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Amy Louisa Winepress

This podcast will explore race in the workplace as part of the Strong When We Belong podcast series. And today, it’s hosted by me, Amy Winepress of EY. Having worked on the Parker Review since its inception in 2015 and issuing the first report in 2016, I have found myself reflecting on the progress that has been made in increasing ethnic and racial diversity on UK boards. While great progress has been made at the board level, I’ve been thinking about how much has really changed for racial and ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusiveness across the broader employee population in UK companies. I’ve been really keen to have a conversation about this topic, and I’m delighted to be joined by my Parker Review colleagues, David Tyler, and Sir Trevor Phillips OBE to get their insights in the hope that this will encourage listeners and companies to think more critically about creating meaningful change. Just a couple of introductions. David is the Chair of the Parker Review and chair of a number of companies, including Domestic & General, JoJo Maman Bébé and PZ Cussons. Trevor is Chairman of the Board at Green Park and is a well-known writer, broadcaster, and former politician. So, to set the scene and kick us off, I’ve looked into some of the data on race and ethnicity in the workplace, and here are a couple of facts. Despite being more likely to express a desire for career progression compared to white employees, minority ethnic employees are more likely to say that their career progression has failed to meet their expectations. And that’s by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) in 2017. Minority ethnic colleagues are also more likely to feel that they need to leave their organisation if they are to advance in their career. And a recent report by the Financial Reporting Council and Cranfield University looked at the barriers to senior leadership for minority ethnic individuals in listed companies and found experiences of these people being overlooked for promotion, overt and covert racism, and being held to higher standards of performance. I’m going to turn now to my colleague on the Parker Review and Chair of the Parker Review, David. And David, you’ve advocated for racial and ethnic diversity and equality for a long time. Why is this so important to you?

David Tyler

Well, I guess it goes back to my childhood, Amy. I spent five years of my first 12 years in Singapore and Hong Kong and I grew up alongside many ethnicities, particularly Chinese, and it just was totally natural for me to live in a multi-ethnic community. And then later on in my teenage years in the UK, I became very conscious of the situation in South Africa, the anti-apartheid movement, and all that. And so, I was shocked really in those years, and indeed in succeeding years, as I moved into my career; why I quite often, I’m afraid, still heard some distasteful comments. So, it’s been something I’ve been concerned about for years. And then when I joined Sainsbury’s as Chair, I was concerned to find out that when we looked at all of our main 600 stores, nearly all of them had a manager who was white and male. And together with my colleagues, it was something that we very quickly decided to do something about. And I spent a lot of time in my ten years at Sainsbury’s focused on this issue with my colleagues. And I think that’s made Sainsbury’s a more inclusive place to work and where some of the aspects of being a minority ethnic person have been addressed, some of the aspects you were talking about a few minutes ago, Amy.

Winepress

Thanks, David. And Trevor, from your perspective, how has the conversation changed over time and how do you feel about progress and your role in driving that?

Trevor Phillips OBE

Yes, I think it has changed quite a lot. I should just say, Amy, that if I were to answer the question you put to David, as he was answering, I was thinking about one thing that struck me. When you and I started this exercise, and it’s probably worth saying that you’ve probably done as much to drive the whole Parker process as any other individual bar John Parker himself, I don’t know if you remember me saying this, (but I’m a chemist by background, so I, you know, constantly default to numbers when I can’t find words) when we ran the numbers the first time around and looked at the composition of the FTSE 100, the thing that struck me was that the distribution by ethnicity was so, so weird. If you had selected, but from the qualified population, which is not that big if you think about who could be an FTSE 100 director, if you pulled from that qualified population, the actual composition, I worked out you had a one in 13,000 probability of that happening by random. So clearly, there was something really strange going on, and that probably drove me more than any other personal factors. But I think the truth is that what has changed over time has been from a small band of people who were interested in this topic for, if you like, moral or social justice reasons to a more, if you like, rational approach, which is why I think about these issues of the numbers. Because what boards are now thinking about is, in the way they would with any other business problem - do the numbers stack up. Does this make sense? Is this a natural outcome? Is what we’re seeing a natural outcome of the market, of the way that we operate and so on, or is it weird? And actually, I think more and more have decided, correctly, that where we are, particularly in leadership positions, is extremely weird and they need to de-weird it as quickly as possible. So, I think what’s happened is that we’ve moved from a sort of straightforward moral social justice position to one where people are thinking about their business, about its outcomes, about its reputation actually. And in my book, that’s a much better place to be.

