I noticed a tweet from Sky corporate
The comments are pretty much as you would imagine. A lot of white men saying that people should be employed on merit and positive discrimination is still discrimination.
Assuming that all the white men that are in charge got there on merit is just terrifying. There certainly seeems to be a pattern that white men get employed for their potential; their ability to fulfill a role, to reach a level of expertise, is unquestioned. The rest of us better have receipts if we claim in an application that we can do something. There seem to be plenty of tests of this theory by just changing the name on a CV.
Now credit to Sky, if you follow the link to web page, they include that this percentage should also be reflected in their top 300 execs. They are not going to just recruit bottom rung staff and keep the board room pale and stale. I think I’d be looking for reassurance that this is a minimum number: that once they have their 15 Black senior execs they wouldn’t rest on their laurels and stop recruiting
Research shows that people hire people whose face ‘fits’.
Shockingly, in the UK, a survey of 1000 recruiters found that they had discriminated against people because they didn’t like how they looked. You only need to think about the “colour blind” hair rules in schools and workplaces that discriminate against African hair to realise what a slippery slope this is.
Because faces other than white men are not seen in boardrooms and leadership roles, those of us who are not white men don’t look like leaders. Kudos to Sky to trying to change that in their workforce