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EP7: EQUITY, What is it, and how do we deliver it? With Nicky Wright and Lyndsey Oliver
67 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of FYI, our host Sam Wakeham is joined by two incredible guests, Lyndsey Oliver and Nicky Wright who bring unique perspectives to the table about recruitment as they delve into the multifaceted world of equity.
Our special guest is Nicky Wright, the Managing Director of Diversity Job Group, a trailblazing platform dedicated to empowering marginalized and underrepresented communities through inclusive job opportunities. Nicky, an experienced recruitment guru, is passionate about creating safe and inclusive job board environments to attract diverse talent from all backgrounds.
Also with us is our very own Lyndsey Oliver, the Head of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at BaxterStorey. Lyndsey's role is pivotal as she leads the charge in transforming our business, and emphasizes the importance of equity in the hospitality industry.
In this enlightening conversation, Sam, Lyndsey, and Nicky explore the true meaning of equity, the pervasive impact of unconscious biases, and the role of diversity in recruitment, onboarding, and shaping workplace culture.
But the conversation doesn't stop there. Our guests share their personal experiences with workplace discrimination, offering poignant insights into the real-world challenges individuals face when striving for equity and inclusion.
Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion that will inspire you to reevaluate how we approach diversity and equity in today's ever-evolving work environments.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Breaking Bread' and Equity Focus
00:00:03
Speaker
Thank you for listening to FYI, the backstory podcast. I'm Samantha Wacom, head of creative at backstory and your host for our latest mini series, breaking bread, exploring hospitality as the ultimate accessible career. In this episode, we'll be discussing equity, what it really means and how do we deliver it?
00:00:19
Speaker
To guide us through this conversation, I am joined by Lindsay Oliver, our Head of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at BaxterStory.
Inclusivity in Recruitment with Nikki Wright
00:00:26
Speaker
Lindsay's role is new to the business and she is shaping the change for us, supporting as we explore equity and its importance to building a positive environment in hospitality. Also with us today, special guest Nikki Wright, Managing Director of the Fantastic Recruitment Board Diversity Jobs Group. Diversity Jobs Group empowers individuals through inclusive opportunities by providing job seekers from marginalized and underrepresented communities
00:00:49
Speaker
with safe environments, confidence and a supportive community to grow. Nikki is an experienced recruitment guru and passionate about creating a safe job board environment for people from all backgrounds and attracting diverse talent. Nikki, thank you for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you as a special guest on our podcast. First of all, can you tell the listeners about diversity job group? How you founded this fantastic board?
00:01:09
Speaker
and why it's different from other job recruitment platforms. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. So Diversity Jobs Group. I founded Diversity Jobs Group about three and a half to four years ago now. I was working for a large FTSE 30 business. And in my role as head of recruitment are my relationships with generalist job boards. But as EDNI became more part of their people strategy, I reached out to specialist EDNI job boards.
00:01:38
Speaker
I won't mention those names on this podcast today, but they were individual ED&I boards that targeted different underrepresented groups.
Equity vs Equality: Lindsay Oliver's Insights
00:01:48
Speaker
I spoke to a variety of different job boards, sat back at my desk one day and I thought I don't agree with it. And what I mean by that is I don't believe any underrepresented group should be more important than another underrepresented group.
00:02:01
Speaker
Long story short, I founded Diversity Jobs Group. We've got 10 job boards covering all EDNI strands with our newest job board added to the group, which is our 10th one, which is Jobs for Social Mobility. And we work with a variety of different clients where we advertise their jobs on our platform. Thank you. Welcome.
00:02:20
Speaker
Lindsay, thank you as well for joining us. For those, obviously this podcast is all about equity and what does it mean and how do we deliver it. And for those who are unfamiliar with the meaning of equity, can you explain to our listeners what it means and why do you think it's taken the lead from equality in many businesses, ED&I strategies? So to start with the back part of that question first, I think there's still some companies where that hasn't happened, but I believe
00:02:46
Speaker
It's really important for equity to kind of take the lead. And so I actually got to choose whether I was Head of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion or Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. And I chose equity. So I can give a kind of formal definition, but I wanted to try and bring it to life. So I'm just back off a holiday, went to Avi Moore in Scotland as well as the Isle of Marl.
00:03:07
Speaker
We were out walking, so I've got two kids, two dogs and a husband. And we were out walking in a forest and there was this massive rock. And on the rock, there was a tree growing. We were like, wow, that's amazing. Like how does a tree actually start to grow on a rock? And when you look all around, there was forestry and trees everywhere. And really for me, that kind of like highlights to a certain extent the difference. So by chance, two seedlings,
00:03:34
Speaker
or two seeds land in the same place, one on a rock, one somewhere just a meter away. One has all of the conditions that it needs to kind of like grow and thrive. And so that, if we were only to measure trees by height, that's the tallest tree.
Challenges and Strategies in Equitable Hiring
00:03:50
Speaker
The tree that kind of like lands on this stone, it's smaller, but actually there's lots of things that that tree has done in order to survive and to thrive.
