This month on the Inclusion Edit we are discussing race equity, so who better to speak to how far we have come, but also how far there is to go, than Sir Trevor Phillips OBE. 

Sir Trevor was appointed head of the Commission for Racial Equality way back in 2003 by then Prime Minister Tony Blair and went on to become the chairman of The Equality and Human Rights Commission which replaced it. He is a politician (former Chair of the London Assembly), broadcaster, writer,  campaigner and businessman who has been fearless in putting the data front and centre in the discussion about race, even if that has sometimes ruffled feathers… 

We kick off with the data. When The Parker Review was launched six years ago only 47% of FTSE 100 companies had one or more board members from an ethnic minority. The aim was for all FTSE 100 companies to have at least one director from a BAME background by 2024. So how are we doing? 

“Well, the latest data is that we are nearly there. There is perhaps one company which doesn’t have one, but it’s been much easier than people thought because there are plenty of brilliant candidates that fit the bill if you start looking for them. However, many of them are Non-Executive Directors, so we need to up the numbers who are in executive positions, much as we need to do still with all women.” 

Of course, Sir Trevor had a hand in The Parker Review’s creation. He smiles. “Well yes, Vince Cable rang me up and said: ‘Trevor will you sort out this situation with boards?’. I approached Sir John Parker. I knew that the chairmen of these city companies wouldn’t listen to me, but they would listen to him when it came to the importance of ethnic minority representation because he is one of them. He’s done a fantastic job. He was very humble when I approached him, saying he didn’t know anything about race. But he has his own story of social mobility—he came from a humble family in Belfast and worked on the dockyards there and rose to be the ultimate City grandee—so I knew he could do it.” 

Would he call Parker an ally then? “I suppose he is, but we have to be careful with allyship. It can be patronising, and it runs the risk of the whole discussion becoming about the white men… again.” It is part of Sir Trevor’s style to inject a mischievous humour into such discussions, allowing for a level of nuance unusual among politicians in this space. 

Sir Trevor is insistent, however, that in talking about race equity we keep our eyes firmly on WHY it matters for businesses to have diversity in their ranks, their senior management teams and above all in their thinking. “Racial diversity isn’t just a ‘nice to have’. It is crucial if businesses are going to properly serve their customers. At my company Green Park we advise one of the huge beauty companies. These days they have data on everything to do with the heritage breakdown of their customers; they know exactly what shade of foundation a Middle Eastern woman buys and not only what colour, but where she buys it; whether she is picking it up in Oxford Street or as she comes through the Duty Free in Heathrow. This information is worth hundreds of millions of pounds to their business.”  

“We ask our clients: what is your workforce ratio when it comes to diversity compared to your customer base? How can you possibly understand your customers and give them the personalisation that modern business requires if you don’t mirror their thinking in your boardroom and your work force? You need to know who buys and who doesn’t, and what they buy and where. It is all about having data-led sophisticated insight.”  

He gives another example. “Twenty-five years ago, in our education system we measured outcomes at what is now GCSE level in three ethnic groupings: children of Asian background, Black background and white. On that metric, the white kids performed best, followed by the Asian children, and there was lots of discussion about bias in teachers and how we needed to reform them and their attitudes to serve our children better. However, more sophisticated analysis of the data showed that this wasn’t about teachers’ racial bias. When we collected more nuanced data, it turned out that within the original cohort of Asian children there were hugely different outcomes: children with Indian parents, or who were of Indian heritage but whose families had come from Africa, outperformed white children. But the Asian children who were the offspring of those of Pakistani/Muslim heritage did much less well in schools. From having more complex data we could see that it wasn’t about the attitudes of the teachers, but that children with different cultural heritages were achieving different results. The same was true of Black African heritage children, and Black Caribbean. These days London, which has the highest number of children from different ethnicities in the country, has the best school results. Chinese children outperform white British ones by over 20%. I have learnt that rather than worrying about being cancelled for saying the wrong thing, the important piece is to have the granular data, so we can talk from facts, not from prejudices or personal experience.” 

The same, he believes, is true for businesses; they need to be accurately recording and tracking what is happening to their strategic talent. “Look at the Coqual research. It shows that if you ask white men whether they are considering leaving their job, 34% say that they are. When you ask the same question of Black men, then that rises to 46%, and for Black women it is a massive 52%.”  

“Every organisation needs to be recording its own data on this and tracking it, because if over half of your Black women want to leave, that means that now, in real time, your organisation is not behaving in a way that makes them feel welcome.” He is right—current data shows that 68% of Black people and 58% of those with mixed heritage say they have encountered racial prejudice, and 81% report that they don’t think the process around promotions or hiring is fair. 

“Is your company culture making this kind of strategic talent feel that they can thrive? If they want to leave, you know that it is not. There is no point in having policies on a spreadsheet, you need an inclusive culture which is a reality every day so they do not want to leave. It is not enough just to hire in a diverse way at graduate level. You have to make sure that the company culture is conducive to them wanting to stay higher up; that they can see people who look like them at senior levels. This matters, because to rehire those key individuals who leave will be expensive, and you will lose crucial company knowledge. You asked me what I would do if I could wave a magic wand to fix this… well I would get all organisations to track these metrics, because we know that in business it is true that what gets measured gets done. I’d like these data points about strategic diverse talent in the workforce and how happy they are to be part of the key metrics given to every CEO at the beginning of every week. That would really start to change culture.” 

These days Sir Trevor is the Chairman of the consultancy firm Green Park: “Last year we placed 400-500 individuals into top level jobs, C-suite, or C-suite minus one, or two. Of those boss-class jobs, 50% are female and 30% come from an ethnic minority. I am doing my bit to try and change business culture one job at a time if necessary. What are YOU doing?”