Winepress

Thanks, Trevor. And I know that David, that’s always something that you’ve advocated you know as long as you’ve been involved in the review, from what I remember, if I cast my mind back all those years ago when we first started out on this. But I remember you always brought the business angle to the fore of this. And I think that’s so important to get across to our audience today as well.

Tyler

Well, I couldn’t agree more, yes. And I have to say, you know I absolutely agree with Trevor, there’s a moral case here, but there’s also an economic case which is really important. Having that wide diversity sitting around the boardroom, sitting in senior management, and working together gives you better solutions. And that’s what drives a lot of me, just as I feel driven also by the moral case, as Trevor puts it.

Winepress

And David, something I just have to bring up, given the contrast between progress on board representation and some of the data that I highlighted at the beginning, which is really around people who are not on the board necessarily, is it fair to say that some companies are taking a compliance approach to ethnic and racial diversity to meet targets?

Tyler

Well, maybe some people are, and I hope that as they get into an approach like that, they’d begin to see the benefit for themselves from, as I say, that diversity of approach and understanding of the consumer from a different background, different experiences living in different countries and so on. So, I think it does move on from one thing to another. And also, increasingly, I think people realise that given the percentage of the population that actually is from an ethnic minority background, which is now 18%, looking at the latest census of 2021 data, if you’re missing out on the talent and the brains of that 18%, your company is at a competitive disadvantage. You really need to do it. So, I think you know most business leaders get the point today.

Winepress

I think as well, you know from that compliance point, you know we actually are really seeing now the greatest diversity in the easiest board positions to fill, so some of those non-executive director (NED) roles I’m thinking of particularly. Some of that could be seen as ticking the box, couldn’t it?

Tyler

Well, indeed it may be easier to do that. But I think increasingly, the important focus that we have in our work is to focus on the senior management pipeline, ensuring that that group is getting right to the top of the company more frequently than has been the case in the past. We’re seeing some progress, but we’re also now feeling that it’s important to set targets too for the senior management percentages that companies have from ethnic minorities in a similar, targeted way, nothing more than that, over a period ahead. So that’s what we’ll be focusing on, as well as the boards, which will, I think, affect what you’ve just said for the future.

Winepress

Thanks, David, and we’ll come back to that later actually when we talk about some of the specifics on the Parker Review as well. Trevor let’s talk about the meritocracy myth. Is this something that we’ve debunked?

Phillips

Well, it depends exactly what you mean by the meritocracy myth. But coming on from the experience that you and David have just had, I think there’s an interesting thing here, that we’ve got to think about the psychology of business leadership. It used to be the case, or we used to say, I think with some validity, that what tended to happen was that people would recruit in their own image. I mean I think you can overstate this. You know, people who rise to the top of great corporations are not stupid, and I think we’re a long way on from the days when blokes just parked their brothers or their wives on boards in order to do whatever they said. But I think what is true is that people don’t necessarily recognise merit unless it comes in wearing clothes and colours that they, with which they are familiar. If it doesn’t speak with a certain accent, if it doesn’t have a particular set of interests with which you are familiar, it can be quite hard to grasp, ah, this person in front of me has some particular capability that I’m always looking for, whether that might be the ability to do numbers or the ability to see around corners a bit in business or the ability to strategize. If they don’t express it in a way with which I’m familiar, it can be quite hard to see that capability and that talent. And as a head hunter, that’s one of the things that we constantly find with very clever senior people that you have to say to them, look, because this person isn’t sending out signals, they don’t belong to a particular club or they don’t wear a particular brand of clothing or they haven’t been and done a particular kind of activity over the weekend, that doesn’t mean that they won’t be great at sales or marketing or whatever it is. You have to open your eyes to the possibility that they may do something, do a particular thing in a different way to the way that you’ve done it or your friends have always done it. And I think that has been, in a way, the great struggle, to get past the puzzled look when you say that to the chairman of the nominations committee. So, in a sense, you know your point, by the way, that a lot of these diversities come in non-executive director (NED) roles, non-executive roles, is correct, but if I may put it this way, sometimes you need baby steps. And frankly, the baby steps are just getting people to recognise that you know ethnicity isn’t a thing in itself, but it’s a pointer to your ability to recognise merit when it doesn’t send the signals that you’re used to. And I think that’s been a big step forward in the last four or five years.

