Effective employee networks

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good afternoon everybody i'm going to kick us off as it is half past 12. i can still see we still got people joining but i
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will get started with the introductions and housekeeping my name is katie jacobs from cipd
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and i'm delighted to welcome you to the third and final installment in this webinar series that we hope will
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help you as people professionals continue to tackle racism in the workplace and keep anti-racism on the business
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agenda this series is a follow-up to our previous series on racism and the challenge
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for hr and if you missed that first time around i would strongly encourage you to go back and take a look it was a
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really really powerful series in our first session of this series we covered how the people profession can go
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about obtaining long-term leadership commitment to anti-racism work and embed genuine cultural change then
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in the session after that we looked at ethnicity pay reporting and other government policy interventions
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this afternoon we're switching our focus back to the organization we're going to be exploring how to set
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up and develop effective employee networks with a particular focus on race and
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joining me to discuss this this afternoon got a fabulous panel i'm joined by nicole mcgill higgins
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nicole works at the cipd and she is co-chair of embrace the cipd's own internal race network i'm joined by
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frank monroe frank is a campaign manager at the ministry of justice and also a co-deputy chair of the proud
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network which is the mojs network for black and minority ethnic colleagues
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and finally last but not least least david de souza david is membership director of the cipd
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and david is currently working closely with embrace on a ways of working project and review thank
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you very much everybody for joining us today as eva i'm just going to run through the very quick housekeeping points
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first point to make is that the session is being recorded and you will be able to access it later
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on demand you can also access recordings of all of our previous webinars and this should be available from the end of today or
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tomorrow to submit questions and please do during the webinar could i ask you to use the q a tab which
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you should be able to see at the bottom of your screen so use the q a tab for any questions you
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want me to put to the panel but please do use the chat function to speak to
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and connect with each other so i would encourage you to get chatting on there um say hello to each other and any
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thoughts uh any points that you think are really great or anything you just want to share about your own experience um because it's really really been great
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during these sessions to see the levels of interactivity and engagement on the chat as well as q a the cipd has developed a new hub
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on our website it's dedicated to tackling racism in the workplace we're adding resources to that all the
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time so do check it out um i just wanted to flag that we've got a guide on setting up effective employee
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networks um and my colleagues will put a link to that in the chat in case you want to access it
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and we've also got a guide to having difficult conversations at work about race which is going to be going live this week so do watch out for
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that i also want to flag our well-being helpline for our members in the uk and
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ireland with award-winning workplace being provider
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providing cipd members with free help and support via sessions with qualified therapists online or over the phone so that's there
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if you need any extra support and finally i wanted to flag our reward management survey
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which this year includes questions on the impact of the black lives matter movement on reward strategy
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so please do fill that out if you have any responsibility for reward within your organization
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so that's enough housekeeping i'm going to get on to the topic at hand in the wake of recent black lives matter
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protests around the world many organizations found themselves tapping into their employee networks around race
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conducting listening exercises or asking for feedback however for some employees this burden
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of responsibility felt like too much taking a toll on their mental and emotional well-being
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employee resource groups or networks can affect can work effectively for both employers
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and employees but it requires thoughtful support from hr and the business as well as appropriate
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resource so what does an effective setup look like what support does a network need
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from hr and the business and how can the people profession help to create psychologically safe spaces
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for employee groups that's the kind of thing we're going to tackle over the next hour please do get your questions in
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throughout and i will pick them up as we go and please as i said you use the chat function to make observations
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as well but before we get into the q a i'd like to ask each of our panel if they want to make a
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brief opening statement introducing themselves a little bit more fully and telling us about their role
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in ergs i'm going to start with you nicole hi i'm nicole mcgill higgins as um katie
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just said and i'm the co-chair for embrace and we've embraced has been around for just over two years now
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at the cipd and just to get us temperature i just wanted to do a quick poll to ask
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um how many of you actually have race employee resource groups if you could just quickly answer the um
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polls that should have just come up on your screen
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and that's just to see how many of you currently have one thinking about one or just haven't thought about it and there's no appetite at the moment
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be great if everyone can participate because then we can get a good
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temperature excellent no not yet hoping to create one soon
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okay so you've come to the right place then you've got someone's quite successful not had much impact and not appetite for
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one okay brilliant thank you so much for participating in that so like i say i'm the co-chair for
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embrace we'll be going into more detail in kind of what we've done what we plan to do in the future and how impactful and maybe some of the
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pitfalls that we've had so thanks katie thanks nicole
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um frank can i ask you for a brief intro remember to unmute yourself i have i've
