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Six principles to inform your anti-racism strategy

1. Demonstrate Leadership Commitment

Leaders play an immense role in fostering – or damaging – racial inclusion efforts by virtue of their positional power and influence on the organisation’s culture, values and ethics. To ensure that change is long term and sustainable, organisations and leaders need to uncover and address racial equality barriers. Traction requires leadership and sustained action, so you’re one step closer to ensuring a more inclusive workplace if board members, governing bodies and senior leaders express a genuine appetite for change by visibly role-modelling behaviours and attitudes from the top.

The organisations leaders must communicate an anti-racist vision for the organisation, inspiring and motivating its people to enhance its anti-racism vision as a necessary element of the organisations work towards achieving social justice for all people.

Recommendations

Key Actions:

• Appoint senior lead/champions for race equality

• Include anti-racism goals in leadership objectives

• Regularly review progress at board level

• Resource initiatives appropriately

Implementation Tips:

• Leaders should educate themselves about race issues

• Participate visibly in anti-racism events and discussions

• Create reverse mentoring opportunities

• Maintain focus despite competing priorities

2. Clarify your organisations stance and values

Organisations must maintain an unequivocal zero-tolerance stance on racial discrimination, in accordance with the Equality Act 2010. This position should be clearly communicated to all employees, partners, suppliers, and stakeholders.

Recommendations

  • Key Actions:

    • Develop clear, achievable anti-racism goals through collaboration with diverse staff groups

    • Create and publish a core value statement on anti-racism

    • Establish specific measures to tackle barriers faced by ethnic minorities in service delivery, contracting, employment, and career     progression

    • Demonstrate visible progress through regular reporting and updates

    Implementation Tips:

    • Provide practical examples to help staff understand what constitutes racism, including micro-aggressions and everyday racism

    • Ensure external messaging aligns with internal commitment to change

    • Regularly assess progress against stated goals

    • Create safe channels for feedback and concerns

3. Create Safe Spaces for Connection and Learning

Establish formal and informal channels for ethnic minority employees to share experiences and contribute to organisational change. There is a need to create open, safe environments for people from ethnic minority communities to express their views and experiences to help raise awareness amongst the many who do not have the lived experience of racism in its many different forms. This is especially relevant for conversations around race, which require a high degree of sensitivity.

Recommendations

  • Key Actions:

    • Create a anti-racism  sub-group with senior executive support

    • Provide comprehensive anti-racism training for all staff

    • Organise educational events and opportunities for cross-cultural learning

    • Establish clear reporting mechanisms for concerns or incidents

    Implementation Tips:

    • Resource employee groups appropriately

    • Welcome allies while maintaining focus on minority ethnic experiences

    • Create multiple channels for feedback and participation

    • Ensure whistleblowing processes are accessible and trusted

4. Review Employment Practices End-to-End

The HR function must work with line managers to create transparent recruitment processes and clear progression routes, which will help to improve retention and make career development fair. HR also needs to work closely with line managers to ensure that espoused policies and organisational rhetoric are played out in reality. HR can play a valuable role as critical friend by holding up a mirror to the organisation – leverage it.

Recommendations

Take a zero-tolerance approach to racism

  • Key Actions:

    • Review recruitment, promotion, pay, and progression practices

    • Collect and analyse workforce diversity data at all levels

    • Implement blind recruitment practices where possible

    • Ensure diverse interview panels

    • Set clear EDI/Race targets for managers

    Implementation Tips:

    • Take an evidence-based approach using both quantitative and qualitative data

    • Involve staff networks in policy reviews

    • Make changes transparently and communicate rational

Evaluate

  • Review the outcomes of process and policy changes, evaluate, and don’t be afraid to try something different if a course of action isn’t working.

5. Ensure Consistent Ongoing Communication

Senior leaders and people managers need to engage in ongoing, responsive, two-way dialogue with staff to ensure that employees feel listened to and valued. Genuine communication between employers and employees provides a voice for people, and an opportunity for the organisation to listen, identify and act on concerns raised. This helps to ensure standards of behaviour are clear to everyone and promotes a culture of personal responsibility for treating people with respect and dignity.

Starting the conversation about ethnicity at work isn’t always easy, and some organisations simply don’t know where to begin. We know that many people are reluctant to talk about race for various reasons, whether it’s for fear of saying the wrong thing, failing to recognise inequalities of opportunity at work exist, feeling people aren’t interested, or feeling like one won’t be listened to.

Recommendations

  • Set up an anti-racism sub group to provide a safe, supportive space for people to meet – a place that allows them to have a consistent, clear voice. Encourage non-ethnic-minority active allies to join.
  • Resource the anti-racism sub group and ensure that it’s supported by senior executives.
  • Actively consult with the anti-racism Sub Group, inviting them to contribute their views from their lived experience in both society and as an employee of the organisation. An anti-racism sub group can be an invaluable resource to advise and inform organisational decisions while helping HR ensure that the people management approach is as inclusive as possible.
  • However, there must not be the expectation that the anti-racism sub group will solve the organisation’s problems or ‘teach’ the rest of the organisation.
  • Employees should also be aware of formal whistleblowing processes so they know they have a voice mechanism, no matter what.

 

  • Key Actions:

    • Establish regular channels for feedback and discussion

    • Include anti-racism updates in organisational communications

    • Create safe spaces for discussing race-related issues

    • Monitor engagement and satisfaction across ethnic groups

    Implementation Tips:

    • Acknowledge past shortcomings openly

    • Choose credible messengers

    • Avoid tokenism in communications

    • Ensure senior leaders model engagement

6. Implement systemic changes

Lasting change will not come from ad-hoc and narrow steps towards promoting race inclusion at work, which can set expectations for change but fail to deliver, sending the message that the organisation isn’t serious about taking action.

Instead, a systemic approach must be adopted to identify and tackle the causes of race inequalities and discrimination at work. Look across the entire organisation, scrutinising all operational processes, ways of working and people management policies.

Identifying the structural, cultural and policy barriers right across the organisation (which are maintaining workplace inequalities) is a crucial step. Action should be steered by data and insight. An evidence-based approach will get to the grassroots of issues and identify where action needs to be focused. The issues and appropriate solutions will differ between organisations, so having a deep understanding of your own business and its context is critical.

Recommendations

  • The organisation’s stance and values should guide the creation of a systemic action plan that is principles-based and outcomes-driven.
  • Ensure your anti-racism strategy and action plan are resourced appropriately, including time, expertise and budget.
  • Action should be evidence-based, steered by data and insight. All business functions, especially people professionals, are likely holding a wealth of unmined data about your workforce make-up, customer base and people’s views of your organisation, which can yield valuable intelligence about the changes needed.
  • It’s likely that useful data sits across many parts of your organisation, and will need to be brought together to create a holistic picture of people’s true work experiences, the experiences of those who interact with your organisation, and those who don’t.
  • If your knowledge of the makeup of your workforce is limited, consider the most appropriate way to gather this data. Ensure your outward engagement is racially inclusive. For example, in marketing and consumer research, make sure ethnic minorities are genuinely consulted.
  • Think about the extent to which other employers in your supply chain understand and echo your stance/values on diversity and inclusion and request that recruiters, partners and consultants demonstrate diversity within their own organisations.
  • When examining how people’s different experiences at work and their views of your organisation differ, avoid making generalisations
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