National news coverage for DiverseCity Think Tank, which claims British companies are “wasting” millions each year on “futile” programmes to eradicate racial bias.
British companies are “wasting” millions of pounds each year on “futile” programmes to eradicate racial bias that will never help black and ethnic minority employees break through the glass ceiling, a leading thinktank has claimed.
As reported by the Daily Telegraph, Racial bias in the British workplace cannot be eradicated because humans are hardwired to be biased, according to workplace bias and diversity, equity, and inclusion consultancy DiverseCity Think Tank.
Prevention or ‘eye-opener’ strategies designed to teach white leaders and staff to be aware of and check their own prejudices before interacting with, and making decisions that affect, minority colleagues are “doomed to failure” from the outset, it says.
White leaders will frequently default to unconscious prejudicial opinions towards Black staff when making career progression decisions that affect them.
And because this prejudice is unconscious, no amount of education can ever fully prevent it from reoccurring.
Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and unconscious bias training (UBT) is big business, with an estimated £6billion spent by companies per year in the US alone.
But the vast majority of such schemes and strategies are unconsciously built around the idea that a prejudicial mindset can be effectively eradicated.
DiverseCity Think Tank founder Buki Mosaku – whose consultancy provides bias navigation training to national and multinational corporate giants including JP Morgan, Sky TV, RSA, and Aon – says, however, that this “flies in the face” of the real world.
He points to a growing body of neuroscientific research which shows that the human brain is predisposed to prejudice, with this trait being common to all races.
Mosaku, author of I Don’t Understand”: Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace, says that the lack of black and ethnic staff on the boards of Britain’s biggest companies only underlines the failure of traditional approaches to tackling prejudice.
Mosaku, who founded DiverseCity Think Tank in 2018, says that the only effective solution to tackling career-stifling bias, which in turn contributes to underrepresentation of black minorities in senior roles, is to call-out racial bias “in the moment”.
Rather than trying to prevent racial bias ever occurring, the key is for white and ethnic minority staff to navigate its inevitability together and challenge it as and when it occurs.
For all media requests, including interviews with work bias expert Buki Mosaku, or review copies of I Don’t Understand, contact publicist Anthony Harvison.
UK companies are “wasting” millions of pounds each year on “futile” programmes to eradicate racial bias, according to Buki Mosaku, founder of workplace bias and diversity, equity, and inclusion consultancy DiverseCity Think Tank and author of I Don’t Understand: Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace.
