Código de Comercio Vigente
4. Análisis Económico
A second area of context for our research is the greater importance given to diversity and equality agenda in the workplace. A greater commitment to ethnic diversity in the workplace has filtered through into graduate recruitment in many organisations, though mainly the larger private and public sector ones, and its significance in practice varies also. Ethnic diversity in the workplace is being driven by a combination of factors: economic and social change, legislation on race relations, and a greater awareness of the business case — ie the benefits from accessing the widest pool of talent available, or the need to serve an increasingly diverse customer base (eg in retail, banking, health services).
We found that graduate recruiters can have mixed feelings about how much diversity can be achieved in graduate intakes. On the one hand, they all want to be seen to be fair, and give access to everyone with the right abilities and skills. In several places we found a strong commitment from the senior management team to support ethnic diversity initiatives in HE (eg internship schemes, diversity mentoring, careers workshops). These initiatives help improve ethnic representation in their graduate intakes, and thus help change the ethnic profile of senior management, or specific functions. On the other hand, the need to match graduates to particular skills/person needs of jobs, means that it is more likely that traditional types of graduates (eg young, with high ‘A’ levels, middle class) continue to be recruited, often because it is easier to achieve within limited recruitment budgets, and also when there are pressures to achieve annual intake targets. Also, the central graduate recruitment person, with more commitment to achieving ethnic diversity, may have limited influence over local business managers where graduate recruitment is a very decentralised function. Various examples were given by our interviewees on how their workplace diversity policies interacted with their graduate recruitment policies, in particular the importance of involving senior and middle management, for example:
z in one organisation, a large transport group, the support from the top — ie a ‘champion’ — was important in making cultural change; but a change at the top had meant a shift in business priorities, leading them to place less emphasis on diversity in their graduate recruitment strategy
z in another, a financial services organisation, a lack of role models and ‘invisibility’ of minority ethnic groups, especially Black people, at senior levels had been identified by the graduate recruiter herself as she moved up the management ladder.
A recent BIC survey was generally positive about progress in ethnic diversity in UK businesses, but also reported much room for improvement ‘… especially across middle management strata, in getting ownership of the issues’. The lack of progress, especially in getting strategies in place to tackle ethnic issues in the workplace, was also commented on in a recent report by the Industrial Society.1
Most large employing organisations in the private sectors, and all public sector bodies (are now required to), have a diversity policy or action plan of some kind, which includes ethnic diversity. In practical terms, this has led to diversity units being set up at a corporate level, or the appointment of a diversity manager in many instances. We found various ways in which these units/people impacted on graduate recruitment. For example, in one large public sector organisation, the effect of some high profile tribunal cases (when the Campaign for Racial Equality [CRE] had been involved) had brought a dramatic cultural shift with the setting up of a new diversity unit. This had led to:
z increased activity in schools and universities that had high proportions of minority ethnic students
z such universities being targeted in marketing and publicity z all staff involved in graduate interviewing receiving diversity
training
z and specific ethnic graduate recruitment targets set and being met.
But in some others, we found relatively little contact between graduate recruitment managers and specialist ‘diversity’ or diversity managers. The latter having just a passive role, to be consulted if felt needed, eg on publicity or advice about their graduate monitoring statistics.
Organisations with more minimal approaches to ethnic diversity included most of the recruiters of technical graduates that we interviewed. Here, ethnic diversity often had a lower priority because their main interest was tackling specific skill shortages. In several, there was also a more pressing need to increase the proportion of female graduates (which was very low) than ethnic minorities. For example, in one large IT company, gender had been monitored for several years but not yet ethnicity, as it was more difficult to ‘make the business case’:
‘Women make up 50 per cent of our market, so easy to convince Chief Exec. ... don’t have same info. on buying power for ethnic minorities ...’
While in another:
‘ … ethnic diversity is a cause of concern, we are being asked by clients in public and private sectors what our ethnic profile in the workforce is, and we do no monitoring as yet ... when push comes to shove they just want the work done … little impetus to do anything … have few tribunals which are race related … most of our ethnic employees are 2nd or 3rd generation and so there is little difference from you and me.’ One organisation which admitted to us that it did not have a corporate diversity policy, a young international telecomms business, cited the reason as:
‘It goes against the cultural norms of the company to set targets for White and non-White, women, disabled etc. — emphasis is on competencies to do the job … we have a culture of equality here (jobs open to all who apply, once in and through the graduate scheme, don’t even know who has a degree)’.
but also added later in the interview that they had very few non- White graduates applying (mainly looking for engineers and expected to find few there).
Many of our interviewees had introduced diversity policies only recently, often to replace an older equal opportunity (EO) policy. This shift represented a move away from an approach driven by legislation, to one which incorporates the business case and corporate social responsibility. Growth of global businesses, and cultural alignments of UK organisations with organisations in other countries (including mergers with US businesses), has increased the internationalisation of organisations’ workforces, including their multi-ethnic mix, which is also acting as a stimulus.