00:04:03
Speaker
Equality is looking at the size of the trees and going, OK, well, one's small, one's tall, and going, well, we'll choose the tallest tree. Equity, for me, is what needs to be added for that tree that's growing on the rock so that actually it can grow to the same height as the other trees. It's not about treating everything the same and expecting to get the same results. And when you look at things that cause inequity, a lot of it is around making sure that we
00:04:29
Speaker
recognize that we have to provide resources, provide support to ensure that everything is kind of an equal and fair platform for us to actually make sure that people can actually progress within the organization. If you take that to people, if you treat everyone the same, you could have steps into an organization assuming everyone can actually access the building. And that's not true. So it's around what do we need to kind of
00:04:55
Speaker
change and add and adjust so that we can maximize everyone's potential within the business. Does that make sense? It's a bit random. I think that's a great way to visualize what it means and I also found a quote from Albert Einstein that everyone is a genius but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree or live its whole life believing it's stupid and I think the way you've described that.
00:05:17
Speaker
how your journey, you can actually spot things and relate that back to what you do. Well, exactly. And I think part of that tree metaphor as well is that if we look at nature and I see a lot of similarities between nature and kind of the business as well, or business in general.
00:05:32
Speaker
If you want diverse, ecologically rich forests, you have to do things to get that because that allows kind of different species to be supported, different trees, lichened grow, moss to grow and things like that. Whereas if you just kind of go down the, or like monoculture route, you only get the same thing in lines, in field. And it just depends on what you want as a business. And I know that the business within which I operate
00:06:01
Speaker
doesn't want saying this, it wants to celebrate that diversity and difference. Absolutely. Thank you. And the fat is really great. I'm going to use that one. I'm going to pinch it. Okay. Search and steal. It's always good. Search and steal. Nikki, as the managing director of a business that strives to achieve equality and equity in black places, why do you believe it's so important to have diversity in the workplace? And do you think employees actually care about diversity in the workplace?
00:06:30
Speaker
I think yes, in answer to your question, I think employees do care about diversity in the workplace, I think they care about
00:06:37
Speaker
I think it's more about inclusion though, I think they want to be included within the workplace, they want to feel part of something. It's different, it's always good to have different opinions as well because like Lindsay just said, if everybody thought the same and did the same and potentially looked the same, you're just always going to get the same. So it's really great if you have different people from different backgrounds, different thoughts,
00:07:04
Speaker
It's just a balanced world. It's different people's opinions because otherwise you're just never going to grow. Everything's going to stay the same. Exactly. So talking about equity and equality, I think
00:07:18
Speaker
to go in the recruitment process if we think right at the start and unconscious bias is where we start with that. So in 2010 the Equality Act set to legally protect a list of characteristics including age, gender and disability, to name a few when hiring talent. But despite this law from over 13 years ago, over 90% of recruiters in the UK still think that biases are a huge problem in hiring.
00:07:42
Speaker
So I just wanted to unpack what is unconscious bias and how can businesses support hiring managers to eliminate or recognise their unconscious biases during the hiring process to ensure that there is a fair process for all individuals. So I think you can't eliminate unconscious bias because we all have biases, it's natural and it's normal and it keeps us safe.
00:08:07
Speaker
However, what we need to do is to be aware of where our biases lead to us thinking that we're choosing the right person for the job when in fact we're actually just choosing the person according to our biases. And I hear all the time we choose the right person for the job and I've heard it kind of for decades actually.
00:08:27
Speaker
I don't personally think that's true unless you do a lot of deep work around recognising what your biases are. And there's definitely things that we can do as an organisation and in general around highlighting biases and making sure that processes are as bias free as possible. There's a lot that we can do. We will still never eliminate bias totally.
00:08:48
Speaker
And the only way through that for me is to make sure that if you take kind of one stage of that process in terms of interviewing, making sure that you have a diverse panel of interviewees and a really structured process so that actually it's not just one person deciding because the more people that you have in that process,
00:09:10
Speaker
that come from diverse and representative backgrounds, the more you actually see people seeking out different things from candidates, so that then you can say, actually, we did choose the right person for the job.
Evaluating Blind Hiring and Beyond
00:09:22
Speaker
If it's one person who's not aware of their biases, making a decision, then I don't necessarily think that will always result in the best person for the job being selected. And the other bit is kind of like, what is best?
00:09:38
Speaker
I think we need to kind of like sometimes rethink about some of those things because what we often do is we kind of match what happened in the past or match what we're used to, which again is kind of like confirming what our preferences are and what our biases are. So yeah, so for me, it's about recognizing your biases. You can't eliminate them altogether, but how do you actually mitigate those?
00:09:59
Speaker
from coming up so that actually is as fair as an inclusive process as possible and that happens throughout the end-to-end recruitment process for me and beyond by the way. Do you have any tips for someone who is looking to hire a role? If I had a non-conscious bias or a bias what do I need to look out for to identify those?
00:10:21
Speaker
So I think there's things that the organisation can do around the process to make sure that it's kind of structured and things like that. But I think there's adjustments at every single stage of the way. So one that I know that we've recently done is that we ask candidates and they don't have to answer this question, but we ask candidates around what their pronouns are.
