Square One Law: Diversity in Leadership

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ED and I – everyone’s at it. But what does it actually mean? Having a policy? Recruiting some people
from marginalised communities? Organising a Pride celebration?


To some, yes, all of the above. To me, it is so much more. It isn’t tokensism. It isn’t about box ticking.
It is about recognising that difference is a good thing and making active steps to ensure your
organisation is inclusive of and welcoming to all, because of, not in spite of, the differences they
bring. It’s about equity, not equality – treat everyone equally and you will perpetuate the gaps in
opportunity. Think about it. If a tall person and a short person are side by side at a concert and the
short person can’t see, but you have a ‘treat everyone equally’ mantra – you give each the same box
to stand on. The short person still can’t see and the tall person has an even better a view. What they
need are different sized boxes that give each the same view – that is equity.


Inclusivity initiatives are often treated as novelties or marketing opportunities (think of all the virtue
signalling that surrounds International Women’s Day!) and billed as benefits for teams. They aren’t.
They are essential adjustments that businesses need to make if they truly want diversity. And often
leadership are guilty of not walking the talk.


Diversity and inclusion, with the aim of creating equity at a leadership level is not only the right thing
to do. It makes business sense. Imagine a world where the board room is full of dynamic chat, with
different perspectives providing different ideas and view points. Imagine how well road tested your
strategies would be. Imagine how confident you would be that the decisions you made were robust.
That’s what diversity in leadership can bring.


But often it is the leadership team itself that lacks diversity. History and institutionalised prejudice
means that typically boards are predominantly male, white, cis gender, neurotypical, straight people
without disabilities. I was horrified to read recently that in the North East there are more men called
Peter on boards than there are women of any name. So the majority of companies are being run by
people who all broadly have the same characteristics and by default are likely to think in a similar
way. What you have is an echo chamber, where challenge is rare and new ideas are scant. What you
have is group think and a lack of innovation.


To address the problem you need to be prepared to be fearless in your pursuit of diversity. You
cannot have diversity of thought and diversity in leadership without an effective inclusion strategy
and that’s where you need to start. Everyone in leadership needs to acknowledge their privilege and
the unconscious bias that that brings and boards as a whole need to examine carefully the make up
of their boards to identify where representation is lacking.


Square One Law is a business with around 65 people. We will never have representation of all of the
protected characteristics plus the variances that intersectionality brings. But that does not mean
that we simply say ‘oh well we don’t need to deal with that issue as we don’t have any people with
that characteristic’. What we must do is engage with those who do have those characteristics and
perspectives to design a workplace that is welcoming and inclusive. We need to pay particular
attention where we have a lack of representation at a senior level in order to ensure we take
account of the needs and perspectives of others when we make decisions. We can do this by
engaging with the rest of the team, but also by building alliances and relationships with other
communities outside the firm.


We also look at how we run decision making forums – who has say over what happens in the
business? I firmly believe that you will get better buy in if the team feel that they have had the
opportunity to contribute to a discussion and have their voices heard when you make decisions as a
leader. But you need to create a psychologically safe environment where leaders’ voices don’t
dominate, healthy conflict and challenge is welcome and leaders show vulnerability and acceptance
that they don’t have all the answers. That’s all much easier said than done, but with a bit of effort
and creativity you can do it. There are loads of books out there on creating a psychologically safe
workplace and how to embrace vulnerability as a leader and that’s a good place for anyone
interested in going on this journey to start. It all begins with trust and that is never a given – it’s
earned and leaders need to earn their teams trust for any ED and I programme to be successful

The Future of Business Development – Diversity and Inclusion

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Business Development, Diversity and Inclusion – Di Keller, strategic equality, diversity and inclusion lead at Karbon Homes

 

Karbon Homes’ strategic equality, diversity and inclusion lead, Di Keller, discusses the growing importance of people’s relationships with the businesses they work with or buy from. There’s a far sharper lens on how you conduct yourself, and businesses have standards to live up to in order to gain support and build a positive reputation. There’s therefore no doubt that equality, diversity and inclusion have become an essential part of business development, and they are poised to grow even more important in the future.

