Developing inclusive workplace cultures

The Equality Act 2010 outlines that people must not be discriminated against because of their race, which encompasses colour, nationality and ethnicity. There are four kinds of race discrimination:

Direct discrimination, which occurs when someone treats a person worse than another person in a similar situation because of their race

Indirect discrimination, which occurs when an organisation has a rule or policy that places people from certain racial, ethnic or national groups at a disadvantage

Harassment, which occurs when someone makes a person feel humiliated, offended or degraded

Victimisation, which occurs when a person is treated badly because they have made a complaint of race-related discrimination under the Equality Act. It can also affect a person who is supporting someone who has made a complaint of race-related discrimination.

Traditional perceptions of racism are often characterised by explicit racist attitudes regarding the inferiority of individuals from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, and overt tendencies to engage in direct, unambiguous discriminatory behaviour. However, racism also encompasses the covert, unconscious acts of discrimination where a person or organisational systems and policies may be discriminatory against a person because of their race, without even realising it – a term that has been called ‘unconscious racism’^[1].

What do the stats tell us?
Research highlights that current workplace practices and cultures can create barriers for BAME individuals, particularly for those coming into the engineering industry. Around 14% of the UK working population come from a BAME background^[2], yet only 7.8% of the engineering workforce come from a BAME background^[3]. Research highlights that BAME employees are more likely than those from a white British background to say that experiencing discrimination is a problem^[4]. In the engineering industry, BAME engineers were less likely to feel included at work or speak up on inappropriate behaviours and were more likely to report that assumptions are made about them based on their ethnicity or nationality than their white colleagues^[5].

In order to address the issues of discrimination and create more inclusive workplace cultures, we must try to understand how these issues have come about and what is maintaining their prevalence.

The issue of ‘colour-blindness’
A common view of egalitarianism within the UK often leads to society favouring a ‘colour-blind’ approach when striving for racial equality. Colour-blindness is the ideology that focuses on commonalities between people, such as their shared humanity, and posits that the best way to end discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture or ethnicity. Despite the good intentions, the colour-blind approach may cause more harm than good and can actually constitute a form of racism^[6]. M Williams, Clinical Psychologist, explained: “In a colour-blind society, white people, who are unlikely to experience disadvantages due to race, can effectively ignore racism in life, justify the current social order and feel more comfortable with their relatively privileged standing in society. Most minorities, however, who regularly encounter difficulties due to race, experience colour-blind ideologies quite differently. Colour-blindness creates a society that denies their negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage and invalidates their unique perspectives.”^[6] This suggests that, by not seeing race, we are essentially erasing the history of racism and the experience of that person. While we maintain a colour-blind approach, we will not address the structural inequalities within our society and will not achieve racial equity within engineering.

Implicit racial biases
Colour-blind messages within society are linked to a reduced awareness of racial biases^[7].

An implicit bias refers to the process of associating stereotypes or attitudes towards categories of people without conscious awareness^[8].

There are three characteristics that make a bias implicit:

They operate at the subconscious level, outside of conscious awareness. Hence, why they are often called unconscious biases

They run contrary to our conscious beliefs about who we are and what our values are

They are triggered through rapid and automatic mental associations that we make between people, ideas and objects and the attitudes and stereotypes that we hold about those people, ideas and objects.

Unconscious racial biases can be prevalent in children as young as 11 years old. In a recent Channel 4 programme, ‘The school that tried to end racism’, students took the implicit association test (IAT), an assessment tool developed to measure the strength of associations linking social categories (for example black versus white) to descriptive or evaluative anchors (for example good versus bad).

Despite many students being brought up with the colour-blind ideology that ‘everyone is equal’ and ‘it does not matter about the colour of your skin’, they demonstrated an unconscious bias, or preference, towards white people. This was even the case for some of the children who were black, Asian or of another ethnic minority, which is claimed to be the result of internalised oppression.

So, despite consciously and genuinely believing in fairness and equality, the students’ unconscious beliefs ran contrary to these beliefs. Holding unconscious biases can lead us to react in ways that are at odds with our values and, if these biases are left unchecked, they can play out in our decision-making regarding who we hire for a job or select for a promotion, which students we choose for extra-curricular activities, who we send out of the classroom for behaviour infractions and which treatment options we make available to patients. Extensive research suggests that this kind of biased decision-making plays out all the time in our schools, hospitals, policing and in places of employment. The question is not about whether it is happening, but rather when it is happening and what we can do about it.

Moving forward
By not developing inclusive workplace cultures where people with a diverse range of identities and backgrounds feel able to perform at their best and progress in their organisation, we are underutilising talent by not enabling everyone to achieve their potential. We must take steps towards creating a more equitable and inclusive industry, by:

Practising recognising and being aware of our own unconscious biases and engaging in non-biasing activities. You can have a go at the IAT online for free to see if you hold any unconscious biases: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit

Being open-minded, non-defensive, willing to listen and learn

Recognising, valuing and respecting individual differences^[9]

Teaching and learning about differences[9]

Fostering personal friendships and organisational alliances^[9]

Reviewing workplace practices and identifying structural and cultural barriers that are maintaining workplace inequalities.

The Royal Academy of Engineering has extensive ‘toolkit’ resources to help organisations create inclusive cultures at: www.raeng.org.uk/diversity-in-engineering/resources

Addressing issues such as racial discrimination is a process of change and change is never easy, but we cannot afford to stay the same.

References

 H Blanton and J Jaccard, ‘Unconscious racism: a concept in pursuit of a measure’, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol 34, 2008.

Race Disparity Audit, 2017.

 Engineering UK, ‘The state of engineering synopsis’, 2018.

 CIPD, ‘Addressing the barriers to BAME employee career progression to the top’, 2017.

 RAEng, ‘Creating cultures where all engineers thrive’, 2017.

 M Williams, ‘Colour-blind ideology is a form of racism’, 2011.

 E Apfelbaum, K Pauker, S Sommers and  N Ambady, ‘In blind pursuit of racial equality?’, Psychological Science, 2010.

 R D Godsil, L R Tropp, P A Goff and J A Powell, ‘Addressing implicit bias, racial anxiety and stereotype threat in education and health care’, The Science of Equality, Vol 1, 2014.

 J McCabe, ‘Doing multiculturalism: an interactionist analysis of the practices of a multicultural sorority’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2011.

If you have any thoughts or ideas, or are interested in joining the D&I Advisory Group, please get in touch: diversity@bindt.org

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