00:10:40
Speaker
and part of that is so that when they arrive and when we actually start that interview process or start that first conversation that we use the pronouns that they want to be used so that we don't misgender people and actually they have kind of that part of the process as inclusive as possible. Where that's not asked people make assumptions around gender and that introduces the potential for people to be misgendered.
00:11:03
Speaker
So I think there's so many different things, I mean there's hundreds and hundreds of different things that you can change but for me it's around looking at every single different stage of that process and where we possibly can, introducing almost kind of these safeguards around where we know bias pops in and crops up, how to mitigate that to make it as fair as possible.
00:11:26
Speaker
I think one of the things that we spoke about earlier actually was some organisations have hiring targets or aspirations or goals.
00:11:35
Speaker
and how that can have a detrimental effect sometimes on the hiring process because a vacancy comes in. The recruitment team are looking at the vacancy that come in or the hiring manager is looking, but they feel that they may need to fill that quota with one of those hiring targets. And then the right person doesn't always necessarily get picked for their behaviours and skill that they should be picked.
00:11:57
Speaker
for and interviewed for, they get put through the process maybe for more tokenism or cherry picking of those candidates. I agree this should be some form of aspirations or targets or goals but it's just how that's used and just making sure it's not used for the wrong purposes.
00:12:19
Speaker
And the Equality Act is a really great example of this. So there's certain protective characteristics defined by the Equality Act, but that's not where discrimination occurs holistically across everything. So if you look at introversion versus extroversion, for example, it's not in the Equality Act.
00:12:38
Speaker
but we know that extroverted preferences are often more successful than introverted preferences in certain jobs and things like that, but that's not protected characteristics. So for me, if you're an organisation looking at equity and looking at inclusion and truly looking at diversity, you have to look beyond the Equality Act. The Equality Act is absolutely essential because obviously we need representation across those characteristics for sure, but how do you go beyond that? And there's lots of things that
00:13:06
Speaker
I think are seen versus kind of diversity that's unseen. And often we take the visual representation as
00:13:17
Speaker
diversity when in fact you could have three people who all look the same but there's potentially one with a hidden disability, potentially one who's LGBTQIA plus. There's all sorts of things that we don't necessarily know and that's unseen that adds to that richness of diversity and I think that's where we need to get more nuanced around some of the conversations that we have around this. I've been reading up a lot about blind hiring and people's thoughts on those. What are your opinions on blind hiring and
00:13:43
Speaker
especially you, Nikki, I know this is something we spoke about earlier. Can you just tell us your thoughts about? Of course, yes. So with Diversity Jobs Group, we've had 10 job boards.
00:13:54
Speaker
but what clients can't do is they can't pick and choose which jobs go on which job boards. What I mean by that is if a client vase had an admin job, they couldn't think, well, that needs to go on the mum's board, jobs for mum, and we have an engineering job and that goes on dad's for jobs. It doesn't work like that. So the same job gets posted on all 10 job boards, so it removes
00:14:15
Speaker
hope well it would remove any bias that comes in because the same job is posted across everybody so you're opening that recruitment funnel and wide as you can at the top making sure that everybody from underrepresented group has a fair chance of applying for that job and then they need to go through the process and those processes look very different.
00:14:33
Speaker
upon client. When it comes to blind CVs, we spoke about this again and he didn't read that, it's great to have blind CVs and I think it probably is very important.
00:14:46
Speaker
But there is always a way normally of seeing through some of the things. So for example, if there was only education on there, it would probably tell me that that person was quite young and they hadn't had any work experience. If there was a gap, it could potentially highlight that there'd been a maternity or parental leave of some description.
00:15:08
Speaker
I get the sentiment around doing blind CVs, but I'm not sure, like we spoke about it, it truly works. Yeah, it can't be the only thing. I mean, it's definitely proven to work on names and things like that. Yeah. And to a certain extent, gender when you only think of binary gender. But I think it needs to be more than that. And it works in kind of like some very
00:15:32
Speaker
significant scenario. So there was, if you look back, it really helped with kind of building diverse orchestras from an agenda perspective because people would walk onto the stage and they'd make decisions about whether that person was able to play that instrument based on their gender. So I think there is definitely a space for it. I think it needs to be built into kind of, as I say, a more nuanced
00:15:55
Speaker
and more holistic look at the end-to-end process. And we were saying one example earlier is so GCSEs are going to be announced tomorrow. I'm of a certain age and I've got GCSEs where they were graded A to E.
00:16:14
Speaker
the GCSEs coming out now are kind of 987654. So if you put your GCSEs down with 987654 versus A's and B's, you know that a person is of a certain age according to that. So again, there's certain interpretations you can make based on certain things that you just can't strip out. If you strip out everything, then there'd be nothing left for you to kind of make a judgment on. And then there's no CV. And then there's no CV. And I think what even part of that is that how do we get
00:16:45
Speaker
How do we think about doing some of these things differently in the first place? Do we even need CVs? That's even another conversation, isn't it? Is there a need for CVs? Or actually, is there technology out there? I'm sure there is, like gamification and things like that, that candidates could apply for jobs and wouldn't even need to submit a CV. And if you're recruiting for a chef?
