Weeknote S2E12: diverse and inclusive
Where being included, in diverse ways, made me feel that I belong
Diverse views on inclusion, belonging — and of course cricket
No weeknotes for a couple of weeks, and with some leave coming up this feels like a good note to end this series on. Another reason for my recent hiatus has been my struggle to find the right words for what follows.
We’ve been talking about race at work. My colleague Jess suggested we start an article club to broaden our horizons, sharing with us an article on diversity issues and facilitating a discussion around it. We read Luvvie Ajayi’s article entitled ‘Why We Need to Call out Casual Racism,’ and had a respectful exchange of views on the issues raised. Much of the piece chimed with my own experience and that of my friends and family. A number of us in our discussion noted how microagressions and instances of casual racism, whilst usually unintended, can provoke a feeling that you don’t belong in that space.
A week later, colleagues shared their experience of being black in Britain. Their stories were at once heartbreaking and, in the words of another colleague, rage-inducing, but we are lucky that they felt confident enough to be truly vulnerable with us — I can think of plenty of environments where that wouldn’t happen.
It’s hard to explain the impact of subtle expressions of prejudice to those who don’t experience them — it’s not easy to equate the feeling of being undermined, whether on grounds of race, sexuality, religion or gender, by a thousand cuts, compared with overt name-calling or abuse. This is where cricketers come in.
With the start of a Test match series between England and the West Indies delayed by rain, Sky Sports aired interviews with former Windies fast bowler Michael Holding, and England women’s international Ebony Rainford-Brent.
If you haven’t, please watch this excerpt. In their cases, so many small comments and remarks added up to lack of belonging. And as both acknowledged in their full interviews, this came despite the immense privilege they enjoyed, of representing their country in sport. I was thoroughly moved by their words, and yet desperate to shift the conversation around inclusion and belonging to an organisational level, away from individual racist behaviour to systems and incentives.
And to include an analysis of power dynamics. Coming back to our team’s article club, in our efforts to make workplaces and cultural institutions more inclusive, we have to be aware of the comfort and confidence it takes to call out microagressions, let alone outright racism. I used an analogy of being in an audience of a panel discussion, vs being on the panel, vs being Chair — each role has different responsibilities to call out and prevent non-inclusive behaviour. As an audience member you can get up and speak out, but can’t really influence the event as a whole. As a panellist, you can use your platform to raise awareness. But the real power is often with the Chair, who chooses who speaks, when and frames the discourse. Translate this to who holds purse strings, or sets regulations, or designs digital or AI systems, and you’ll see how vital diversity can be — and not just of personal traits, as below.
Being inclusive at work
In recent weeks, a pretty significant data project I’m leading reached a milestone. It’s something I’ve been confident about, right up until the last few days — where I started getting nervous. Would the newly gathered data meet the needs of colleagues who seek it? Will it be an improvement on what we already have? Will there be large gaps to address?
We’re still checking over the data, but so far, so good — my nerves are calmed by colleagues saying that it broadly meets expectations. I’m relieved, and on reflection the success of this project to date is down to a multidisciplinary team working on it together, rather than bits of the organisation chucking data, requests, and complaints at each other.
What’s that got to do with diversity and inclusion? As colleagues elsewhere in government and I have been discussing, diversity of personal characteristic is an important social norm, but in the workplace, diversity of thought, perspective, and experience. I can’t think of any endeavour that wouldn’t be improved by ensuring a broad range of views are truly included — which is a real challenge for those working on D&I in the public sector, as we move beyond diversity of race, gender and so on, to collective cognitive diversity.
Sharing knowledge
Finally, a thought on sharing research knowledge, which I’m helping my team to do. Throughout my eclectic (my word) career, spread across a decade in lab research, in advocacy and civil society, and in the civil service, I’ve tried enjoyed sharing research insights with others — patients, students, politicians and decision-makers. I’ve put together a short series of Knowledge Cafe sessions (every good initiative needs a catchy name!), where our research team and partners will share the insights from our work to date, with the rest of my organisation. It’s part of a wider strategy to disseminate our research findings and catalyse action on it. An exciting thing to be working on, which I hope to return to in a few weeks when these weeknotes return.