 

The past two years have seen dramatic changes in society, bringing into the spotlight some of the inequalities that have been in existence for decades. In particular, the murder of George Floyd and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests have advanced the conversation about ethnicity in the same way that the #MeToo movement raised the profile of sexual harassment. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought new ways of working for many, while also highlighting the plight of inequalities. Those in lower-paid jobs have been more at risk of furlough or job loss, women have been impacted more than men regarding employment, and those already vulnerable or from our ethnically diverse communities have been disproportionately affected from a health perspective.

As a society, we are becoming more diverse and more aware of diversity. That includes our customers and our colleagues. If you haven’t got diversity and inclusion in your business strategy, then you are missing out on a golden opportunity, and it is those who embrace this opportunity that will see success in the future of business development.

 

Financial

The financial benefits of diversity and inclusion have been long discussed, since the publication of McKinseys ‘Diversity Matters’ in 2015, which showed that businesses that are more diverse have demonstrated improvements on the bottom line.

“Diversity brings discussion, challenge and ultimately innovation.”

So why does it make a difference? Diversity brings discussion, challenge, and ultimately from that, innovation. For example, people that think differently, have different cultural experiences, and different abilities, will all view a challenge in different ways, as opposed to a group of people that have had a similar path of education, live in a similar area, and are of the same gender. It’s not always easy to see when you’re in the situation, as those in homogenous groups will all agree with each other and therefore believe they have a great solution.

A report by Lord Davies in 2015 endorsed this approach to diverse thinking by calling for businesses to increase the number of women on boards. Having diversity in senior roles improves decision-making. In previous generations, the societal norms of men going out to work and women staying at home with the family have created a pattern of male leadership teams. When women become leaders and part of those teams, they provide a different set of skills, perspectives, and, importantly, structural and cultural differences that drive effective solutions.

 

Reputational

The potential damage to the reputation of a business can also have a financial impact, whether that is from loss of business if your products or services are non-inclusive, or, when a business gets it really wrong, legal implications, costs of tribunals, and attentiongrabbing headlines where organisations have treated either a customer or colleague in the wrong way. Some of the leading names in fashion and beauty have suffered extreme fallout from their intercultural incompetence over recent years. Having more diverse teams involved in their marketing may have avoided or minimised the risks. This isn’t just about global companies – our own region is multicultural, so this needs to be a consideration.

A poor reputation often correlates with increased costs for hiring and retention, which impacts operating margins and prevents higher returns.

Looking after your reputation as a business isn’t about ticking boxes or being politically correct. As awareness is raised in society and knowledge increases throughout the generations, businesses have to be aware of the complexities that diversity can bring, and that doing the right thing makes good business sense.

 

People-focussed

Our communities and business users are becoming more diverse. If businesses continue to work in the way they always have, their products and services will become less relevant, and leave the door open for more future-focussed businesses to accelerate and develop. Understanding the profile of your customer will help you to develop your products and services and make you stand out from the competitors and win market share. Creating a product or service that is mindful of the customer will bring loyalty from your customer base, improve your reputation, and, ultimately, the bottom line. We are starting to see more organisations have a person-centric approach to their products and business development as opposed to chasing the sales revenue in isolation.

A great example of this is shared in the book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Design for Men. Some of the examples in the book demonstrate that not considering diversity actually costs lives. For example, the research in the book by Caroline Criado Perez argues that women are 17% more likely to die in car crashes than men. This is because the passenger seat is the only seat that is commonly tested with a female crash-test dummy, with the male crash-test dummy still being the standard for the driver’s seat.

This isn’t just limited to gender, there are as many examples for those who fall into the minority groups in some way.

 

Talent pool

And, last but not least, if you are successful as a business, demonstrating diversity in your leadership, improving your reputation, and being people-centric in your products and services, people will want to work for you and stay loyal.

Job site Glassdoor report that a diverse workforce is an important factor for 76% of job seekers and employees when evaluating companies and job offers.