00:17:09
Speaker
Surely it's about the dishes that they create and the innovation around those dishes and so surely a good test of the skills and expertise is around how they operate in a kitchen and what if they're given a set of ingredients what do they come up with versus actually have they worked for the Ritz or have they worked for kind of I don't know
00:17:29
Speaker
So again, I think there's kind of role specific things that you can look at that actually makes for a better choice of candidate. I think a lot of clients as well are hiring based on behaviors rather than just skill. And if you look at behavior matrix and a skill matrix, I always believe that behavior should lead on skill as well. And that cannot be picked up on a CV. So I think there's definitely technology and other things out there that we can do to actually remove CVs.
Addressing Unconscious Bias in Careers
00:17:57
Speaker
Have either of you had a personal experience where unconscious biases caused you any
00:18:03
Speaker
opportunity of being treated unfairly. So in the past, have you been stopped from having a position or a job opportunity because of an unconscious bias that someone's had a view? How long have you gone? Yeah, we've got a few, haven't we? Okay, so I've got two examples, if that's all right, or two that I can think of straight away. So the first one was when I was 16 and my dad had a building company and for the summer I went to work on a building site.
00:18:29
Speaker
And I turned up and I was asked if I was there to make the tea. I said, no, I'm not here to make the tea. I'm here to borrow the bricks just like you are. So that was the first snippet of not being included in the workplace. And the second one was when I was a mum. I've got three children, but a mum had two children at that point. I was a single parent. I had the two boys at that time.
00:18:57
Speaker
And I worked in the HR role, HR business partner role for a hospitality company, large hospitality company. And they had a role in operations. And I wanted to move out of HR and work in operations. So I can remember being in a room with a really senior operations leader. And I said to this individual, I said to him, I said, I really want to move out of HR. I want to apply for this operations role. And he turned around and said to me, no, Nikki, because you're a single mum of two children and the role involves travel.
00:19:27
Speaker
So you can imagine what I did at that point. I think I slammed the door on him. I was very unprofessional, so I shouldn't have been so unprofessional, but I was absolutely livid. I stormed out of the room, slammed the door, stomped through the main atrium, went upstairs, stamping like an elephant, and shouted at the top of my voice just because I haven't got a booboo, booboo, booboo, and I won't say anymore. But yes, it happened. And that was in the last eight years, maybe.
00:19:56
Speaker
that situation. And I'm sure situations like that still happen to this day especially to women and working mums. Still happen to this day. I've got lots of examples as well but I mean I guess it's why I actually got into this area. So I initially graduated and I spent 14 years for a FTSE 100 company in IT and I had a really successful career trajectory
00:20:26
Speaker
And if someone like me had come into that business and said, okay, here's some things, I would have gone, no, no, no, I'm all right here, Jack. It's all good here until I had babies. And then when I had babies, all sorts of things changed. And I ended up leaving that organization. That organization now wins awards for their diversity and inclusion. So they've made transformational changes in the kind of last decade. But I left and I set up an EDI consultancy
00:20:55
Speaker
essentially so that women like me didn't fall out of the talent pipeline like I did, which later kind of evolved into more of a focus on inclusion. But there were all sorts of things that led to that point, some of which probably needs some trigger warnings actually on. But a lot of it was around being a mom, being a female in IT, even though the company was actually quite diverse. Yeah, there were all sorts of things which probably, we can give some examples over
00:21:25
Speaker
over a glass of wine or something. But yeah, all sorts. And at the time, what was really interesting actually, I thought it was me. And often that is one of the things that happened. People think that it's them versus actually what is the system or what's actually happening, actually happens to a lot of people. Because I had a really rubbish return back after my first maternity leave, for example. And I remember sitting down with HR and going,
00:21:52
Speaker
Is this just what happens or is this just kind of? Or is it just what happened to me? And it was generally made to feel as if actually it's just a one-off. But the reality, having been in this field for kind of like over a decade now, I know that that's not the case. And I think that's part of it, which is how do we make sure that we look at
00:22:16
Speaker
One, what needs to shift individually is something needs to shift individually, but how do you actually shift some of the systemic issues that affect people too? And I think that balance between looking at the system and also looking at individual behaviors is really important because another person in that organization would have a very different experience. And I think part of it was kind of just around where I sat and who was involved in that process, so.
00:22:45
Speaker
So it wasn't the policies and the culture, the business. No, no, no, exactly. Exactly. And even if you look at what we're doing within the organisation at the moment, there would always be individual flavours with individual teams within that where you have certain microcultures. And so what you might do for an organisational cultural change, you still have to take into consideration kind of team cultures and microcultures that exist, especially where
00:23:14
Speaker
We don't sit in one big head office. We have 650 client sites over the UK, for example. That's really important to take into consideration as well because one size absolutely doesn't fit all. That
Implementing Equity and Inclusion Strategies
00:23:28
Speaker
is very true. How do you ensure that that top-down
00:23:32
Speaker
is essentially going across to all these micro teams. So for me, how I'm doing it is we've got a one through five year plan around kind of equity and inclusion. There is what are we doing organizationally in terms of the big system, not necessarily technology system, but kind of systemic organizational changes.