Winepress

Yes. And you know there’s some people that may argue that targets are a counter to a meritocracy. They will say it’s lowering the bar or is it diversity versus meritocracy. Any other thoughts on that topic before I move on?

Tyler

Well, I think ...

Phillips

Well, I think ... No, you go ahead, David.

Tyler

If it’s just a short comment, Trevor, then please go. I was simply going to say, as a chair, I’m often wondering whether we’re getting our fair share in my company of all the talent and brains in the country. And if I see that we’ve got a relatively low percentage of people from ethnic minorities in my senior management team, then I’m worrying about it. I mean I said previously, 18% of our country now are from ethnic minorities. If you’re only in low double figures in percentage or less, then I think you’re not getting the merit, you’re not getting the talent that you should be.

Phillips

Yes, and I think targets, which by their own nature here are aggregate targets, do something else in addition to what David has just said. And it’s a little bit technical but let me perhaps express it this way. We’ve got a piece of technology that allows us to profile populations, and in particular, some big employers use them to discover the proportion of different ethnic groups within their workforce. And in some cases, they want to get a very fine distinction between different ethnicities. And we did some work for a big company. And what we discovered was that they recruited, for example, West Africans. But when they recruited them, and we’re talking about quite large numbers, so we’re talking five figures of West Africans, they recruited quite a lot of West Africans, but they were all Nigerians and Ghanaians. Now, that in itself, who knows exactly why that took place? But in a way, that’s the interesting thing. They then had to go and look at their processes and ask themselves, how could, once again, such an eccentric result turn up? Because it’s obviously not random. And the point is, if you discover something like that, then you have to ask yourself, what else is, whatever the thing that’s doing this, doing to the rest of our recruitment? And it comes back to David’s point, that if you get into thinking about things in that way, then you quite frequently discover that there are things that you’re doing which are unnecessary or which throw you off or skew your efforts to improve your performance, and you can then fix it. I mean nobody has ever fixed a problem that they didn’t/couldn’t identify right? So, I think that the setting of ambitions or targets usually triggers off a process by which people are forced to ask themselves, how are we doing, why are we doing what we’re doing, and why are we not achieving some of the outcomes in the natural order of things we should? So, I think targets do have value. I know people criticise it because they think, oh, it’s all artificial, it’s all politically correct, and all the rest of it. But anybody who has actually ever done the exercise will have learned that, quite frequently, you discover things you would not otherwise have discovered.

Winepress

Thanks, Trevor, very valid points. And David, the topic of targets brings us nicely on to the Parker Review. For those who may not be aware, perhaps you could just tell us and give an overview. What are the objectives of the review, and what is the progress that we’ve made so far?

Tyler

Well, it’s essentially, to you know provide opportunities for ethnic minorities in the same way as every other person in our business community. And we started by focusing on board directors, and in particular, FTSE 100 and FTSE 250. To be specific, on FTSE 100, when we started back in 2016, we had 47 companies that had at least one minority ethnic director. Today, we’ve more than doubled. We’re up to 96 at the end of 2022. So that’s real progress. And I don’t think it’s all simply to do with us, of course, I don’t, but I think we’ve helped put the issue on the agenda on every listed board table in the country, which I think is important, and focused people’s minds in the way that Trevor has just suggested. There’s been good progress too in the FTSE 250, and we’re now looking rather more widely, in particular towards the senior management groups in the years ahead.

Winepress

Thanks, David. And what about broadening the scope of the review out past the FTSE 350 as well?

Tyler

Well, that’s another thing. We have to recognise that outside the listed company, there is a huge amount of employment, a huge amount of value generated in private companies. And we have taken the view that it’s important for society and it’s indeed important for those companies themselves also to address this agenda. So, with our latest report in March 2023, we’ve asked those companies too to put it on their agenda, and in particular, asked a group of 50 large private companies to set targets for themselves over the coming years and achieve similar progress, which we believe will help them, and help them achieve better results in the future and certainly help the employees and prospective employees of those companies. So, we want to treat them very much the same, and I think they’d want to be treated in a similar way, the same as listed companies.

