The Power of Privilege

The Power of Privilege

On Monday, September 12th in our Can Recruitment Crack Inequality series, Jo Major and I were joined by Holly Chapman who is the co-founder of Be Radical and Director of Recruitment and Employee Branding.

This series is designed to deliver tools and techniques that recruiters and hiring managers can implement in a way that makes sense and encourages them to think about developing inclusive and accessible recruitment processes. In this episode, we discussed privilege.

Privilege: how do we recognise it?

What is privilege?

Jo kicked us off by suggesting we need to try to understand people, privilege and its relationship with race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic influences. We must start to explore how our identity and background sometimes give us an earned advantage over another person who doesn’t share that identity, circumstances, rights, and privileges. Privilege can be fluid and evolve at different stages of our life. The instinctual response to this can be that it means wealth but even if you come from a background of social deprivation, with a basic level of state school education, you still have the privilege.

Privilege is a sliding scale

Holly described privilege as a sliding scale of building blocks. Several factors contribute to or detract from the privilege levels throughout life such as your education and socioeconomic background. An individual may not have a degree for example because they had to care for someone or faced financial challenges, it is not because they are somehow ‘less than’ others. Privilege could be as simple as growing up with two parents who went to work in a suit or coming from an area and having a specific accent. If the way you speak, for example, is perceived as not ‘palatable’, it can place you immediately on the back foot.

“It’s also about the knowledge you hold that allows you to show up in these places and be palatable, accepted or included in the way that you would hope to be.” Holly Chapman

Where do candidates deselect themselves?

Consider layers such as class system, whether someone comes from a 2-parent home or if they are neurotypical. All these factors contribute to understanding the job ad, reading through a job description and the ability to deal with a complex application process. It can simply come down to having a non-Anglo-sounding name.

“People with a non-Anglo-sounding name on average send 60% more applications than those who have an Anglo-sounding name.” Jo Major

The Cookie Cutter approach to recruitment just does not serve us. As few recruiters have faced the barriers others have, they have blind spots. Work must be done to undo historic exclusions because we are missing large proportions of society who can’t get in because of barriers and can’t progress because of unconscious bias.

Holding a safe space for others

In the ED&I space, you must be willing to take a bullet for others and be comfortable with being called out in a safe space. Holly cited a recent example where she had posted on LinkedIn that “1 in 10 people suffer from dyslexia”. In the comments, someone suggested the choice of the word ‘suffer’ may not be right and that ‘have’ was a better choice. Holly was happy to be called out and left the comment in the post because deleting it would have reduced the opportunity for others to learn.

Where’s the power in privilege? What can we do?

Having a voice at the table that isn’t censored, means advocating for someone who isn’t in the room. Conversations get contentious and trigger things with other people because it's vulnerable and uncomfortable. The default response to this feeling is “I know someone who is black/neurodivergent/gay…”. If you’ve not done the self-learning, this defensive position makes this a fractious conversation; it is down to a lack of education and confidence prompting an immediate desire to shut this down.

“It triggers what about me-ism”.

How do we help people overcome this??

What is an ally?

The role of the ally is to have these difficult conversations and shield the trauma from the people who are fighting to get into these spaces. They are most detrimentally impacted and may come to some kind of mental, physical, psychological or emotional harm because of the lack of provision they have. Use your privilege to advocate in that situation for someone with less privilege than you. It’s your responsibility as the one with more privilege to try and shield. If you’re highest on the scale, it’s your job to support backwards. Use all the building blocks of privilege to open the space for other people who don’t have that privilege. Actively step into the role of allyship and pull people up.

So, what can we authentically do to level the playing field?

• Decentralise yourself from the subject - remove yourself and focus on the people you're supporting.
• Do this work because of proximity to underrepresented groups.
• The LGBTQIA+ community don’t necessarily want a Pride Day – engage with them.
• Ask Muslim workers if would they prefer Eid off or non-alcoholic events.
• Christmas and Easter are standard - consider other religious holidays, eating into holiday allowance is automatically unequal and non-inclusive.
• Provide equity in the workplace, and ensure candidates and employees feel seen and recognised.
• Create maternity, paternity & family building benefits.
• Non-paid internships are not inclusive - not everyone can access the Bank of Mum and Dad
• Consider if someone must do their job in the office.
• How can you support fertility and menopause journeys?

Train your leaders

Passing a person over to someone without training leads to candidates entering a homogeneous environment. You can’t recruit into a workplace that has not been built for diverse individuals.

Invest in leadership training first centred around inclusion and then take action to build a better recruitment process. Training and education result in a developed set of processes, policies and procedures including onboarding that are set up to welcome diverse teams rather than hiring people hoping they’ll fix a problem or number.

Small, gradual changes level the playing field. If we can push through massive fundamental changes like IR35, why can’t we push through these changes to the recruitment process?

For more information and training, visit: https://www.inclusiverecruitmentfoundations.com/