00:23:54
Speaker
And there's a piece around how do you ensure people take personal accountability for the changes that they need to make? Because for me, you have to have that kind of top down and bottom up approach. And if you get both of those right, I think you can kind of address the change that is needed. I think if you only do one and not the other, you won't get that.
00:24:17
Speaker
I think a really good tip for that though, I had, I was on a webinar the other day and some really positive feedback came out of reverse mentoring. That's amazing. Yeah. And I think it was about, it wasn't just listening groups, it was actually the top, down, bottom, whatever you want to call it, reverse mentoring, really saw it from both sides. And I think that's really important in organisations. Yeah.
00:24:39
Speaker
So they've sort of stolen the answer, I suppose, to this question, which was around recruitment practices, but actually the culture in the workplace. So as we know, recruitment is a great tool to gain equity within the workplace. But the next step is keeping that talent, ensuring an equitable work culture to allow for employees to thrive and feel a sense of belonging. In many industries, EDNI strategies and culture has to come from the top down. But as you said, actually, maybe it should be the bottom up.
00:25:06
Speaker
But there is that question, if there's a lack of diversity at the top, is it difficult to have that inclusive culture in the business? And according to the Whittle 22 annual report, almost all businesses across hospitality have seen an increase of women in leadership roles over the past four years, with thanks to policies around parentally returning to work menopause.
00:25:27
Speaker
However, there's only been a marginalised increase of women in board level roles. And in fact, only 30% of board and exec committee roles are held by women. And statistics of leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds.
00:25:40
Speaker
at board level in hospitality are even more stark and sit around 10%. And in fact, 50% of companies in our industry have all whiteboards. So I suppose my question is, what are your thoughts behind these statistics? And if there is that lack of diversity at the top, does that make it difficult to have that inclusive culture within the workplace? I'm unsure with that one, because again, we spoke about this earlier.
00:26:07
Speaker
And not all diversity and inclusions can be seen. So like Lindy mentioned, you could have three people that actually look the same, and they might all be men. And that was on talking about gender. But they might all be very different. They might be someone that's neurodiverse, someone that's from the LGBTQ community. So I understand that, but I think there's also diversities that cannot always be seen.
00:26:37
Speaker
And it doesn't mean to say they're not inclusive if they have an all-male board. Absolutely. They might well be, but they might not have the gender balance quite right. So I think we need to have a slightly different conversation because even if you look at women on boards, and I'm absolutely all for kind of greater gender diversity, but the conversation across the board is around male-female or women-men, I should say.
00:27:01
Speaker
So when we look at women and men, that's a completely binary definition. It makes no space for people who are non-binary. We don't even start talking about kind of the trans community as part of that. So for me, there needs to be a slightly different conversation about gender because everything, and even if you look at the statistics around representation, it's always in men, women. And people might not think that's an issue, but actually,
00:27:28
Speaker
there's no space in there for anything else if you just take that as a measurement target. So I think that we should have a different conversation about diverse representation because, as Nikki said, some of it's seen, some of it's unseen. And if you take kind of educational background, for example, how do you know who was privately educated? How do you know who was state educated? Like that whole social mobility piece, you can't see it.
00:27:57
Speaker
So yeah, I think a wider conversation about what diversity really is, even at the senior levels now, I think if we ask different questions, you would see greater representation because we're having a different conversation about it. However, I do think there is room for kind of making sure that we do have representation. Absolutely. But for me,
00:28:21
Speaker
I think targets drive diversity. Targets don't necessarily drive inclusion. And my belief is if you get inclusion right, diversity happens. So for me, I will always go down the route of how do you get to a more inclusive and equitable culture? And if you do that, then diversity will flourish and you won't have to have kind of these rigid targets.
Diversity Targets and Personal Responsibility
00:28:46
Speaker
but different people think differently about it but that's just kind of my stance on it and I just think that it's a
00:28:54
Speaker
For me, it's a kind of more inclusive route because you can't ever get to a statistical representation of what the best balance is according to kind of one measurement. And you may have someone who is part of the LGBTQIA plus community and has a disability. I think stats, as I say, drive for a more diverse workforce, but not an inclusive workforce. And if you take kind of Nikki getting people into organizations,
00:29:22
Speaker
It's great to hire in diversity for sure, but unless you've got an inclusive environment for them to land in, all that will happen is that you won't be able to retain them because they won't be able to thrive and succeed within the organisation. So for me, we've got to get inclusion right first. Well, they don't feel part of the team. So a good friend of mine, a black lady, she was hired probably the last 10 years, maybe slightly longer than that ago, at a big bank at Canary Wharf.