Winepress

Thank you, David. Yes, the expansion of the scope of the review, I think, has come at a really good time actually, if we think about how that fits into that broader societal piece that we were talking about earlier as well in this conversation. Trevor let’s get into a conversation on language. I think, well, my theory is we’re much more comfortable talking about race in the workplace now. And particularly if I think back to the start of the Parker Review nine or ten years ago, some of the discussions we had then about what should we call this was actually quite telling, I think, wasn’t it? You know we still get questions about whether minority ethnic is appropriate, given that many ethnicities subsumed within that category are part of the global majority. Is minority ethnic still meaningful in the UK workplace? Why do you think it is or isn’t? Or is there a middle ground?

Phillips

Yes, I remember some of the conversations we had. And in a way, one looks back and you think, did we really spend an hour talking about that word?

Winepress

It was at least an hour. At least an hour.

Phillips

Yes, we did. I think the thing is that it is easy, certainly for somebody like me, to laugh at it, but language does matter. It matters for a whole set of reasons. Firstly, it is important, if you’re going to be measuring things, to be precise, and everybody has to have a common understanding of what it is that you’re measuring. So, if you say, we are going to count the number of people in a category called black, it’s helpful if everybody knows what is included in that category. And I think that the Parker process has been extremely helpful in establishing that for this particular issue, not least because if you don’t get some precision, people will game the system. And we’re seeing that in all sorts of spheres, including not just race but also in relation to gender and sex. But I think the more important thing was, and this is particular I think to ethnicity, the uneasiness about language wasn’t really about words. It was really about the topic itself. It was a lack of confidence in the issues of identity. And one of the things I’ve always held is that one has got to be careful not to get too, sort of what I’d sometimes call ism-istic about this, i.e., one ‘ism’ is just like another ‘ism’, racism and disablism and so on. They’re not. And these issues, lines of human difference, are not exactly the same. There is a particular thing about race and ethnicity that I think stands out in most countries, certainly in this one, which is that most other lines of human division, they might be sex, they might be a disability, are to some extent transparent. Most of us ... Even I had a mother. Most of us know well and intimately somebody on the other side of the sex divide. Most of us can imagine ourselves being disabled, we will get old and so on. The thing about race and ethnicity is that it is very unusual for someone to be able to change that in a material sense. They might be able to change their description, but they won’t change what they are. I will not really look any different in 20 years than I did when I was ten years old. And I think that for many people, that’s quite a big obstacle because other people’s race lies behind an opaque curtain, and that means that people are very nervous about what they might say, how, what do they know, and so on. If I had a, you know if I could say something that I thought that I think has been really good about this whole process, it's that it hasn’t got rid of that completely, but it has made people feel less anxious and it’s made other people a bit more generous. Rather than saying you know when somebody says something a minority person doesn’t like, instead of jumping down their throat, they might say, you know what, Jack, I’d prefer you didn’t use that word, and everybody goes, oh, right, okay, and it’s over. So, I think we have made progress. There’s still discomfort in some places, but we are better than we were five years ago by a long, long way.

Winepress

Thanks, Trevor. David, any thoughts from your boardroom perspective on the language side of things?

Tyler

Yes, I mean it’s always an issue, and as we’ve all said already, we spent quite a lot of time in the review discussing this. I think part of it is this uneasiness that Trevor talks about. Because many of us grew up being told we shouldn’t notice the colour of someone’s skin. So, to talk about that, to talk about race is naturally something we don’t really find very easy. And so, we’ve had to adapt, those of us who really thought, I don’t want to be involved in this and it’s not easy. I found it helpful, but it took me a while, to go out there and actually acknowledge someone’s ethnicity. When I went around a store at Sainsbury’s, for example, it would be what I ended up doing, and that felt much, much better. I’d be talking to an Asian person in the Leicester store and hearing about his or her experience as they grew up. And I felt that created a link between us that wasn’t there previously. Ditto with maybe a black person in a Hackney store or wherever it was. It’s part of what people are, it helps explain their experiences, helps explain their outlook. And if you can approach that in an open way, I think you can create those links in a much more effective way.

