The Fix Newsletter

WHY DEI EFFORTS ARE FAILING

Most of us like to believe that workplaces function like meritocracies but this is simply not the case. A landmark new report has revealed the extent of racism in UK workplaces and how women of color face barriers to opportunities at every stage of their career, preventing them from reaching their true potential.

Broken Ladders – published by the Runnymede Trust and Fawcett Society – documents the experiences of 2,000 women of color in workplaces across the UK. Researchers found that institutional racism is common in all sectors and in all organizations – 75% have experienced racism at work, with 27% having suffered racial slurs. The challenges of structural racism, including microaggressions, embedded bias and lack of representation exist in all institutions and have a profound effect on women of color.

The report found that workplaces “are a constant negotiation between identities and inability to progress”. Sixty one per cent of women of color have felt the need to change themselves in order to fit in at work, from the language or words they use (37%), their hairstyle (26%) and even their name (22%).

Unsurprisingly, this is having an impact on mental health, with 39% of Black and brown women saying their well-being had been affected by a lack of progression, compared to 28% of white women. These findings support a study published earlier this year that found that half of Black women in senior management have resigned ‘due to racism at work’.

The skills, abilities, and experiences of women of color should be harnessed and celebrated. Employers need to seriously consider the recommendations in the report with the aim of closing pay and progression gaps for women of color in order to retain skilled staff.

Everyone deserves a workplace where they feel like they can be themselves, and they will be valued for it. But to create this workplace we need to be clear on how inequality works, and why it is everyone’s problem to solve.

Yours,

CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE

Everyone has privilege to some degree, and the levels of privilege you have determine how much power you have. Privilege makes it easy to deny other people’s experiences of inequality and keeps us from seeing the workplace in the way others see it. Checking your privilege means understanding how workplaces may work for you in a way that they don’t for other people, which creates barriers to their advancement outside of their control.

Learn more here:

ALL TALK AND NO ACTION:

WHY DEI EFFORTS ARE FALLING SHORT

HOW TO BECOME A CO-CONSPIRATOR AT WORK

THE MYTHS THAT UNDERMINE RACIAL EQUITY AT WORK

From “We are an unbiased meritocracy” to “Advancing Black professionals will mean fewer opportunities for others,” every organization has a series of orthodoxies, or accepted ways of thinking, that it must challenge in order to truly drive racial equity. Challenging these orthodoxies is not easy. It requires empathy and vulnerability, tough conversations and constant self-reflection. It takes sustained commitment from leaders and team members, even when it is uncomfortable or unpopular - or perhaps especially when it is uncomfortable or unpopular.

HOW WOMEN OF COLOR ARE CHANGING WHAT LEADERSHIP LOOKS LIKE

One in five Americans is a woman of color, and women of color will be the majority of all women in America by 2060, according to Catalyst. These changing demographics alone won’t automatically alter the representation of leadership, where currently only 4% of C-suite leaders are women of color. “We need to expand our impressions about what a leader is supposed to look like to allow for more types of leadership to be valued and promoted,” says Deepa Purushothaman, author of The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America. “If you want to support women of color, you have to let us lead in our own ways.”

5 THINGS YOU PROBABLY HAVEN’T THOUGHT OF THATWILL HELP YOU BE MORE INCLUSIVE

The author of Inclusion on Purpose walks you through practical strategies that will help you make meaningful change on your teams.

3 WAYS ‘NICE’ TEAM LEADERS UNWITTINGLY CREATE WORKPLACE CULTURES OF EXCLUSION

One of the reasons why so little progress has been made on racial equity and inclusion is that too many professionals assume that everyone else is the problem. When a great article is posted on LinkedIn or they hear an inspiring quote, most leaders are too eager to forward it to someone who “needs” it - not recognizing that they need it. They confuse basic decency with real equity and think that simply because they voted for Obama, belong to the DEI Council or wore a Black Lives Matter t-shirt to a company event, they must be creating an oasis of inclusion. Not true.

HOW BUSINESS CAN HARDWIRE CHANGE TO DELIVER ON RACIAL JUSTICE

Two years ago, this 25 May, the murder of George Floyd – an unarmed Black man killed by a police officer in Minneapolis – sparked a global reckoning and movement for racial justice in multiple sectors, including business. More than 60 organizations across 13 industries with more than 5.5 million employees worldwide have since committed to building more equitable and just workplaces as part of the Partnering for Racial Justice in Business initiative – a global coalition led by the World Economic Forum. Now, keeping momentum needs action amid other priorities, such as COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, vying for our attention.

EQUALITY FORWARD MASTERCLASSES

We have curated a series of interactive masterclasses to enable all employees to put equality into practice and embed diversity, equity and inclusion into every aspect of working life.

Our learning series enables employees to advance their knowledge of foundational diversity and inclusion topics, understand how this shows up in their workplace and, most importantly, how to take action every day to build a workplace that works for everyone.

Transforming the behaviours, norms, and cultures in a team begins with ensuring employees are paying attention to the inequality moments that happen and taking action to manage them. As employees take action, they will begin to understand how making workplaces more inclusive and equal serves to benefit them. This is equality in action.

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