Week 4: Barriers to diversity and inclusion

Introduction

Over the last two weeks you have looked at a range of the Equality Act’s protected characteristics, exploring examples of discrimination and learning about key issues, recent cases and appropriate terminology.

You were also introduced to the impact of social capital on inclusion, and the concept of intersectionality, when a single individual has several diversity characteristics.

This week, you’ll pick up on some of the issues raised in more detail. You’ll explore challenges that might present barriers to the diversity you are aiming to facilitate, such as unconscious bias or fear of saying the wrong thing.

Start this week by watching some of our employers explain the value of listening to and learning from others, and owning the uncertainty you might feel.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1: Introduction to Week 4

Show transcript | Hide transcript

Transcript: Video 1: Introduction to Week 4

Sophie Washington

Nervousness about talking about diversity and inclusion is completely understandable. Nobody wants to offend or upset anyone by accident. And sometimes it can be really difficult to find the correct language to use.

I think the most important thing to remember is that knowledge is power. And actually learning everything you can, speaking to people, finding their preferences, and generally speaking, if you approach people in the right way, even if you may use the wrong term, if you learn from that, most people won’t get offended or upset. They’ll be pleased to actually help you learn to do better for the future.

Craig Pemblington: Firstly, I’d say that feeling of nervousness is really natural and to embrace it a little bit, but I’d also suggest that they own it. And it’s OK to recognise that you have a challenge around diversity and inclusion in your organisation. And actually, a more authentic and honest approach to that is usually the best starting point, because what a lot of organisations might try to do is something that’s fairly tokenistic, so finding people within an organisation who are more representative but they’re a very small minority and then making that a focus point of recruitment campaigns and things. And actually, it’s not genuine. And I think that in terms of recruitment, but also in terms of customers, people recognise genuine authenticity.

So my thoughts are, own it and be brave. One of the ways in which we had to be really brave was that we tinkered a lot with our recruitment and selection process. But actually, we decided we wanted to run a positive action scheme, we had a major problem with not getting enough talent from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic backgrounds, and we were worried. We were worried about legal ramifications, how do you hold the line between positive action and positive discrimination? And what we decided to do, ultimately, was to go for it and seek some relatively inexpensive advice about what we could and couldn’t say and do and just be brave and go out there and do it. And actually, we were respected more for that, and the results have been that, three years down the line, we’ve went from 7 percent BAME to 40, 4-0, percent BAME.

End transcript: Video 1: Introduction to Week 4

Download

Video 1: Introduction to Week 4

By the end of this week you will be able to:

• describe unconscious bias and the impact it can have on our approach to diversity
• reflect on other potential barriers to diversity in your workplace, including privilege and diversity fatigue
• understand the impact that your sector and location might have on diversity.

You’ll start by exploring the concept of unconscious bias and what you can do to combat it.