The first thing I do every morning, much to the annoyance of my long suffering husband is pick up my mobile phone and look at the twitter chat. No cup of tea or coffee before seeing what has happened in the world in the six hours since I last looked at my phone.
This morning was no different and the tweet that caught my eye was one with an article from
The Guardian about Lenny Henry. I remember meeting Lenny many years ago but that is an entirely different story!
The article was about how as a black man in television, particularly behind the scenes in writing, directing and producing, he was a very visible minority. He said that for every 100 plays, films and documentaries made only three are produced by black and minority ethnic (BME) people.
The statistics are the same in the world football, the judiciary, health, the police, the list is endless. At the very top of organisations there are predominantly white people, more females than there used to be but mostly all white. Lenny talks about how he is often the only black person in the room; I certainly know how that feels.
The issue that I want to bring to the fore in this blog is the thinking that goes behind these stark and frankly shameful statistics, the statement that I hear time and time again to justify these figures is ‘We must employ the right person for the job’ OK, so let’s examine that statement in more depth.
There are 60 million people in this country and approximately 18% of them are from BME backgrounds nearly 11 million people, yet at the top of all the institutions in this country there are usually a handful, in most cases less than double figures of people from BME backgrounds. In the case of the health service 20% of the workforce is from BME backgrounds yet the figure for senior leaders stands at 7%.
This means one of two things. That the majority of BME people quite simply are not up to scratch in terms of education, experience, talent or drive compared to their white counterparts or there is something more dark and sinister going on in our society that does not recognise people of colour as having the same level of skills or talent as their white counterparts. When I point out this simple fact to people, they will often become defensive and counter my comments with, ‘well do they apply for the jobs?’ On the whole, BME people apply for roles in equal numbers to their white counterparts, and the evidence is that they are equally likely to be shortlisted. In London trusts more than 60% of shortlisted applicants are from BME backgrounds, surely this is evidence that they have the required skills and experience to do the job, however when it comes to interviews they are often not deemed to be the right people for the job. We know that across the board in our NHS you are 1.60 times more likely to be appointed if you are from a white background than if you are from a BME one. The issue for many BME people is that the opportunities to advance are limited, access to mentors, sponsors, stretch assignments and secondments are not always available therefore the possibility of jumping bands is difficult. Let me give you an example.
Let’s call it NHS trust A.
Trust A is a district general hospital, serving a mostly white population in a rural part of the country. 2% of the population are from BME backgrounds yet in the trust 16% of the workforce are from BME backgrounds.
The slide below shows clearly the pipeline issue, the trust only has one member of staff at band 8b.
Being the right person for the job is about having the experience to perform at the required level, if the pipeline for BME staff is not there clearly equity will not be enabled.
Recently, a new report came out, highlighting the fact that there is not one BME person out of 240 on the parole board .
The chair of the parole board Caroline Corby said, “We had a campaign to recruit 100 Parole Board members in 2016 and 2017 tried to address the shortfall, but it had not attracted enough ethnic minority candidates and a disproportionate number of those who did apply failed to get through the selection procedures.
The design and development of selection processes are invariably done by a non-diverse group of people, developed in a preconceived ‘image’ of what good looks like from their perspective and their world view and the rest of us have to strive to reach that standard and are often, like the people that applied to join the parole board found wanting, thus perpetuating the myth of their inferiority.
Being the director of the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) means I meet lots of senior people in the NHS and I often hear the words, “First and foremost Yvonne, we need the right person for the job” this statement does not take into account that many of our white, often middle class peers have inbuilt and often invisible advantages to succeed over and above their BME counterparts. The playing field is not level, white people have broader and more powerful networks of which there are principally three types, social, knowledge/technical and hierarchical. If you are not inducted into these often invisible networks you are at a massive disadvantage and you might not even know it. Hence BME people saying, ‘I want to be treated like everyone else’ not knowing that everyone else is receiving favourable treatment through their networks. It truly brings home the meaning of; it’s not what you know, but who’.
We have been working with organisations and understand a lot more about what works in order to improve race equality and the pipeline. With regards to recruitment, panels can be made more diverse, the infamous ‘Rooney Rule’ can be employed and group interviews can take place as this has been proven to show a more diverse group of people are selected.
I believe if we continue to do what we have always done and say what we have always said, without fully understanding the complexity of the issues behind race inequality, we will continue to have the ‘right people for the job’ and invariably those people will be white.
Yvonne Coghill 