The headlines of talent and skills shortages and the great resignation have been all too familiar since the pandemic. People are reviewing who they work for and are wanting more from their job in terms of flexibility, security, and worklife balance. We have new jobs and industries being created, for example, the Net Zero Strategy claims it will support up to 440,000 jobs by 2030, but achieving this depends on having a skilled green workforce in the economy to deliver these. MI5 are now looking to tech geniuses to help them with their cyber security. Businesses that are forward-thinking and using skills programmes to develop their future workforce are building skills from within rather than waiting for someone to be ready now. This isn’t the only talent we have been missing out on, however. For years, the biased approach to our recruitment, terms, conditions and working practices have excluded so many people, but the flexibility we have seen during the pandemic has highlighted how successful organisations can be with flexible approaches to working. People do not need to be based in an office or constantly on the road to do business; they can do good business from a place that works for them.

“A diverse workforce is an important factor for 76% of job seekers and employees.”

Diverse businesses are better places to work; they make better decisions, have a more positive profile in the community, and earn greater respect in the marketplace. These and other factors generally result in greater financial returns. Having a diverse and inclusive business makes good business sense.

 

You can read the full Future of Business Development Report here.

Tackling the gender divide in STEM

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In the UK, women account for only 24% of the core STEM workforce It’s no surprise to know that the number of women taking STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) roles is disproportionately low, but why? Lyndsey Britton-Lee of 50:50 Future explains.

The issue is a multi-faceted one. One of the biggest problems we come across at 50:50 Future is in recruitment and there are lots of practical strategies and practices we can put in place to ensure we attract a wider candidate pool – however, it’s not just down to recruitment it’s also about retention & building inclusive cultures. Despite many women obtaining STEM degrees, few continue to work in the field in which they qualified, which is where we start to see a ‘leaky pipeline’. Retention needs not only greater attention but also breaking down some of the entrenched biases in the industry. Sexual harassment and bullying have forced many women out of STEM and further barriers include bias during the hiring process, difficulties reintegrating following a career break, and women’s low confidence in their abilities despite their accomplishments, all of which can hinder career progression.

More emphasis needs to be placed on promoting STEM as a welcoming and inclusive sector, workplaces in this industry must view Diversity and Inclusion as a business critical strategy and run it through the veins of their organisation as they would any other core business strategy, such as sales. Many businesses don’t know where or how to start but even the smallest changes can make a big difference. At 50:50 Future we always recommend taking a holistic approach to your D&I strategy rather than one-off initiatives in silos across the business.

However, the problem starts way before the workplace in the way biases and gender stereotyping shape our children’s perception of the world and their place within it according to their gender. 

At an early age, boys are four times as likely to want to become engineers as girls

Research shows that gender stereotypes result in girls, by the age of six, avoiding subjects they view as requiring them to be “really, really smart”

The assumptions we make about boys and girls may be conscious or unconscious and can result in our young people being treated differently or offered different opportunities based on their gender. Gender stereotypes shape self-perception, attitudes to relationships and influence participation in the world of work. An understanding of gendered roles, for example, is evident as early as age four.

These misperceptions have a strong influence over what young people believe is for them or not and can be an extremely harmful barrier to their potential if they aren’t challenged effectively or regularly.

‘It feels like I have to like pink and play with dolls and I can’t like blue and play with cars.’ (Girl, 9-10)

‘I feel like people underestimate girls. When I tell people I study physics they think I’m joking because I don’t look like a person who would do that apparently. It annoys and frustrates me. It’s weird because girls can also be engineers.’ (Girl, 15-16)

Through my involvement with the Institute of Physics on Improving Gender Balance in secondary schools,  we have seen first-hand the harmful effect of these influences in specific subjects and interests for girls and for boys, which heavily impacts on theirlife choices and careers. This then leads to small numbers of women choosing STEM subjects and pursuing careers in this field as well as men in caring professions as a counter balance, for example.

We can help break down these barriers with our future workforce, by;

  • Reflecting on our own unconscious biases
  • Role modelling equality
  • Encourage children / young people to participate in a range of activities
  • Be a conscientious consumer
  • Don’t highlight gender in the way you talk when it’s not relevant
  • Be willing to question assumptions children make about gender

There is a lot of work still to be done and progress is slow even though the benefits of diverse teams are a no brainer! STEM is at the forefront of innovation and we are currently in an echo chamber – a team of like-minded engineers, mathematicians or scientists, all with the same backgrounds and who have faced similar challenges, will not be as effective as a team with diverse ways of thinking. A homogenous workforce creates homogenous solutions that are most likely only relevant to people within their social and cultural group.

