Race and Ethnicity
Racism at boardroom level?
Where are the BME executives?
The glaring absence of some of the brightest black and minority ethnic individuals was highlighted in a study by the Guardian newspaper. The report showed that there are only five black and minority ethnic chief executives across more than 300 NHS organisations in the UK. In social care the picture isn’t much better; the number of BME directors of adult services in England is four out of 150.
Such low numbers have prevailed for many years, despite over a thousand BME managers taking part in excellent development and leadership programmes. This pattern is replicated across both public and private organisations.
On 2 December, 80 BME senior managers from the NHS and adult social services met together at an event jointly organised by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass), the NHS Leadership Academy, the Local Government Association (LGA), and the National Skills Academy.
This was the first time a grouping of BME senior managers crossing health and social care had met together to look at barriers to gaining top jobs, and ways of breaking through systems which stubbornly never seem to shift. Several of the major recruitment consultancies also contributed to the discussion.
Barriers identified included inconsistent approaches to developing talent, selection boards and a lack of perceived transparency in the recruitment process.
In our work at Equal and Diverse we are increasingly hearting of poor recruitment and selection practice which discriminates in hard financial times against many from BME communities. Surely it is time if the NHS and social care is being serious about equality for that talk to be shown in action? Surely we need to build a society where a colour bar in senior management doesn’t exist – because anecdotally and now from evidence it clearly does
Dr Donald Macaskill
Source: The Guardian.
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