By Nazreen Visram, head of charities at Barclays Corporate Banking.
There’s no doubt many charitable organisations are starting to make progress on achieving greater diversity and inclusion. Charity leaders are increasingly being held accountable for delivering on these objectives, amid an increased focus on this vital issue from donors, partners and the wider public.
Organisations may make changes to the way they select trustees and staff to include a wider range of economic, ethnic and social backgrounds, disabilities and neurodiversity, to more closely reflect the societies they serve or endeavour to address gender imbalances and pay gaps.
Yet, despite the good intentions and many changes that are taking place, the fact is there’s still a lot of work to be done to create more diverse and inclusive working environments within charities.
By way of example, ACEVO’s latest Pay and Equality Survey shows that the gender pay gap in the sector is widening, including at senior levels, and the proportion of charity leaders from Black, Asian and Minoritised Ethnic backgrounds remains low and fairly static.
Pushing the boundaries
At Barclays, we are committed to driving change in this vital area, and we place a lot of emphasis on the critical concept of equity, alongside those of diversity and inclusion.
As Ray Dempsey, Barclays’ Group Chief Diversity Officer, points out, the need to proactively pursue diversity, equity and inclusion goes way beyond the moral imperative of ‘doing the right thing’.
He argues that striving to meet Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) objectives in fact supports three vital areas charities need to address to be successful; their social ‘licence to operate’, access to talent and excellence in service delivery.
Firstly, as regulation and legislation around DE&I continues to evolve and expand, complying with it is an important part of both a charity’s social and literal licence to operate.
Secondly, at a time when acute skills shortages are impacting almost every industry, embracing DE&I also helps make charities more attractive to people from a larger potential talent pool, enabling them to reap the advantages that come from incorporating a more diverse range of experiences and perspectives.
And, thirdly, all the evidence suggests that organisations that are more diverse and inclusive tend to perform better than those that are not – because that diversity of experience and perspectives means they’re better able to exploit opportunities to improve the effectiveness of their services.
Deliver equity to achieve equality
So how does equity fit into this? As Ray stresses, it’s important for organisations to understand the subtle but fundamental difference between equity and equality.
I’m sure every charity to some extent sees achieving greater equality as being a noble ambition, and what many are essentially all about.
However, the reality is that people don’t all come from the same starting point, have the same socio-economic background, or share the same life experience.
Equity involves taking action so that those facing the biggest disadvantages within an organisation, for whatever reason, get the support they need to redress any in-built imbalances and enjoy the same level of opportunity as everyone else. Inevitably, some people need more help than others to reach a ‘level playing field’ situation.
This means charities have to first understand and acknowledge people’s differing backgrounds and workplace challenges so that support can be targeted and tailored to their own particular circumstances, whether the disadvantages they are experiencing are related to their gender, socio-economic background, sexuality, ethnicity, disabilities or neurodiversity.
Ultimately, to achieve the laudable long-term goal of equality, charities first have to ensure they’re endeavouring to achieve equity, so that every individual can perform to the best of their abilities, achieve their ambitions and truly stand on their own merit.
Keeping focused
In the current environment, over-stretched charities may be tempted to take their foot off the pedal on the DE&I agenda, as inflation and talent shortages pile-on financial and operational pressures just as demand for services rises.
Even so, it’s really important for the sector to continue to focus on DE&I. In fact, I’d argue that pursuing these goals is now more essential than ever to the long-term success of charities and their ability to continue helping the most vulnerable people in our society.