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managed the technology good afternoon everybody my name is frank monroe um
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i'm currently the deputy co-chair for the moj proud staff network but i have
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actually been um involved in staff networks for over 20 years prior to that i was the chair of the
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defra main staff network um and in the civil service
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we're relatively unique in that we have um a network called the civil service race
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forum which is a it's a bain staff network of fame staff network so
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in order to be on that group you have to be either the chair or deputy of your bain staff network and that
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represented 28 government departments and 13 non-departmental public bodies and
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for that i was the deputy chair of that role thank you thank you
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you have to unmute yourself it's always one my name's david de souza
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i'm a membership director at the cipd um so together with nicole uh i understand very much what we're doing as
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an organization internally so where frank's talking about needing a bank staff network of a bank staff network because of scale
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we're about 300 employees so we face similar challenges to any other organization
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and possibly one of them we don't is that there's obviously a kind of quite strong senior team advocacy given what we do in the space
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that we operate in but the people that we have working for us face the same challenges the organization has the same kind of
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dynamics as any you might expect so i'm here to share i suppose a bit of my experience uh what it's like to
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sponsor some of these groups and also answer any questions uh as effectively as i can but nicole will
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have the best and most immediate insight into what we've been doing at the cipd
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thank you david i'm just going to read out a comment about what people are calling these so obviously we call them employee
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networks or employee resource groups but um a comment in the chat says we don't call it an erg we call it an edni
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task force so i think lots of different things you call these but i'm sure all trying to achieve the same outcome um so the first
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question i'd like to ask is one of mine before um i dive into some audience questions um so nicole what does an effective
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employee network or resource group or task force look like what strategic value do you think it can add
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to an organization um well i would say that mainly for or firstly it's a voice
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voice for the employees and voice of engagement with your organization and and for us i think that's why the
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group was started funnily enough i didn't start the group it was jule miller who started it and it was called the bain network which we changed
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immediately because we don't particularly like that terminology but i'm sure there's lots around terminology which i won't go into at the moment
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but i think for it to be successful you have to have buy-in from the top your senior leadership team needs to
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know why the staff network exists what are the impact that you're trying to accomplish and also organization
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the organization has to be involved as well it can't just be an isolated group in the corner you have to have that visibility and
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also understanding of what you're doing and as i say hr needs to understand it
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has to be an organizational effort i think the organization is almost an extension of the staff network but you just have
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people that's joined it and it's important that it's diverse it's not just for black people it's not just for asian people it's all for
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everybody and it's really important that you do have that ally ship as well and if you do have any other staff
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networks have collaborations for me for it to work you've got to have the understanding of what the other staff networks or
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employee resource groups are trying to accomplish and have that collaboration and understanding and just
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have the communication throughout the organization so for it to be successful or to to start
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successfully shout about what you're doing let the organization understand why are we talking about this particular
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topic have a sponsor from the top you know get a good sponsor who can obviously advocate your work and talk about what
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you're doing thank you and frank you've obviously been involved in in quite a few of these
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where have you seen them really add value to the to the organization
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yeah um where i see ads um value i'm just re picking up on nicole's
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point it is the voice of the organization so more often than not it depends on
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what the driver is so if there is something going slightly awry
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in terms of the policy processes and practices it's normally the staff network if there
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is one um that will actually pick that up first and bring that to the attention of to
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the organization um so the networks play a crucial role
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certainly in terms of um looking at all of the policies processes and practices
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that are about to be introduced to make sure that um they don't have any hidden
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um or um unforeseen consequences thank you when it comes to setting one
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up david where does the kind of drive an appetite tend to come from does it come from the kind of employee base or should it
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come from hr or as nicole said is it a leadership issue i think you can see it coming from
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different places and different organizations depending on the context i think it's you know given the events
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of the last six months or so and you've seen lots of senior teams driving for what are we doing in this
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space how do we do more that in some cases will have been a relatively knee-jerk reaction in which case what i'd advise people to
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do is take advantage of that knee jerk and make timely interventions there so it might not come from
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the place that you wanted to come to but actually use that momentum where you can but historically it's come from quite
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often people you know organizations understanding or voices within organizations driving
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for a recognition that actually different parts of the community within the organization
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will have shared interests shared challenges and it's right and appropriate for people to come together so i think there's always that tension
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between is it inclusive is it exclusive well we recognize that people come together as teams people come together around shared interests
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quite often there's nothing more important as a shared interest than people's identity and their values and that's why it's really important for