00:29:51
Speaker
And she is a black lady, like I said, and she got hired. And when she got there, many of the other people that worked there said to her that she was hired because of the colour of her skin, because it was a tokenistic hire, or she was cherry-picked. She wasn't. She had every right to be there. She had the right skills. She had the right behaviours. But culturally,
00:30:12
Speaker
they made her feel uncomfortable and she was only there because of the colour of her skin. That's not right. Nikki, I think you have a very interesting job because you can make other business lots, you can touch so many businesses at once with your group. What advice do you give to those companies when they are looking for advice on their ED&I and their recruitment
00:30:36
Speaker
I think one of the biggest things that I don't believe that one underrepresented group is more important than the other underrepresented group, I think they're all equally important. I think it is about finding the right person with the right behaviours and the right skill for the job, regardless of who they are and where they come from. So one of the things that I say to our clients is
00:30:54
Speaker
We advertise all your jobs on all of our job boards. It's always unlimited job postings as well. So you can't cherry pick which roles you think are more important from an ED and I point of view than other roles. So if you come on board with us, you come on board with us for a whole year. So you're not cherry picking those particular vacancies and prioritizing those vacancies. But it's about making step on the journey. And I appreciate that many businesses are at different stages of their journey.
00:31:21
Speaker
but we've all got to start doing something. And again, we spoke about it earlier. You know, if we all do more, even if it's more in certain areas, we're just increasing it and we're just hopefully creating a more balanced world. And I think around that as well, just to kind of highlight is that most people I've come across in industry are nice people who want to do a good job and aren't intentionally out to try and cause harm or to try and
00:31:51
Speaker
be exclusive. And for me, it's around kind of the educational piece as well. So how do you take responsibility for your own learning around some of this? Because an organization isn't going to give you everything to make you totally inclusive. And there's so many resources out there that people can pick up and access or Google. I mean, there's so much that I think it's really important that people don't wait for the organization to do some of this stuff. They take that responsibility themselves.
00:32:22
Speaker
What tips would you give to those individuals who are looking to just make that, to start that journey? Well, you Google everything, right? You Google everything. But I think even just stuff like if you're on Netflix, obviously other providers are available. But if you go for a certain genre of movies or films or TV shows or movie as a film.
00:32:43
Speaker
Choose something different. Choose something by a different producer. Choose someone with a different kind of actor that you would usually go for. Podcast exactly the same. If you usually listen to a certain genre, go for something different. So just try and challenge yourself to kind of pick up different things. Get your news outlet from something other than your standard news outlet. There's loads of really good news outlets out there. Not just the BBC or the Guardian or you know, wherever you get your news from.
00:33:12
Speaker
So yeah, so for me it's kind of like making those individual choices. If you're going on holiday and you walk into the book shop to choose a book, go to a different part of the bookstore, choose a black author, choose an LGBTQIA plus author, choose someone different from your normal choice and that will just start you on that kind of process to unlearn, as I say. So for me it's kind of like unlearning some of our
00:33:37
Speaker
behaviours that we've kind of grown up with that we think are normal and just kind of choosing to open our eyes up to a different version of the world.
00:33:48
Speaker
I think that word, sorry, unlearning, is really key. And I've done your training, which was fantastic. If anyone's listening and wants to do it, please do. It was really, really good. And that word unlearning kind of stuck with me. And it's about just picking away at what we've grown up to believe is real or right. And yeah, that unlearning piece. Do you actually think that this utopian workplace exists where equity is everywhere and it can be delivered across the whole board?
00:34:18
Speaker
I think it will evolve over time. I think what we believe equity is now may well be different in two, three, four, five years' time and many more. So I think as long as we all keep evolving, we all keep learning and learning, I think we will make a difference. We've got to make a difference. We've got to always look to the future, but it will be ever-changing, I'm sure.
00:34:41
Speaker
One of the things that we mentioned earlier, just going back to your previous point, is also being part of different ally groups within workplaces. So if you have a women's network group, you don't have to be female to go to those women's networks groups. You could absolutely encourage people from different backgrounds, different underrepresented groups, different groups, to join those ally groups, to see what's happening in those ally groups.
00:35:07
Speaker
They shouldn't just be protected to those individual groups. Other people from other groups should be able to be part of those too. So I could call myself an ally as if I've reached that destination. I will always say that I'm on a journey to allyship because I can't ever know everything about the lived experience of every kind of person on the planet. And so I like to think that kind of I'll be on this journey until kind of
00:35:34
Speaker
I'm not on the planet. So for me, it's this journey to our life show where it's this constantly, constantly this kind of thought process, which is based around kind of being really curious about the person in front of you and always kind of like challenging your own assumptions and judgments, because there's always something to learn. I just think it makes the person in front of you. You'd be able to see them better and yeah, and just make a different kind of connection.
00:36:05
Speaker
Is there anything else that you think we should be recommending for businesses to do to ensure that equitable workplace?
00:36:11
Speaker
Well, for me, there's matters. If you look at the strategy that we've got in the business, it covers all sorts of different areas. One example will be the systems that you've got, the data that you capture, the data that you don't capture, the employee resource groups that Nikki mentioned earlier, making sure that you've got that in terms of representation, looking at your communications and the way they communicate, looking at your policies, looking at benefits, looking at your entire employee life cycle as to where biases crop up.
00:36:40
Speaker
as to where biases are baked in, because there will be biases baked in, looking outside of the organisation, at the industry, if you look at kind of the hospitality industry and
00:36:54
Speaker
if you look at gender stereotypes, for example. So gender stereotypes are ingrained or start to get ingrained between five and seven years old. And often at that age, you get chefs referred to as men and cooks referred to as women. And so that then kind of carries on through the industry as to how many female
00:37:13
Speaker
head chefs are there, how many non-binary head chefs are there, how many black chefs are there. So for me, there's this bid around not always focusing inside the organization, but looking outside of the organization as well. I mean, there's so much. And we were talking about this earlier. For me, it's not one big thing. There's lots of little things that absolutely change the trajectory of making sure that you've got an inclusive and equitable culture. It's not around six big projects.
