D
Diversity | Catalyst
Harnessing the
POWER OF DIFFERENCE
Alexander Mann Solutions hosted a roundtable in London to discuss
overcoming barriers to diversity and social mobility in the workplace.
M
ost businesses acknowledge
that they could be doing more
to address workforce diversity
and support social mobility. But
where should they be focusing?
At a roundtable run by Alexander Mann Solutions,
Simon Fanshawe, co-founder of consultancy
Diversity by Design, and founding member of
equality charity Stonewall, spoke about the ways
in which organisations can move the dial.
Fanshawe began with a stark indictment of the
current demographics of business leadership:.
“Of the 300 top jobs in the FTSE 100 – chairs, chief
executives and chief finance officers – there are
more white men called John, David and Andrew
than there are women and black and Asian
people,” he asserted.
However, he explained that this does not simply
reflect poor intentions. There are systemic issues
to address and ways in which unconscious bias can
perpetuate diversity deficits. For example, when
working with the NHS, he found that senior jobs
that needed to be filled quickly were only being
advertised within managers’ networks –
comprising people who were almost
exclusively white and middle-
class.
“Within organisations,
deficits can be created and
exacerbated by the ways
in which they’re doing
things internally, which
are not about intentions,”
he explained.
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Leading with strategy
Fanshawe encourages companies to begin with
strategy rather than diversity, pointing out that
whenever someone says they are trying to achieve
greater diversity in their company, it’s important
to question why. The goal shouldn’t be diversity
for diversity’s sake, he stressed, advising hires
and promotions based on “the virtuous circle of
recruitment”: this involves asking what you’re
trying to achieve, the specific combination of
differences that might help you achieve this, and
the demographics you are currently lacking.
To highlight the commercial benefits of gender
balance, he cited the experience of BHP, the
biggest mining company in the world. BHP looked
at its teams within which women made up more
than 20% of members, concluding that those that
combined men and women outperformed those
in the rest of the company by a significant margin.
This, Fanshawe argued, is because people’s
differences (whether of gender, race, sexuality
or socio-economic background), and the ways in
which their life experiences have shaped them,
are valuable to companies – whether or not they
recognise it. (Instead of asking women what
they have forgotten after coming back from
maternity leave, organisations should ask them
what they have learned.)
He joked that businesses will be seen to have
made real progress on gender balance when
mediocre women reach the top jobs (“because
there are an awful lot of very mediocre men
who think they’ve got there on merit; and
they haven’t!”)