISATION
Our closing session was on External Impact and also aimed at everyone. Guest Speakers for this session were Geoffrey Williams from Burberry, Lydia Amoah, and Christopher Kenna from Brand Advance. The discussion was aimed at identifying ways in which you can ensure your organisation is effective, authentic, and having a positive impact.
We had a number of interactive slides from the session with questions answered by the audience:
How important do you think having purpose behind your brand and be authentic?
We polled the audience on how important brand purpose was and unsurprisingly, 97% felt it was Very Important.
How often do organisations fail to do this?
Following on from the previous question, however, 58% of the participants felt that Very Often, organisations fail to be authentic.
What can organisations do to engage customers and clients?
We polled the audience on what organisations can be doing to engage their customers and clients in order to be more authentic in purpose and had the following responses:
- Show our DEI commitment by having employees from diverse backgrounds serve our clients/ customers who are from diverse ethnic backgrounds too
- Ask them what they want. Invite regular 360 feedback. “Not about us, without us”
- Focus on being inclusive of the full diversity of your client base
- Ask them. Never assume
- Bring them along our diversity, equity and inclusion journey
- Deliver consistent and excellent service
- Technology, user experience feedback acted on
- Clear values that drive an authentic brand
- More diverse senior leaders
- Listen to customers
- Challenge the norm
- Be forward thinking
- Be authentic with advertising, products and services that represent communities they are based in.
- Educate everyone in their scope
- Partner with organisations that are purpose driven and not just about shinty tokens
- Talk about relevant issues without fear of being “too political”
- Have the company represent their customers and clients (what does your company look like)
- Talk honestly – no spin
- Give them a seat at the table
- Have people of colour on strategy leadership boards
- Get their feedback and act on it
- Think big, not who I employ, who I inspire! Diverse marketing – inclusive language
- Nike. Just do it.
- Representation
- Understand their drivers ?!
- Engage with those ‘on the ground’
- Show up
- Listen
Video Highlights
We asked our attendees to speak on a few topics