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organizations to create a space for this but that space to have an employee voice flowing through
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thank you and when it comes to setting one up from scratch so we saw in nicole's poll that more than half people watching this um
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really want to set one up but kind of haven't haven't done it yet nicole what advice can you offer on getting
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started unmute
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oh you you unmuted and then you muted yourself which i've never seen before i've done a
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lot of these yeah it's still on me it's not pretty consistent
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very professional can everybody hear me now yes okay david i blame you david i blame
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you sorry um so how to start a network and get people involved um basically
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get some internal comms out there say that the reason why you're starting the network um i remember that when this when
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embrace was first started and i saw it on on the internal comms i didn't believe in it i'd be completely honest i was a
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non-believer i thought is this going to be tick box you know is it going to be rose tinted i'm not getting involved why do we even
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need a race at work network i didn't i'd never heard of them before didn't understand why we were creating one
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when spoke to jill and said okay if we're going to do this we have to do it properly it can't be a tick box exercise so the
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group was formed we had a couple of meetings and and we said what is the purpose of this group so ensure that you know what
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your purpose is is it in line with your company's values and your mission and and then get the
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word out to the organization to say this is a group that we're starting these are the things that we want to change this is the impact that we want to have
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and and be clear with why you're doing it and and then once you've kind of set that up start being active seeing
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what other departments can help with because not everybody can be involved but people may have an appetite and just be consistent with as i say why
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you're starting these groups but i would say ensure that it's diverse and try and get different people in
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different departments including speak to your senior leadership team speak to the line managers and be clear on what impact you're
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wanting to do and and have a projection of what you want to do within the time say in the next six months or the next three months
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whatever you want to do have conversations you know have organizational conversations don't let don't be
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isolated and just speak amongst yourself because you may find that a lot of the groups have people from that demographic
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in there it's not really about preach to the converted it's about getting that voice out there so everybody
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in the organization understands why you started the group and what impact you're planning to have or hoping to have thank you and frank do
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you want to add to that yes um i also think it's very very important that you actually have
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people who are leading the group that actually have some knowledge of the subject area
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um because very often people can you know get into unstaffed networks for
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not necessarily the right reason and so that when it comes to leading the or the you know when it comes to
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leading that staff network and taking it to the next to the next level because there will be turbulence
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without that knowledge and experience in the space it becomes very very difficult
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thank you and before i come on to some audience questions um david i wanted to ask you what do you think hr's
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role is in all of this and also what the importance of um senior sponsorship is i mean both
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nicole and frank have mentioned that yeah and i i think sometimes networks get bounced about between those two
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polls and they they should be working in concert so senior leadership teams shouldn't be just
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branding this an hr problem or something that hr should be doing to help them but likewise anything to do with culture
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hr should have an incredibly important leading role in that so i think it's genuinely one of those subjects where
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you can't make the progress that you need to or want to if the senior team are bought into it but likewise you're probably unlikely to
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make that progress that you might want if hr aren't playing a leading role in it so i
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don't think it's a binary question which which is it i think the senior team needs to make sure that if it's
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if they're sponsoring something that means they are actively sponsoring something so having a name on top of a piece of
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paper doesn't actually drive any change but actually helping remove barriers to progress helping
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people actually be able to develop their voice share what's needed in the organization and following up
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that's what's needed from senior teams hr we know this is an agenda that's actually critical to the profession
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this is just one way that hr can make a difference understanding how it fits in with all of
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the other ways is a really important thing too so it's not about initiatives and it's not about nicole's point tick boxes it's about
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how you can genuinely have a suite of things that are making a proper difference over time and what do you do if you have a senior
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leader who'd like to say is happy to have their their name on it that isn't being very active or is not doing any active
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sponsorship don't let them anywhere near it and i realize that's easier said than done but at the heart of this
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if you're dealing with something as important as this you can't afford to have passengers and you certainly can't have full-time
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passengers at that level so either pick a senior team that will park you know are passionate about it
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or the ceo or whoever's leading it in the business needs to show visibly how much it matters to them and
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that there's accountability for delivery it's not just about a nomination of a name
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thank you um to build on the question that i asked about hr functions we've got a question um
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from someone watching asking should central dni teams have a say in the activities and priorities
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of employee networks where should the authority lie um frank can i put that to you first
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um whoever asked that question must have a camera in my house um
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because um because that's um that's one of there's always going to i mean david's
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already um david's already spoken about it there's always going to be attention um at the ministry of justice we've