Phillips

And without opening some horrible “where are you really from?” type question, I think we’re just about getting over a hurdle in which, as David says, those are very important points you made, the acknowledgment of difference is now becoming an easier thing. Previously, I thought it was very hard for people, because generally speaking, the acknowledgment of difference would be a preface to saying to somebody, well, you don’t really do things like most people, and you need to shape up and become a bit more like us. I think we’ve got past that. And certainly, I think anybody, well, I don’t know, David and I couldn’t say this, but anybody under 40, I guess, would now be astonished, not just appalled but astonished to think that recognition of difference is a pathway to saying, you get back in your corner, whereas now, I think much more, people are able to say, this is what I am, this is my background, and you know what, I bring something extra to the table because of that background. And nobody is going to feel that you’re being aggressive or cocky about it, but they’ll go, yes, okay, show me. And I think that is an incredibly healthy thing, which, by the way, is true of this country and Canada but is not true actually of most of the continent yet. I’m not even going to talk about America. Whole other story.

Winepress

We’ll do another podcast on America, don’t worry, Trevor.

Tyler

Someone said to me, Trevor, I don’t think it was you, but it might have been, look, it’s not a matter of being colourblind, it’s a matter of being colour-brave, being out there like that. And I don’t think it was you, but it might have been.

Phillips

No, that’s not, it’s not my phrase, but I agree with it.

Winepress

I’m going to change tack very, very slightly here and just say that as we were talking about that, it made me think that at EY particularly, we’re closing the race gap, but we are seeing a lot of cultural differences as we employ lots more people coming to the UK from overseas. And it just made me think you know, trying to disentangle race as an agenda from culture, class, and social equity is really difficult. Can or should that be done? Have you got any thoughts on that, David, or Trevor?

Tyler

That’s a difficult one. Yes.

Phillips

Well, I think, well, it is difficult, Amy, but I think it has to be attempted. And there are two different kinds of lines of divisions if I can put it that way, that you referred to there. Race and culture are associated typically, but they are not the same thing. And I think the important thing here is that someone shouldn’t, sort of to put it simplistically, in other people’s eyes, someone shouldn’t become a prisoner of their skin. And that, by the way, would be true about a person whatever colour they were, white or black or brown. The great, if you like, the holy grail in this area is not to make what somebody looks like a ready indicator of what they are like. We very, to put it very briefly, we noticed in my company at Green Park that one of the things that were happening or have been happening in recent times is that black individuals tend to go to rise to a certain level in big companies, and then they leave, and not true about people of Indian background, for example. And we are puzzled about why that is. We don’t know why it is, but we have a hypothesis. And the hypothesis is this, generally speaking, in most companies, you are judged by what people experience of you first-hand, what they hear about you second-hand from people they trust, and thirdly, what they think you’re like because of your archetype. And historically, this has been an issue about women, that actually, we assume that women are like this or like that. We think that one of the things that have been happening with some ethnic groups in big companies is that all three things are used to judge people, but in bigger companies, it’s far less likely that you’re going to know the individual. And we think that this third factor, what they are like, whether consciously or unconsciously, kicks in, and the people involved know this, and that’s one reason why they leave. Because typically, what we’re seeing is they go to smaller boutique outfits, and they prosper, because people know them. So, this issue of race, disentangling race and culture is very, very important, not just in a theoretical sense but in terms of getting people to make a proper judgement. And on the other issue, class, and ethnicity, I mean this is a whole minefield. But to put it very, very simply, one of the things I always say to people, be careful about this, because they’re not the same thing. You know I can change my accent, I can get a whole host of degrees, I can make a lot of money, but I’m never going to be able to change what I look like. So, we shouldn’t confuse these things. And why I think that’s particularly important is that people these days are slightly in danger of saying, you know what, if we want to have more people from ethnic minorities, what we need to do is to go to a council estate and find some. Well, actually, there are quite a lot of people who are highly qualified, middle-class professionals and their children, who come from ethnic minorities. So, if you want to fix that problem, don’t put the framework of the other problem on it.

Winepress

Thanks, Trevor. David, any thoughts on that topic from yourself?

