Enough of the BAME game for corporate Britain

Accelerating diversity and inclusion in corporate Britain is essential – we lead the world by the way - but we must do this in an inclusive way that is rooted in meritocracy. Labels are fraught with division and resentment.

I recently came back to live in the UK after 18 years of being an expat in seven different countries. Though I was born and raised here (I’m of Indian heritage), I came back to an acronym that I had not come across before I had left, yet is now in the everyday vernacular: BAME. It was commonly used even before the onset of COVID-19, where it is used frequently to describe this group as higher risk to contracting the disease, which to a degree I can accept given the context.

In a consulting capacity I was asked by an organisation to review their proposed approach to retaining employees with a BAME background. Their challenge being that most of those members of staff who they categorise under this umbrella leave within 2-years of entering the firm as part of the annual graduate intake.

I immediately noted two things. The first was definition. BAME stands for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic. Not Black, African and Middle Eastern, just to shout out one variation. Even some mainstream media outlets should note this! The definition specifically excludes white ethnic groups, which is a fertile topic in itself. Who falls under “Minority Ethnic”? It’s not clear and I’ll remind you of the phrase, “they’re all the same”. This is hardly the desired outcome given the intent, which I concede comes from a good place.

Corporates, if not already, will be falling over themselves to get their BAME stats published in the same way as they have been reporting their gender diversity and carbon footprint KPIs over the past 5 years. In a way, these fool us into thinking that they are on top of the situation, or that they are dare I say woke. But the lack of a consistent interpretation of who falls under the BAME definition will render the data relatively meaningless. Plus, it does not address the issue.

The second thing I noted was personal. I experienced my own unease with a label that I was now a subset of but had no affinity to. For the first 30 years of my life in the UK before I went to work overseas, I was not given a formal label. I know full well what the informal labels were from growing up in 1970’s and 80’s Britain. I wanted to integrate and belong to the fabric of the nation that my parents had emigrated to for a better life. I repeat, I wanted to belong. So did my friends. I suspect that regardless of shade or ethnic background, the desire for equal opportunities and the desire to belong remains equally intact for the youngsters of today. However, a label like BAME divides, it segregates and creates resentment amongst the majority. It doesn’t resonate with me, that’s for sure.

The onset of corporates publishing data will no doubt lead to target setting. But to set BAME targets feels to me like a divisive way of attempting to achieve a goal. It creates an unwanted self-consciousness for those directly impacted – ‘Am I only here to fulfil a quota?’.

A proposed plan of action by the company I was working with was to mentor BAME employees solely and have them attend workshops – what to provide exactly, I’m not quite sure.

Over the past decade I have been involved in, or have closely observed, many focus groups working on diversity and inclusiveness within the companies I have worked in and the institutions I have studied at. These have been primarily focused on gender diversity. In one organisation, gender diversity workshops were exclusively for women. What I observed was that by not educating/providing awareness to everyone within the organisation they generated an atmosphere of negativity including calls of bias, tokenism and “only there because…” comments. There is a place for closed conversations to enable vulnerability and to provide a space for experiences to be shared. However, it needs to be part of a wider organisational agenda.

I’ve been fortunate to have lived and worked in several countries. None, in my view, are as advanced as the UK when it comes to diversity and inclusion. In fact, they are light-years behind and the countries that fall far behind may surprise you. The depth and quality of the conversations we have as a nation are more advanced than anything I’ve witnessed elsewhere. In the UK, representation of the minority groups is very visible, including at the highest levels – look at the Government, look at the media, look at the NHS. This is not meant to be a get out of jail statement but the reality of what I have experienced. This is not tokenism, these people are good at what they do.

We all know that corporate culture is of utmost importance and it trumps everything. If corporates want to attract and retain talent, BAME or otherwise, it is essential that the leadership is front and centre of the initiative and that people are advanced on merit and not driven by meeting quotas. The social pressure and awareness is omnipresent and will not subside. There is good momentum in a nation that is truly leading the way.

Companies should continue to drive an inclusiveness agenda, but labels such as BAME in this context is not helpful – it goes against what is trying to be achieved.