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actually just gone through a similar exercise ourselves um it comes down to when you're setting
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up your staff network what is the governance process because a lot of staff networks do not
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have a governance process so the default is that most hr
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functions want to be part of the governance for the staff network
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but that doesn't always work because that in itself causes some tension so for example within the
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ministry of justice we've got race champions who are senior civil servants so
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i've argued and won the argument that our staff network should report into the
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um race champions and sit outside of the hr function
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uh and carefully if you ask that question says she promises that there are no hidden cameras in your house
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thanks kirsty it's made him feel a lot better um nicole can i put that question to you as well um yeah i think um david and france kind
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of said but for me i kind of look at it that it's almost like a freedom of speech and if you there has to be a level of
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governance but there has to be a level of freedom as well so to me it's more of a collaboration than being governed by
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hr because what you will find is that when you have an employee resource group people in the organization will speak to
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you differently because they just do you look at hr people will see hr as the police of an organization
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and but when you have this is a very safe space and and you know when we have our embrace meeting sometimes we can have a
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rant we can talk candidly we can talk openly and it's really important to get that out the way and then you
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think about okay this is how we're all feeling how do we channel that to make a change what impact are we wanting to
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have so yes of course hr has to have visibility and has to have access and if anything
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is said to us you would then signpost it to hr depending on what it is but you still have to have that safe
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space for the people that's within the organization within the group david yeah i think it's that age-old
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question around hr isn't it is it there to control well possibly but if it can enable
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then that's even healthier and i think it depends on the level of trust that your hr team has within the organization and because
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that plays a part in it as well so reporting something into a team that doesn't have large amounts
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of trust isn't a great way to start with momentum so it's understanding the dynamics of your individual organization
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well to a degree inform that governance question but i think it's less about governments
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more about clarity and trust because that's actually a better place to be working yeah thank you agreed and
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yeah some questions about the kind of what examples can you give of events and
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supports that your ergs have delivered to your organization so i'll start with you nicole maybe you can bring it to life a little bit um
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with what you've done with embrace and then i'll move on to frank yeah good question um so when we
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launched embrace um because what you'll find is that an employee resource group is voluntary so anything that you do anything that we
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do is is not compulsory so something like race the people that probably should turn up
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to the events or should be in the room don't turn up but you're not forcing anyone and this is why on the flip side of things you'd want to
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kind of implement something that is going to be solid that you'd have mandatory training or what have you but when we launched embrace we had a
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whole week and we were quite fortunate to have a canteen where we work so we would have
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our free lunches so what we did is that we did an international menu for the day for the for the um
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for the week so we had things you know chicken jollof rice we had things from trinidad just around the world basically and we had
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sri lankan food indian food etc we had bob marley's exodus album playing throughout you know so we had a little
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bit of a dance there um and we also had um we've got the speech bubble and we had embrace on that so we've got
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our own kind of internal logo and we went around the building and lots of people just held it and took pictures with it
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we then had a quiz night around um the employee resource group and things that we want to do
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so we've really got people involved that way we've had panel discussions which is more serious topics we've had one recently um after the
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murder of george floyd which was quite emotional and um it was a really really good session and people were really open
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and we had a let's talk race at the beginning of um opening up embrace like two years ago so we
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continue to celebrate things like diwali we celebrate um chinese new year and that's where the organization gets involved
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so we look at the cultural side of things but we also talk about the serious and the uncomfortable side of things
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and that's where you get the organization involved because we will speak to our brand's team we talked to our comms team so people know that we're about to put
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in an event we want everybody involved we're not isolated so i would say celebrate things you know celebrate the
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events around the world talk to have panel discussions have focus groups and have quiz nights think you know let
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people well not now but you people could bring food in and you can have zoom calls and do like
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a tour around your country one of our teams did that the content team and for their teams
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people in the organizer in their teams basically spoke about where they were from so there was somebody who spoke about well somebody who spoke about
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trinidad i went in and spoke about the one love tour for jamaica so and we did that all on team so there's
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things that you can do to let people understand that did you knows so you can get people involved and you
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can do to do organizational activities thank you and what about frank what have you experienced and delivered
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um okay thank you um well since the well no let me start from
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the beginning um the moj um had a separate project that sets
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outside of hr called project grace and the aim of project race was to make
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the ministry of justice raise confidence after just over two years um that
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project was wound down a bit prematurely if we fast forward 18
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months to last water this may um the um murder of george floyd
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had a immense impact on the ministry of justice