00:37:42
Speaker
it's not just at hiring is it you know that's my focus with diversity jobs group is you know my focus is hiring but that data needs to be looked at at all different stages doesn't it yeah so it's at hiring at your retention at your turnover at your development learning and development to making sure that yes you are hiring you know a diverse workforce but if you're not retaining that diverse workforce and you're not then developing that diverse workforce you're not making a difference it's got to be
00:38:07
Speaker
consistent throughout the whole
Equity Practices in Hospitality Environments
00:38:09
Speaker
journey. Yeah and also I think for me there's a bit, and this is kind of part of our strategy, a lot of companies are doing it to meet legislative criteria. For me the legislation actually doesn't go far enough so how do you go almost beyond the law? Not in terms of breaking the law, I actually mean just kind of
00:38:32
Speaker
making sure that you're not just restrained to the protected characteristics by law, but you go outside of that to look at, well, where does exclusion actually happen across the whole demographic range? Yeah, unfortunately, not 10 things that can be done, but lots of little things and lots of big things that will absolutely help. Thank you.
00:38:56
Speaker
So Lindsay, I had a question for you around hospitality and how do we ensure that the industry is being equitable to those on the floor? We have lots of restaurants and cafes and those sorts of environments. How can we ensure that we're having equitable practices on the floor? I mean, there's loads of things that we can do. If I give one example,
00:39:25
Speaker
because honestly, I could give you a massive list. I think there's a way that we need to relook at what we think is kind of professionalism. And one aspect of that is that when someone's kind of out on the floor meeting and greeting customers, one element of professionalism could be to make eye contact, for example. And we know that if you're
00:39:54
Speaker
neurotypical then potentially that is easier than if you are neurodivergent.
00:40:00
Speaker
I'm neurotypical, but actually, as much as I do make eye contact, when I think, I actually look away. And so there's all sorts of things that I think actually kind of, we think about professionalism in a bit of a weird way at times. And for me, that is around how do I make sure that if I'm on the shop floor, I make authentic contact with that person in front of me.
00:40:29
Speaker
Authentic contact for me might be very different to authentic kind of contact and connection for you and it doesn't make one of us less professional but I think we have this kind of view of what makes for a professional person in that environment that's kind of quite stereotyped.
00:40:45
Speaker
And I think we need to break some of those stereotypes so that we can be more innovative, more flavourful, more passionate and really bring to life both sides of the provider and the customer standing in front of us. Because the person in front of us is as diverse as the person on the shop floor as well. So I think we just need to rethink some of that.
00:41:10
Speaker
because I think it will have a greater impact. Agree. I think it's about being open, so encouraging your employees to be open. So, for example, if an employee was dyslexic, they felt comfortable telling the employer they were dyslexic. So, for example, if they went to write something on the whiteboard, could you write me that new menu on the whiteboard, for example?
00:41:29
Speaker
wouldn't feel ashamed to say actually I'm dyslexic could you help me write some of that or could you spell some of these words for me because I'm really struggling so it's making sure that you're approachable and you are open to knowing what your employees you know if they need any additional support yeah and it's a great example it's around also providing the right equipment for the right person so equality would be everyone getting exactly the same thing equity be making sure that you've got text to speak
00:41:54
Speaker
software that you have kind of things in various multiple languages if English isn't your first language and we were chatting earlier actually in the school that my kids go to there's 59 first spoken languages so it's really important that we consider
00:42:15
Speaker
kind of our society as a whole and kind of what is normal according to kind of the kids coming through school because that's a version of my kids normal and so they will expect when they go into industry that we cater for 59 first spoken languages and more and I know that
00:42:33
Speaker
that's not catered for right now. So, yeah. Yeah, and the other thing is an accessibility on the, if companies have an internet, is making sure your accessibility app is not just forward-facing for your client. It's also internally on your internet as well. So when your employees are navigating their way around the business, they feel comfortable and things can be amended. Yeah. You know, suitable adjustments are made for individuals. Yeah. It's like having right-handed and left-handed scissors in the stationary cupboard, just as standard.
00:43:01
Speaker
like little things like that can make all the difference. It won't totally transform, obviously, and go, oh, suddenly we're totally equal. But some of those things aren't necessarily majorly difficult to introduce. But they send a message to say, actually, we've thought about you in advance, and you don't have to ask for that. Oh, the uniforms. You had a great example of the uniforms that we spoke about earlier. Yeah.
