How I can fight racism at work #BlackLivesMatter #BeAntiRacist

The past few days have been a real rollercoaster of emotions from anger to disappointment, to sadness and grief, from honesty and care to hope and vision. We need to abolish racism, we need to completely remove it from our lives, our minds, our organisations and society, there is no doubt about that. The best time to fix this was 100 years ago, the second-best time is today!

Unfortunately, racism is not a new issue, racism has existed in organisations and societies for longer than I've been alive and it’s time we address it. This is not about rediscovering racism or raising awareness, it's about calling out racism ingrained in our societies and organisations, our families and social networks. We need to call it out on its name, we need to talk about it and remove it.

If this does not yet resonate with you, let's do a little experiment, close your eyes and...

think about the first time you have been made to feel like you don't belong and excluded. Think about the first time you have been made to feel 'less than'.

What was the context? How that made you feel? How you reacted to that? How have you tried to fix it (if you did), revolted or accepted? 

this is how black people feel every single day. more than once a day, in some of the 'good days', if I can call them that.

In other days, they get racially profiled, they experience rude and racist behaviour, they are excluded from decisions and progressions because of their colour... and this is just the light version of it if you don't lose your life on the way.

What can we do as people professionals?

A few things we can do to combat racism at work as people professionals and business leaders from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic on Forbes:

1. put in charge people who are genuinely committed to diversity and inclusion, people who have the grit, courage, and dedication to fight for a better status-quo, people who are open-minded, altruistic, and empathetic.

2. sanction racism and any type of discrimination in order to instil a culture of civility, respect, and kindness.

3. look in the mirror and realise who you are and what they don’t like as a person and organisation - then commit to finding a better way to be yourself.

All these might include simple things like:

• An immediate review of recruitment practices to identify areas for racial unconscious bias - what are our areas where we're not doing that well?
• Reinforce zero tolerance in your bullying and harassment policy - communicate this across your organisation reminding people what they should expect and reporting routes
• Review of all race-related ER cases in the last 12 months and a review if sanctions were robust enough
• Review all performance management ratings across the last 12 months to explore potential systemic racial bias. Do we overall rate the performance of people of colour less than our other employees?
• Reviewing your L&D offer to ensure you're offering inclusion behavioural change programmes not just mandatory equality act training. What are the key programmes you're delivering internally that will address racism and un/conscious bias?
• Learn more about the challenges of black people in societies and organisations (Google, read books, watch videos, listen to stories, research reports, etc) Use these to support your whole organisation to learn about the topic.
• Challenge your own behaviour. Every time you feel uncomfortable or defensive or dismissive in a conversation about race, write it down and record that moment. It’s a learning moment that you can foster to change behaviour.  
• Create a safe space for difficult conversations about race in your organisation. Support and sponsor a network for black minority ethnic people to come together and share, in a safe and supportive way, life experiences. 
• Link race diversity and inclusion practices with outcomes that matter. can everyone across the organisation have performance objectives around actively contributing to education about race, removing racism and tackling racial bias? Should this be part of the evaluation process you use in promotions?
• Regularly involve PoC in HR decision making. Ask people to have a look over your draft policies, your learning and leadership development programmes draft outlines. do they innately disadvantage black people and people of colour?
• Look at the evidence: is our organisation representative of the market we serve? are black people proportionately represented across all levels in organisations? would voluntarily completing the ethnicity pay gap reporting helps us understand where we are?
• Find a charter or standard that works well for you it might be the BITC The Race Work Charter or any other race or D&I benchmark (that has a specific race or black angle)

Updated points

• Is your supply chain sharing your values? Are the recruitment agencies you're working with able to attract a diverse talent pool and reach out to black candidates to attract them to your organisation? Are they responding with zero tolerance to any racial biased shortlisting decision from their customers?

'Where do I start'... you might wonder.

Here are some more things to inspire and support you:

1.       https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaspremuzic/2020/06/03/how-to-combat-racism-at-work/#7d96ac3329c4

2.       https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/voices/comment/hr-needs-take-lead-calling-out-racism-work

3.       https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/voices/comment/stamp-out-racism-need-learn-love-one-another

4.       https://medium.com/@AmaechiPerformance/everyday-activism-how-standing-up-to-hate-is-an-ordinary-daily-routine-f4523f2c459f

5.       [book] Diversitfy - June Sarpong

6.       [book] How To Be an Antiracist - by Ibram X. Kendi

7.       [book] Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge 

8.       [book] Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World by Layla Saad and Robin DiAngelo

9.       [book] The Clapback: Your Guide to Calling out Racist Stereotypes by Elijah Lawal 

10.    [book] White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

11.    [book] Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire – by Akala 

12.    [book] What is Race? Who are Racists? Why Does Skin Colour Matter? And Other Big Questions Hardcover – by Nikesh Shukla, Claire Heuchan 

13.    [movie] American Son on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81024100

14.    [movie series] 'Dear white people' on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80095698

15.    [movie] 13TH on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80091741

Some final thoughts, if you are still struggling and need to better connect empathy with understanding and living other people's experiences, here's a library of stories that might help -> https://play.acast.com/s/amileinmyshoes/6ba83714-9549-4002-88b7-984af706331e

I’m an idealist and I have hope that together we can remove racism from our lives and our minds. I dream of living in a society who has honesty, fairness and care at the core of it. I dream of all being equal, have our voices heard, feel supported and feel like we belong in that community. We can only do that together, we can only do that by becoming actively anti-racist regardless of the colour of our skin.

What else do you have on your list that would be useful to be added to this?

-----

I work for the CIPD, however, my writing reflects my views and thoughts and conversations I'm having with the people professionals in my network.