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um and in so in so much that um myself personally i found
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i found the whole experience very traumatic um and i shared that with colleagues
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um and as a result of that we actually um put on a series of listening sessions
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for staff throughout the ministry of justice so during three sessions we had over 800
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people call in and we had the um burn sec and his exec exco listening
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on those sessions and people as nicole has said found what they found it very very
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emotional and traumatic to the point that um within well certainly within the
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the first session um our then perm sec made the statement that the ministry of
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justice was going to be an anti-racist organization since then um and that has had a lot of
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traction because since then i've delivered about seven presentations
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on on um white privilege how to be an ally across various
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divisions in the organization and that would never have happened that would not have happened 24 months ago
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impact have you seen from from that increase in activity um where we're seeing it is um people
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actually contacting the um the network wanting to be an ally so as a consequence we're actually
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designing an allyship program for them um and
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um we are another for me another indicator is as you know we've got black
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history month um in a few days time um and traditionally black history
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month has been for black people because there's been very little sign up from
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our white colleagues in the past we're looking to see if that dial changes this time round
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it'd be interesting you have to come back and tell us um we've um had a few questions i think
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nicole you just touched on this um about what to do now with social
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distancing or the fact that we can't do things in person and particularly around gathering insights
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from staff now that we're all working remotely um david i'll come to you first for any any thoughts on how to to do this well in a
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virtual world yeah first tip is do your best so it's it's definitely harder
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and we're missing that intimacy of contact um in a whole host of different
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dimensions but now is not the time to let this slip now is the time that there's an infinity
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of reasons that you could let this slip because we all have viable excuses in terms of what we're busy with
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but if you genuinely care about human rights in the workplace this isn't what we should be letting slip so we need to get more creative we
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need to get more direct line managers have got a key role to play in this as well in terms of contact with people
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but the organization needs a strategy to bring people together
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resource groups have got the ability to form a community we've got the technology to enable
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conversations in this way the one that nicole was talking about we did that socially
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distance everyone was at home but it was spellbinding and depressing and disturbing
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and all of the other things you might think to listen to people talking about their experiences what that does is it legitimizes the
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conversation in the organization so that people can explore it in different ways in different offshoots
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private conversations small groups you have to make it legitimate to talk about these things
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otherwise they'll continue to be brushed under the carpet or it won't seem like something we talk
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about at work whereas it has to be key to that so use the technology but whatever you do don't give up on it
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just because it's tricky in there thank you and nicole just to build on that um
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any advice on getting people involved not only remotely but also when there's just so much else
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on people's agenda and a lot of people just feel that they're so busy yeah i think it's basically what david
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said you do have to use a technology um because i had a conversation last week i was just thinking about this like
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if we were all at work when this had happened we would have heard about george floyd yes but i think because it
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was all in our homes it just seemed even more magnified but then i also wonder
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when you're not in the office and colleagues who may not know have black friends or be around
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black people and black people who may not have white friends etc what would that impact be if you were in
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the office because you would see the trauma you would see the upset you'd have those one-on-one conversations so that is missing
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um so it is about using their technology it's about having those conversations in your team meetings
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you know you know it's about what can we do differently we've had a massive appetite at the cipd with lots of
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departments wanting to do different things and people have reached out to the embrace network say nicole how can
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we be allies what can we do differently and and i always say racism is learned behavior not work behavior
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but because of what racism is also if you're learning about it at work it's like you're taking it away as well
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you're thinking about it at home and lots of people are saying nicole what can i do as a person what can i do as a manager or what can i
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do as a part of my team and it is about the hard conversations but it's about understanding it's about
31:09
humanity it's about human rights kind of what david's just just just mentioned have the conversation i just cannot draw that
31:15
home enough yes the impact will come yes the the solutions will come the change of policy the guidance but if
31:20
you're not having those conversations and becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable you're not going to get
31:26
past that first barrier so so as an organization speak about it and your senior leaders and your line
31:31
managers and anyone of influence should be having those conversations and you both mentioned um how kind of
31:39
traumatic the weeks following the death of george floyd were um frank can you give any thoughts on
31:46
creating psychologically safe spaces because we know that kind of in the in the wake of the killing and the black
31:53
lives matter protest some employee resource groups and black employees in particular felt a little bit overwhelmed
31:58
by the amount of emotional labor being put on them by the organization um very much so um we did it well i did
32:07
it one of two ways i then um created the safe space for
32:12
just black um colleagues to actually have a conversation
32:18
because i i liken the experience to well yeah it was very very traumatic
32:28
so what we then started to do was actually look at um material that was
32:34
out there in terms of videos so we started to look at um trying to
32:39
identify videos that we could use that could actually start that conversation
32:44
and then if people felt comfortable within that space then build on that um but