00:43:28
Speaker
The other thing around kind of shop floor and just in general is how do you make sure that you have inclusive uniforms for people where they wear uniforms? And there's a great book called Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, which left me very angry actually. But just around how a lot of the uniforms are kind of like small, medium, large, based on the average size human, which is actually the average size male. And that leads to kind of ill-fitting uniforms that potentially
00:43:58
Speaker
cause a health and safety risk at one level, but also just kind of don't make people feel great. And the other thing is that chefs whites are generally white, not always, but we've got a lot of people in the business that have periods and white trousers are not brilliant. And to be honest, like I'm not a chef, I wouldn't go near a pair of white trousers at kind of certain times. And,
00:44:26
Speaker
And that would lead to kind of an element of discomfort. And if you have that element of discomfort in kind of how you feel and how you're dressed, you're not going to be yourself. So I think there's some things that we can do to kind of make uniforms more inclusive. And that's not just in our industry, stab vests, firefighters, uniforms, like all sorts of things that we can adjust to make people feel better and more safe to be themselves.
00:44:52
Speaker
something that's overlooked by so many people is uniform, and it's so important to you every day. One of the big airlines have just done a big launch, haven't they? Where they've rebranded all of their uniform, and that is exactly that. So I suppose my next question is, do you have experience where it's not being demonstrated very well? If businesses are not culturally ready. So I think that's probably the biggest, I think there's probably many examples where there is, again, hiring targets, aspirations, but culturally, the business is not ready, and there's not
00:45:21
Speaker
communicated that to the organisation about what journey they're on and then when they implement all these targets and candidates are turning up they don't feel valued and they don't feel included because I agree with Lindsay I think inclusion will drive diversity but not the other way around. I don't think diversity drives inclusion. I've got a million examples and I think
00:45:46
Speaker
The reality is there is no business that is truly inclusive because we're all on certain stages of the journey, including kind of backstory. There's lots that we're doing over the next one, three, five years and beyond that. And therefore, inequity happens every single day.
00:46:08
Speaker
And inequity happens outside of this organization every single day. Going to the shops leads to inequity. There's all sorts of things that happen. Is there any organization that I think is perfect? No, not at all. So everyone can always do better. We can all do better. I can do better.
Gender Parity and the Role of Equity Advocates
00:46:33
Speaker
I think it's a journey isn't it? It's a journey and it's an evolving and that journey you have to keep evolving it you have to keep changing it because it doesn't matter that you think you're never going to get to the end I don't believe I think things will keep changing along that journey. You need to be agile.
00:46:52
Speaker
I think kind of one of the statistics that we looked at, that I actually do remember without actually looking at piece of paper, is that it's 132 years to get to gender parity globally. I mean, that's just depressing. That is, for me, that's just like, well, that's not in my lifetime. It's not in my kid's lifetime.
00:47:09
Speaker
So how do we at Back to the Story take less than 132 years to do that? And that's just one aspect. And even then, when you look at gender parity, again, it just addresses a binary notion of kind of women and men and isn't kind of totally inclusive. So for me, the challenge is how do we
00:47:31
Speaker
not break the rules, but how do we do it our way so that we can speed up certain aspects and just continually learn, continually reinvent. And if you look at fueling your individuality, the only way that we can achieve that is through making sure that we've got an inclusive culture where we celebrate everyone and recognize them for who they are.
00:47:57
Speaker
and that they can walk through the door every day and feel that they belong in this business and they're set up for success. My children are boys of colour, two of my boys have a mixed family and I want them to feel included. I don't want them to walk into an environment where they don't feel they can be themselves. What's the saying? You have to be unapologetically, I can't remember. Unapologetically yourself? Yes, just be you.
00:48:27
Speaker
But organisations need to embrace that because they're going to get far more out of their employees if they can be themselves. And there's an element to that around, and I think this is kind of part of my own personal journey over the last 10 years. How have I twisted and contorted myself to fit into a culture that says that I need to be a certain way? I mean, I'm 46. There's a lot of unraveling to do to get back to actually, well, where have I
00:48:55
Speaker
not really been authentic because girls aren't meant to do that. And that is a learning journey kind of in probably another whole episode. But I think that there's that piece that is always really interesting to look at as well when it comes to inclusion. How am I including all of the aspects of myself so that I can walk through the door and be myself in the business? And in terms of love my job,
00:49:25
Speaker
I do love it. I hate the fact that there has to be a job with this job title and that we're not there. When my boss, my manager, kind of my number one objective is to make this role redundant. Because actually, if this role is made redundant, it means that we don't need someone like me in the business because we have equity, diversity and inclusion. And I would love for that to happen within my career.
00:49:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's true. I think each of your values, each of your inner values, I've always been a footstampers, so I'm just going to keep stamping their feet until we hopefully make the world a better place to be. Do you have any final things you'd like to add? I think it's brilliant that organisations and businesses like Nicky's actually exist. If I think back to, I don't know, 10 years ago, or even 15 years ago, or even five years ago,
00:50:25
Speaker
that stuff wasn't there. And so I do think there's lots of innovation that has happened, but I think it's brilliant that people like Nikki exist and are doing the job that she does and has the business that she does because it makes allies easier as well from a kind of recruitment process to have businesses like Nikki's that are helping us to achieve what we want to achieve as well. I keep on stamping them feet then. You keep on stamping them. I will. Yeah.
00:50:53
Speaker
It's been an absolute pleasure to listen to your stories and your inputs and it's been a really powerful conversation. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. You've been listening to FYI, the Back to the Story podcast. Bye.