- BDAILY PREMIUM -
Bdaily’s Mark Adair chatted with Bukola Adisa, the CEO of Career Masterclass, an organisation that focuses firmly on the career progression of underrepresented people, specifically people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Working closely with businesses large and small, Career Masterclass helps implement professional practices to create environments of inclusion and equality in the workplace.
“We believe that career growth should not be the preserve of a few people, we believe that anyone regardless of their backgrounds, where they’ve come from, where they’ve gone to school, what they look like and what their name is, should have access, access to opportunities, access to knowledge, access to people that can help them progress their careers.” said Bukola, outlining that Career Masterclass’ goal is the democratisation of career growth.
“We help organisations as well as individuals grow in their career. So that’s what we do, we work with amazing organisations, to help unlock the pipeline and to develop the talent within the organisations workplace.”
Bukola Adisa, CEO of Career Masterclass
Bukola described an endemic state of exclusivity across industries, keeping minorities out of positions of career growth. “I don’t believe that there is any one industry actually doing a great job. Now, of course, some are doing better than others. But I think when we talk about the issues of diversity, and inclusion it is a societal issue. It’s a business issue and an economic issue, it is an industry wide issue.
“While some organisations have done a great job in moving the conversation and moving the dial forward. Unfortunately, for a lot of organisations across a lot of industries, we’ve just not seen enough action, what we’ve seen is a lot of words, we’ve seen a lot of words, we’ve seen a lot of events. But when you look at a lived experience of the black colleague on the shop floor, or in the branch or in the office, substantially, not much has changed.”
We went on to discuss what systemic factors have led to a system where there are barriers in place for certain communities. Bukola said that, “There are many systemic issues. When you look at the way we recruit; if you typically hire from Russell groups, or Oxbridge. universities you are automatically excluding a lot of the population, a lot of that population are diverse people that have just not had the opportunity to go to an Oxbridge University or a red brick university.
“Because they worked this way for hundreds of years, and there was really no incentive to change. When we recruit people from the same organisations, we don’t think about things in a different way. Whereas what is really needed to move this forward is to think about things differently and to do things differently.
“Another systemic factor is that people are generally comfortable with who they know. So if you look like me, talk like me, have the same background, we grew up in the suburbs, you understand my sort of jokes or we go to the same places on holiday, then empathy is built.”
Because of these issues, Bukola continues, underrepresented groups, “just don’t have that same access to a network. You don’t have people championing you. And so you don’t have visibility, you don’t get put on projects. Therefore you don’t even have an opportunity to rise. So those are some of the systemic barriers that we are actively fighting. And these are the barriers underrepresented backgrounds face in corporate UK today.”
In 2017, the Mcregor-Smith review found 1 in 8 people of the working age population were from BME backgrounds, however, they only accounted for 10% of the workforce and held only 6% percent of management positions. Moreover, the review found that BME groups were more likely to be overqualified than White ethnic groups, whilst being less likely to gain a promotion.
When asked how companies, governments and individuals can challenge these workplace practices, Bukola emphasised the importance of positive action. “Good intention is not always enough, good intention has to be married with positive action. And so, number one, you need to have a zero tolerance to bias or racism.
“So you may be unconscious in your action about excluding groups or actions of micro aggression, while the person that is feeling that is feeling that in a very, very real way. So the impact is not unconscious, neither is the impact micro, the impact is very conscious and the impact is at a macro level.
“So that’s why organisations need to maintain zero approach tolerance.”
Bukola also places importance in understanding the potential bias points during the hiring procedures of staff. For example; asking questions about who they use as head hunters, what educational backgrounds their employees are from, and how they can ensure they are hiring from different communities and networks.
“Look for where the bias points can be, and then, to ensure that that doesn’t happen (again) take corrective actions and take them very immediately. So those are some of the things that you know, we work with organisations to say, this is the way in which we can help you to identify these potential bias points, and build an effective controls to ensure that it doesn’t crystallise with the added effects that employees of colour tend to thrive in your organisation.”
She stresses the importance of monitoring career life cycles within companies saying, “there’s research that says, every time there’s a restructuring, or redundancy programme, the people often find themselves in the firing line first are people employees of colour, right, black employees specifically.” (Not sure about using this quote as I can’t find the research)
It is clear from our discussion that much needs to change to create a fairer and more equal professional space for people of all walks of life, but the work of groups such as Career masterclass is certainly paving the way.
By Mark Adair, Correspondent, Bdaily