32:52
but you're absolutely right um for for the majority of black staff
32:59
it was very very traumatic um and that's why the organization felt
33:05
it had to do something about it um and a specific question that someone's just put in and i'll come to
33:11
you david um is it harder to create psychologically safe spaces if meeting online instead of person
33:18
and frank if you've got any tips on mitigating that or do you believe it's not an issue no it's most definitely an issue because
33:25
one of the things i found in the new the new normal or new ways of working is
33:30
that in the old days if someone wanted to put a meeting in your calendar they'd look at it and they'd think right you've got
33:36
do you need to get from a to b in an hour now they know you're not moving anywhere so it's possible
33:43
that you can literally have back to back you know so in in that respect it is quite a mental
33:49
load so you need to find different ways of actually addressing that so for me i do an hour hour and a half
33:57
walk in the morning and i try and do a walk in the afternoon i'm just uh just to try and um ease that
34:05
load someone also asked if i can quickly address that about um
34:10
do i actually get facility time for my role the answer to the question is yes but
34:16
nowhere near enough i get effectively um a day but ever since
34:23
um ever since may i'm literally doing 12 14 hour days doing my day job
34:29
and spending as much time on my role as a deputy chair
34:35
um david i ask you to pick up on some of those points saying about creating psychologically safe spaces online but
34:40
also the the both the emotional load and the kind of resource load
34:46
preparing to run this thing how the organizations can better support yeah i mean i nicole and frank would
34:53
express it far more articulately than me but people are grieving and they're grieving for the loss of
35:00
life that they see they're grieving for the the prejudice that their children will witness and they're grieving for
35:07
the lives that they could have had and it makes no more sense to try and say but we just need to crack on with
35:13
things than it would do if someone had lost a loved one and we just went right back to work because we don't have time to deal with
35:18
that and and if you don't understand that grief then you're probably not going to create
35:24
the right solutions to it i think is to create a situation as frank said without the natural
35:30
gaps that traditionally might exist in organizations between meetings the kind of the ability
35:36
to catch up with someone afterwards together that's obviously impacted what you do without it being through this medium is
35:42
really really tough lots of the work that happens in the cracks in organizations is about social dynamics and about care
35:49
and compassion and understanding and we don't have the mechanics for that so we have to create them because
35:54
otherwise the the emotional burden the emotional labor sits with the people who are feeling it
36:00
most and the organization's response will be inadequate and my final point would just
36:05
be about senior leaders and lots of them because i'm happy to share will be like me and we will feel
36:11
completely inadequate in our efforts to support and lead through this because there's a
36:17
global pandemic with other layers on it and you just
36:22
feel alone and it's tough so for anyone working in hr thinking your senior teams aren't doing
36:29
enough they might just not know what to do and they might need that help and support and expertise from you
36:35
sailor actually you can add value here or you doing a small thing over here will make a big difference all you need to invest time but these
36:42
are complex systemic problems it's therefore okay for people to feel helpless it's not okay for people not to
36:48
do something about that and they'll come back to the same point i'm made around the comms yes it's not ideal that we have to work like this but
36:53
this is the hand we've been dealt it's about us doing the best with it now that we have it
36:59
thank you and thanks everyone loads of really great questions and i'm gonna try to answer as many of them as possible um nicole i'll put this to you
37:06
first sometimes employee networks start up with great gusto and enthusiasm in the early days and then someone who was driving things
37:12
leave leaves and things go off of oil with the network how can we avoid this kind of thing happening and somebody asked somebody
37:18
else asked a question about how do you kind of revive inactive groups
37:24
i think um well the revival of an inactive group i think the main thing really is to find
37:29
out why did it become inactive in the first place and what were the things that because that's not particularly happened
37:35
to us because we're still going but um i would say look at what why did it become inactive in the first place is it
37:41
because the driver left but did you not have a strategy in place you know maybe pick up on some of the
37:46
things that worked when that particular person was there and have a conversation see who can now lead that and
37:52
if there's not one one leader then all of you probably need to get together and really dig in
37:57
because if that happens and you're going to have a gap and then you're going to be going back to ground zero and they're hard enough as it is
38:03
to start them and to get that momentum going so i do understand that you could have a strong person that's in
38:08
you know in in the resource network that could be the driver but think about why it started in the first place
38:13
and and i would just say pull your socks up and you guys just have to just push forward honestly um but frank's putting his
38:20
hands up so he's probably been in this situation two things i would recommend to
38:25
everybody on this call all 150 of you to rush out to wh smith's or online or
38:33
amazon and buy the incredible power of staff networks by sharon sharon akantara um that's essential
38:41
reading for anybody in this space i can't reach my copy because it's the
38:46
other side of the room but i i will show it to you but but really it is essential reading for
38:52
um people in this space i also alluded earlier that um it's really important that whoever is
38:59
driving that network um isn't you know has more than just good intentions because
39:06
um when when i took over how i actually got back into um the staff network because when i
39:13
joined the ministry of justice the network was actually an abeyance it went from having
39:18
nearly 4 000 members to less than 100 because the chair and deputy had stepped
39:23
away they'd wound up project race and um myself and another colleague decided
39:30
that um we had to do something about it so we literally um put part body and soul into
39:38
relaunching it um getting an xco um so since last
39:46
since um 2018 october we've gone from
39:51
about 150 members to 1100 now
39:56
um but it is about having as nicole said it is about having that drive
40:02
um to make it happen and being altruistic wanting to you know put something back
40:08
in because you can make you can make the organization a better organization and make
40:13
a lived experience for a lot of staff a lot better could you repeat the name of the book
40:18
some people are asking somebody's asked for the isbn number but i think that's a little bit too much to ask him it's hold on if you bear with me i'm gonna
40:26
i'll ask a question to nicole go grab the book but somebody is somebody's already ordered it so uh okay
40:32
um nicole um have you involved white allies in your work and if so have you done it
40:38
i have done but let me just go on the back of what frank's just said all of you do need to buy that book is the only
40:43
book that actually will tell you how to start a staff network so it's the incredible power of staff network you
40:49
put that into amazon you can get it on prime tomorrow um and you will walk around with it it is no honestly it is fun
40:56
no one's on commission for this no i'm actually quite annoyed that frank said it before me because that was my line
41:01
frank hello i'm the one that promotes this book not you but anyway so um
41:06
why allies yes and that's important because it's funny whoever just asked that question i was just thinking back
41:11
to the poll that we did in the beginning and we had 11 that said no appetite and i'm really curious to know why
41:18
there's no appetite and i don't want to assume because it may be an all-white company um there's the book sorry
41:25
i'm getting distracted this is the book okay so amazon prime so um
41:31
yes i'm interested to see why we've only got 11 what the 11 of no appetite what does that no
41:37
appetite mean um and you why allies we have
41:42
most of half of embrace we have white people who's on who's he's a part of the
41:48
network and it is important to have white allies of course because unfortunately you'll probably find in
41:55
many organizations that you don't have many senior leaders who are black or even have any influence or on a
42:01
certain salary or on a certain band or at a certain level um and that's where the buy-in also comes from so like
42:06
i said beforehand yes we are speaking from our perspective but it's not just about preaching to the
42:12
