The UK held its first-ever Race Equality Week from the 1st till the 7th of February. Race Equality Week is a nation-wide initiative to unite organisations and individuals in the UK to tackle issues affecting Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) employees. It is vital that corporations account for the diversity and multiculturalism present in the UK and any discrimination against BAME employees must end.
Race Equality Week was the brainchild of the organisation Race Equality Matters, which is a community interest company that started as a response to Black Lives Matters in 2020. Over 1,000 organisations signed up to participate in this year’s Race Equality Week for which the theme was ‘Transparency and Accountability’.
Participants were encouraged to participate in three activities including a Virtual Badge Campaign to show their support online, a public commitment to change known as The Big Promise, and a facilitated discussion with Safe Space between ethnic minority workers and their company boards. Race Equality Matters also supported organisations with resource packs, webinars, and a network for exchanging ideas with other organisations.
The UK is becoming increasingly multicultural and corporations need to become much more inclusive of ethnic diversity. The Colour of Power 2020, a visual depiction of Britain’s diversity composition in the public and private sectors, reports that only 52 out of 1,099 of the most powerful roles in the country, belong to minorities, making up only 4.7%. The increase in diversity since 2017 has only been 1.2%, which is not enough. To make matters worse, one-third of FTSE 100 companies do not have ethnic minority board members and BAME university graduates are twice as likely to become unemployed as their white counterparts. This is not something to take lightly, immediate action is necessary to change this.
At Here & Now 365 – defining Multicultural Marketing, it has always been our mission to help connect companies and brands in the UK to multicultural audiences and to promote diversity and inclusivity. We are proud to say we have BAME representation in all segments of our company, with minorities making up over 90% of our team. We strongly support inclusivity and are here to support initiatives like Race Equality Week. We hope that through such efforts, the UK workforce will become more inclusive and diverse.
Image credit: raceequalitymatters.com