Tyler

Just a very short comment. I would simply say, treat everybody as an individual. Treat them on the basis of what they say. Treat them on the basis of what they do. Try and exclude everything else. Just like you know when I’m talking to people about how to interview people, I say to them, if a person walks in the room, don’t try and associate what they look like, how they sound, what their accent is with others. Just don’t make any conclusions. Listen to them, and only start trying to draw conclusions later on in the interview. It’s so important because we all are filled with prejudices, you know thought about or not, about what a person looks like and the fact that they might be that sort of person. They’re not, they’re an individual. Treat them as an individual.

Winepress

Very good point, David, thank you. I just have one last area to probe with you both before we move to the wrap-up. But how will we know when we’ve succeeded, or when all of us have succeeded on the front of being able to increase opportunities across the different races and inclusivity for all?

Phillips

I’ll let you go first, David.

Tyler

Well, I haven’t really got an answer for that, when happiness develops all around society, when we don’t have the fights between people of different ethnicities, and so on. Look, step by step. All I can say is I feel we’ve had qualitative change over the last few decades. You know at this stage of my life; I feel very much happier about the way that communities are working together and can all succeed in our society. Look, we have a Prime Minister who comes from an Indian background right now. Was that likely to have happened 40 or 50 years ago? I rather doubt it. And that’s just one indication, as well as what’s going on in businesses and many other parts of our society, which shows that progress is being made, in my view.

Phillips

Yes, I mean I think, I’ll tell you what, there are two things which I think, thinking about it, that I would like to see. One is if I hear those decisions are being made in which difference becomes a plus rather than a problem. And a very simple example going back a long time, when in the 80s there were a lot of cot deaths. And there was a campaign. People might remember. Anne Diamond was very prominent in that. And doctors came up with the idea that if you positioned children, and babies, slightly differently, backs, not fronts, then actually that might make a difference. And indeed, it did. What I discovered, much later actually, was that the person who essentially initiated that change is, she is a now distinguished professor of Pediatrics at Cambridge, a Pakistani-heritage medical researcher, who noted that in her community, which had a much lower incidence of cot death, there was this different practice. And she did the science on it, and that’s what made the difference. And actually, nobody made a big deal of it, but actually, it was important that she was who she was, and she brought this extra thing into the room, that it wasn’t that anybody else was ignoring that community, but how would they know if they weren’t part of it? So, I think having, when I hear stories of that kind coming into the business, then I’ll know we’ll have made a difference. And I was just thinking about it. Just on a personal level, maybe this would not apply to me personally, but I think when a person of colour walks into a room and nobody reaches a conclusion about whether they’re a doctor or a dustman, then I know something will have changed in the air. We’re not there at all, but that would be a success.

Winepress

Thanks, Trevor, and what a fascinating story. I’m indebted to that lady for helping me with knowing the correct positioning when I became a mother. So that’s great. Just to finish off, as part of our podcast series, we ask all our guests to share what makes them belong. So, I can kick us off, but then I’ll turn over to both of you, and to finish this sentence, I belong when ... So, I’ll share mine. I belong when I’m encouraged by others to live my personal purpose, which is making things work better. David, over to you.

Tyler

Well, I guess I belong in those moments when, in the midst of a long meeting or activity with people in an organisation I’m involved with when I realise, we’ve all largely forgotten about our background, our gender, our ethnicity, or whatever, and instead, we’re just a group of human beings, working together to address an opportunity or a problem. At that point, I guess I belong. I’m not there as a white person or as a male or anything else. I’m just one of the groups. I belong.

Winepress

Thank you, David. Trevor?

Phillips

Yes, in a way, following up with what David said. I think I know I belong in a group when I make one of my absolutely grotesque, awful jokes and everybody laughs. So that’s a very British thing to say, isn’t it?

Tyler

I just did it for you.

Phillips

There you go.

Winepress

Thank you, Trevor. Yes, we laugh right on cue. We laugh right on cue. Listen, it just remains for me to say thank you both, David Tyler, and Trevor Phillips, for joining us for this podcast on race. It’s been very interesting. Thank you for your time. And as we close, I’ll just say have a good day.

Phillips/Tyler

Thank you, Amy -Thank you.

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