converted so this is when you think about what is the impact why are you having a staff network
42:18
why you know it's the why why why is people just want to know why why should i be involved in that you
42:23
know what's that got to do with me i'm not black i'm not interested that's what you have to be looking at so what have you started the network for us
42:30
we wanted to look at policies look at guidance um how can senior leaders and how can um recruiting
42:37
managers understand what the process is understand our lived experiences understand the rejection understand the
42:43
lack of progression understand not getting that interview it's a completely different um experience for us and it's important
42:51
that the organization understands that because if you don't understand it then you can't fix it so in terms of so these are the kind of
42:57
things that you would be relaying to your organization this is why and it goes back to humanity and human rights why wouldn't you not
43:03
want to change that why would you not want a level playing field for all um and if you've got people in your organization that's
43:09
expressions expressing this marginalizations or microaggressions we understand that
43:14
would would come on board i'd also like to point out that other places are available to buy books
43:20
some people are raising that in the chat oh sorry amazon's been my lifeline
43:27
um i agree with everything that nicole has said and more um but it but i can't under i can't
43:35
stress the importance of actually having that ally ship because when i took over um as deputy chair i went to the exco
43:42
um because at that time um we were a predominantly bain only network and i said to them we need
43:50
to actually open up the network to all staff um and nobody backed me they just they were
43:57
adamant and i said well look guys we're not gonna do this on our own we're literally
44:03
you know you're bringing a pen knife to a gun fight you know really you know you're totally out of it
44:09
and then um as i said six months later we had um george floyd after the first
44:16
listening sessions literally after that first listening session we changed the membership
44:22
criteria thank you
44:28
david yeah i just struck by a couple of things that people are saying
44:33
as well as the fact that book is now sold out apparently so uh congratulations everybody who ran out and got it
44:38
yeah i think it's that balance of you know allies and people who are
44:44
cool and i think it's really easy to find goodwill at a point in time for
44:50
something in organizations and that goes for almost anything an organization does but what you need is not people who
44:55
would like it to succeed but people who aren't prepared for it to fail and that's a really different mindset so you
45:01
are likely to have ups and downs in terms of how it goes in terms of the momentum in terms of
45:07
how much it feels the organization's moving and you need people who are prepared to keep pushing and it just reminded me of
45:13
something that john amity said who i know has some kind of similar sessions for the crpd but he talks about look when an incident
45:20
happens and there have been many over the years if you imagine a group of people pushing a boulder up a hill
45:26
and what happens is everyone rushes for a few minutes to help push the boulder up and then as the attention goes elsewhere
45:32
they dissipate and you're left with the same group of people pushing the boulder up the hill you need those people pushing the
45:38
boulder up the hill but you also need more allies across the organization more often more consistently and that's the
45:45
challenge that hr can help with and help solve that's why it's important for senior leaders not just to be
45:50
putting their name at the top of a sheet of paper but actually putting their shoulder into that this is about a long time sustained
45:57
change and you need to have that group of people that just won't let this
46:02
fail and if you can't assemble them then you will find people drifting in loud and you will find that you lose momentum
46:08
and you will find that no one really knows what's happened for six months um but you need more than that small
46:14
call because otherwise it ends up with frank doing you know incredibly long days nicole doing incredibly long days
46:21
um and too much effort being placed on a small call
46:26
the trick is how do you broaden it out to an organizational world effort that's sustained as quickly as you can
46:32
not how do you keep that small call the small core of the only way it happens initially to give that drive
46:38
then the push and the effort has to be shared thank you uh nicole you wanted to make a
46:44
point and then i'm going to ask another question yeah um i also wanted to say well on the back of what david just said if
46:49
everybody does a little no one has to do a lot but it's also getting to the core of that understanding because with
46:55
with race especially you'll find that there's a defense mechanism because it's the only one of the nine protected characteristics where another
47:02
group is being marginalized because of another group so as soon as that comes up i always say this the barriers come up well i'm not
47:08
racist you know i i i i have never done that i've never done this so it's really getting to the core of
47:14
the understanding i can't stress that enough of why are we concentrating on race and explaining that and then you will have
47:20
white colleagues that will say well i don't know what to say i don't know what you know i don't want to offend
47:25
this is why the conversations need to be had because it's important that that understanding of why we're talking about
47:31
race and what are your triggers why are you not getting involved what are those issues there they need to be
47:37
talked about you can't silence any voice you can't silence the white voice yes the black voice does need to be heard
47:42
of course but you also need to understand what are those issues what are those core problems or barriers why people are not
47:48
getting involved once you've broken those down you can proceed and move forward thank you and frank a question for you
47:55
you mentioned a little bit earlier about the the skill sets needed to run these effectively
48:00
um somebody's asked if you do not have individuals with the necessary knowledge and experience to drive or leave the
48:06
setup of diversity network groups what skills would somebody need
48:11
that's true for i'd say for me that the most important skill there is a willingness to learn
48:17
so know what you know be aware of what you don't know tap into as many resources as you
48:24
possibly can so for example um myself and nico we're on a couple of whatsapp
48:31
groups is making sure that you're tapped into um that resource where um you can you know you can pick
48:39
up that knowledge so um for for example um one of the things i've
48:45
i've been i've been switched on to is cultural intelligence
48:50
um and that only that came on my radar um you know march this year and that's
48:57
helped me a lot probably more than anything else in this space
49:03
and when it comes to the education yes um and nicole mentioned that some people may feel uncomfortable talking about it
49:09
somebody else has asked how do you engage with the employees who volunteer but promote an all lives matter agenda um david any
49:16
thoughts on what the organization should be doing to educate outside of the the realms of the network
49:23
yeah so education is an ongoing process rather than an event and i think that's where organizations often
49:29
go wrong so that's where we've seen what we've done the unconscious bias training what more do you expect
49:34
so there are conversations to be had here about what language is acceptable why the organization's
49:39
taken the stance it has why it's being you know being overt and brave about saying this is why we're putting
49:45
resource into it this is where we stand this is what's acceptable what isn't acceptable so i think seeing it as a communications
49:52
and education piece rather than just one-off is really important and the organization needs to do two
50:00
things which are quite difficult but it does need to find a way to do them one of which is to enable
50:05
innocent naive conversations where people will say the wrong thing but they're exploring the subject matter
50:11
and the other is not to create normalization of hate speech or inappropriate or aggressive
50:17
language within it and that's why the organization needs to be over and forward thinking before it puts
50:24
itself into that situation because it's really anticipated so if you haven't set one up yet think about where you're going to draw the
50:30
lines where you're going to stop this going because there's already been quite a few organizations that have
50:35
started off very open conversations and ended up with people being very offended that isn't the same
50:42
psychological space that you're trying to create thanks frank um last week i delivered
50:49
um two sessions i talked about them earlier one was about race um um
50:56
race uh well both of them ultimately were about race because the second one was allyship but but then i came up with this idea of
51:03