85% of large global enterprises believe that workforce diversity is critical in driving innovation

Organisations with above average gender diversity and levels of employee engagement outperform companies with below average diversity and engagement by 46% to 58%

Companies with more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues due to innovation

To become more inclusive in your workplace you can start by;

  • Awareness & Education – a cohesive approach to D&I is invaluable in any organisation to get everyone confident about the subject and on the same page. It’s everyone’s responsibility to learn about others’ challenges and how we can become better allies.
  • Rewind, Review & Revise – take a fresh look at your policies, practices and recruitment process to see what you can do differently. Using inclusive language, imagery and formatting in your job ads, social media, marketing and website is a good starting point.
  • Authentic & Aligned – make sure your D&I agenda is owned at the top with a bottom up approach and is holistic across the whole organisation. Aligning your strategy to your values and embedding it into your cultural DNA will make it authentic and can really impact your organisational performance and bottom line.

Lyndsey Britton-Lee

Co-founder, 50:50 Future Ltd

If you would like some free guidance on how to become more inclusive you can book in time with our 50:50 consultants here.

https://5050future.co.uk/

Sources;

Royal Academy of Engineering

Unlimited Potential | Report of the Commission on Gender Stereotypes in Early Childhood

https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/globalassets/docs-and-resources/research-and-campaigns/girls-attitudes-survey-2020.pdf

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110713006204/en/Forbes-Insights-Study-Identifies-Strong-Link-Diverse

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

Chamber diversity survey results revealed

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North East England Chamber of Commerce has concluded the results of the survey into business attitudes within the region towards diversity, inclusion, and discrimination. 

The information gathered has been encouraging, and although there appears to be uncertainty around what discrimination looks and feels like, within the changing landscape of the region business community, the survey also revealed a great appetite to learn ways in which businesses can promote diversity and learn from best practices.  

The survey asked how business owners felt they encouraged an inclusive culture within their workplace and many of the respondents replied they would benefit from race equality training and practical ways of promoting positive action. 

Nagma Ebanks-Beni MBE (Prima Cheese), Chair, Chamber Racial, Ethnicity and Discrimination (RED) Commission said: “We were really pleased that our main findings within this survey showed a great enthusiasm to be inclusive within our region. People reported they were keen to offer opportunities and to successfully recruit a more diverse workforce but were unclear about how to go about it and apply the right focus to successfully utilise, grow, and retain people from black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds. 

“Our job in the Chamber RED commission now is to help ensure people get the resources they need to recruit, develop and encourage all their employees, promote racial equality and build a fairer environment for everyone, no matter their heritage. We need businesses to grow their knowledge about race, racism, discrimination, and inclusivity so they don’t do something as a one off and think the job is done.  Being truly inclusive is an on-going approach by addressing attitudes and behaviour that are barriers to achieving a genuine solution for combined success.” 

Survey respondents identified one of the main challenges is not knowing the appropriate terminology to use for people from ethnic minorities, especially in relation to diversity and discrimination which has resulted in an ambition to have the right resources and training in terms of HR and legal knowledge to tackle racism and discrimination. There was also the suggestion that the region needed a forum for people of different ethnicities to engage in candid discussion on what could be done and to help promote positive examples of business success for the people that live, work, and contribute to our region. 

Aneela Ali, regional commercial strategy manager for LNER in the North East, is also a member of the Chamber’s RED Commission.  She said: “There is a lot of work to be done in our region to become truly inclusive and support everyone’s career development, no matter what ethnic background they have.  However, the findings from the Chamber research on the appetite of businesspeople to improve diversity is really heartening. We need to have everyone reaching their potential if we are going to truly level up the North East with the rest of the country.” 

Companies who responded to the survey also had suggested they would welcome a database of potential employees from diverse backgrounds, advice on overcoming unconscious bias and information on different cultures and religions. 

The Chamber RED commission is using the information to provide a toolkit for businesses on everything from how to become more diverse and inclusive as well as setting out the proven benefits to the bottom line of a business which employs people from a range of ethnic backgrounds.