how to start those conversations so i started it with the quiz um and i asked the audience first one was
51:10
about 122 people i asked them to name me five white inventors or inventions
51:17
um gave them a minute to do that um and everything
51:24
knocked out the park then i asked them to name me five black or black inventions and
51:31
it was a tumbleweed moment and then when i shared the top 10 with them it was
51:39
an omg moment because they were thinking well why didn't how come i don't know that and then that
51:46
spurred them on you know to you know that's when that conversation
51:51
opened the door to that conversation nice david um
51:58
nicole um i'm gonna feel free to build on that i'm gonna ask you another question as well obviously the cipd we
52:04
aren't a massive organization yeah um any advice you can offer for good practice for smaller
52:10
companies um yeah and i think smaller companies i mean i don't know
52:16
how small we're talking but i think for smaller companies again have those conversations it would be more intimate
52:21
and probably be even better because then everybody could potentially get involved i mean we couldn't have all of the cipd in the embrace group of
52:28
course not um but i would say have the conversations and think about you know how we're going
52:34
to make changes how has this impacted us how has it impacted our colleagues and how does it impact our clients
52:40
because you may have organizations that think well this isn't on my agenda you know because i don't have anyone of color in
52:45
our organization anyway but however your clients probably are and your end users could be so it's
52:52
still something that you do need to learn and understand and what i was just going back to was the person who
52:57
asked about the people who have the all lives matter agenda now to me that's quite serious um for me
53:03
and but it's like david said is it somebody who just generally has well doesn't everybody's life matter no one said it didn't
53:09
that's the first narrative nobody didn't say that all lives don't matter of course they do however
53:15
it just seems like black lives don't matter for the last 700 years or so
53:20
so it's been quite a long time so and this is what um the black lives matter hashtag is
53:26
highlighting and so it's important again education education education
53:31
and i would say if people really want to understand go back unfortunately to colonization
53:38
learn the british history and then take it all the way back down i've had people say to me well you've
53:43
got the 2010 act equality act it's way before that so if it's an all eyes matter agenda and if
53:50
that does offend you in your organization speak to your hr department if you don't have an employer resource group and say
53:55
look this is some of the narratives that people in the organization are thinking or feeling and have a session around it
54:01
have a session around stereotypes discrimination microaggressions and educate your staff and your organization and have those
54:08
conversations and that's what i would say about that but in terms of the smaller organizations
54:13
again talk about it see if there's an appetite you know put it out there and say look we've been going to you know what's
54:19
happening at the moment we've gone to the cipd webinar this is what they're saying you know how can we change this what can we do
54:25
differently and get people to give ideas so then people feel included as opposed to excluded because that's
54:30
when that's when the divide happens when it seems like it's an agenda over there just for you black people you can't do that have a conversation
54:37
and bring people in to invite people into it and i'd like to flag as i did at the
54:42
beginning our last webinar series um because the first one on that was on the history of black under representation
54:48
places and tackled a lot of the history there so a really great place to start and frank how should employee network
54:54
groups work together to raise awareness and tackle the topic of intersectionality
55:00
um for me that's key um that's another thing that i tried to
55:05
bring home um with the proud staff network because we did try to be a bit
55:10
isolationist um and i said no we we need to reach out because you'll find that we have a lot
55:17
in common and the bottom line is nobody is one thing you know um so and to believe that is
55:25
is a bit naive so we are now um we're now doing a lot more
55:30
collaboration with the other invoice certainly in the moj there's 13
55:35
and don't get me started on that but there's 13 unstaffed engagement um groups
55:42
um and some of them to be honest um we're more active with than others
55:47
um but but it really really is important that their intersectionality is drives
55:53
that and on that to add to that should you have a group for everything
55:59
or or not um i think i've said this a couple of times internally and casey and
56:05
i've said it to david i would be so happy if we could send an email and say that embrace no longer exists
56:10
because we don't need to the problem with groups like this is that because there is discrimination and marginalization it's
56:17
almost like you have to segregate before you unite and in that segregation process sometimes you can do a bit more
56:23
damage than good but to highlight and to understand what a particular group is going through especially when it comes to race
56:29
you do need that kind of niche look at it um i think it's a well-being issue because
56:34
the bottom line is we want to belong right hr means human race so um
56:40
it's difficult to say you should just have one umbrella group and say yep just push everybody under that that's like saying be a me to me
56:46
because you do need those different segments however it is a well-being thing it's like how how would you want to be treated be the
56:53
change that you want to see kind of thing so for me yeah it's
56:58
a bit it's a bit double-edged for me to be fair i'm running out of time here i'm just
57:03
going to ask one more one more question um i'll put it to david first how do you
57:08
encourage um if you perhaps are getting pushback from line managers about the amount of time and resource that's
57:15
needed to be spent on this how do you basically encourage the the space to be created for it i
57:20
think the expectation has to come from the top so it you know lots of things that happen in organizations are about
57:26
incentivization legitimization you need your senior team to say this time is protected because this
57:33
matters to us and this matters to us more than the productivity that you would have had in
57:39
that time or that slot because otherwise it's just it's a raw deal we go we're not treating
57:44
this group of people well enough so we need them to work extra to try and fix that problem the
57:50
onus has to be on the organization and the sacrifice has to come from the organization because otherwise ethically practically
57:58
from a moral standpoint it's even more offensive you know if you say we acknowledge that
58:03
we are we have a problem with racism here so we're going to leave it to the people of the victims to sort it out
58:08
and you can do that in one day a week but we're not really backing you on it that's really problematic and you know
58:14
i'm not being idealistic about this nicole you know you and i have spoken within the last week about
58:20
time commitment and how we get this working you know even more effectively in our organization um but organizations have to face into
58:27
those choices rather than pretend they don't exist thank you and i'd just like to ask frank
58:32
nicole any closing thoughts apart from everybody by that book yeah i would just i agree with david um
58:41
race has to become business critical until it's properly addressed it has to become business critical
58:50
and and on the back of that business critical means money time capacity resource yeah it's it's
58:56
not going to be taken seriously unless you say this is a budget this is a strategy this is what we've got to do
59:02
it has to have finance behind it and that's the bottom line you can't rely just on a group of
59:07
employees or like you say just one day a week to do something it's not going to happen you're not going to make
59:12
those changes so it has to be business critical agreed with both thank you
59:18
i'm afraid we are out of time there um thank you so much nicole frank and david for uh spending with us really really
59:25
great contributions from everybody uh thank you so much to the audience all of you watching um
59:30
for putting in so many questions uh tried to answer as many of them as possible and apologies if i didn't get
59:35
to yours um really really fantastic questions there and thank you for your reflections in the chat as well um this is the last
59:42
in our current anti-racism webinar series but do remember you can catch up on everything you missed on
59:48
demand and it's a topic that we are covering in detail at this year's cipd annual conference and exhibition in november
59:54
where our speakers include reniedo lodge author of why i'm no longer talking to white people about race
59:59
so um do sign up for that and check it out if you're interested um but that's it from us for now thank you so much for watching and for
1:00:06
engaging and we will see you soon
1:00:12
bye you