How to make your business actively anti-racist
The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist.’ What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist’. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
As a business leader, you may be watching the global protests in response to the murder of George Floyd and Belly Mujinga’s death here in the UK. Maybe you’re also questioning how you can directly support and contribute to the efforts to tackle systemic racism and social injustice where you are. This is a movement, not a moment. A movement that has a 400+ year history. It needs more individuals and organisations to join, to help build and sustain the momentum that will create lasting, meaningful social change.
There have been a number of resources shared about what you can do as an individual, which we’ll note at the bottom of this post, but as a business you have additional power and responsibility to ensure that you are actively anti-racist across your organisation. We’d love you to use this guide to inspire action and to continually interrogate your business and where you can do better. We’ve included a lot of ideas here, many which might take time to develop and implement but we hope you find a few that you’re excited about and committed to engage with now.
This is by no means a complete list and there may be suggestions that need to be changed/added to/updated, so please drop us a note if there are ways to make it better.
Firstly some don’ts:
- Don’t use the Black Lives Matter hashtag or post on social media without also sharing resources or detailing the actions you as an organisation are committing to. A post of solidarity or words, truly means nothing if not supported by a commitment to act. If it’s purely a PR tool it will read as completely inauthentic and, as we’ve been seeing, you could be called out for it.
- Don’t ask your Black colleagues or friends about their opinions or guidance in response to the situation. They have their own needs. To rest, to process, to grieve and to organise and it is not their responsibility to educate you or lead the change in your organisation or community.
- Don’t worry about being perfect. Mistakes can be corrected, you can always learn if you’re open to feedback. Being silent is being complicit, now more than ever, developing the ability to be a good ally is essential to making real change.
- Don’t expect this work to feel comfortable or easy. It’s natural with the discourse and heightened emotions right now to feel shame or guilt or defensiveness — but remember the bigger picture.
What you can do
You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time. — Angela Davis
Through your leadership & governance
- Listen & learn — Do the work as an individual first (see below for resources). Find and listen to Black voices in the public discourse to learn about the movement.
- Talk to your team — share a statement internally & externally clarifying your and the organisation’s stance as anti-racist. Begin to share what you are committed to doing going forward.
- Critically revisit your people policies — are they explicitly anti-racist? Are they understood and meaningfully enacted by your team? Where could you do better?
- Draft and share a brief diversity report to objectively see how you are doing. Are there any obvious pay or management differences? Again, ask yourself where could you do better?
- Commit to equal pay for equal work.
- If you have a board — look at the representation of that board.
- Set goals for the ideal situation and then work towards those. Do not set goals benchmarked against other organisations or your own previous levels, be ambitious and set the goal as where it should be not an incremental improvement or so that you are in line with peers.
- Ensure someone is responsible and held accountable for making progress against these roles and that they are supported by leadership and a working group from all parts of the organisation.
- Here are some additional thoughts for business leaders from Anthea Kelsick, Co-CEO, B Lab U.S. & Canada & in this HBR article on the meaningful action businesses can take.
Within your team
- Look after your Black employees. Allow them to take the time to look after themselves or join protests and offer mental health support if needed.
- Get some anti-racism (unconscious bias training is not enough) training scheduled, for the entire team, leadership included. Share a refresher if you have done training previously. Make sure it is delivered by people of colour. We’re fans of The Other Box, Fearless Futures & Nova Reid in the UK.
- Look at your hiring process. How accessible is it? Can you develop a blind recruitment process to eliminate unconscious bias from the recruitment process? Check out Ban the Box too, which advocates for banning the criminal record check box from applications.
- Also look at your performance management process. What behaviours are encouraged and rewarded? Do these indirectly discriminate against different groups?
- Share books/podcasts/documentaries (many in the individual resources below) with your team and create opportunities to discuss, through your team days, all hands or town hall meetings, book clubs, lunch and learns, internal comms platforms etc.
- How are grievances processed? Can employees raise concerns safely? Trust that they will be heard and that their concerns are dealt with appropriately?
- Can staff organise? Are there opportunities to create communities within the organisation and have meaningful discussions with leadership?
- Support fundraising efforts by matching staff donations to charitable causes.
- Check out some additional tips from Dr Salma Patel on Twitter.
Through your products and services
- A huge area where you can make serious change is your supply chain. Do you have full transparency along every part of your supply chain to ensure that all suppliers are treated fairly and they in turn are treating their staff and suppliers fairly? Do they align with your views on discrimination? How can you actively build this check into your procurement process?
- Can you actively support a more diverse range of suppliers through your procurement? (Black owned businesses in the UK listed below)
- Modern day slavery exists and may be lurking in your supply chain. You may not be big enough to require an anti modern slavery statement on your website, but it's absolutely still worth looking at what one includes, to ensure that you’re voluntarily compliant.
Be thoughtful with your marketing
- Audit all your external facing marketing materials, social media, website, publications etc. Who is being represented? Who has been left out? There are many sites for free and paid diverse stock photography and illustrations to give your materials a thoughtful refresh.
- When posting in relation to the BLM movement or showing your support, consult your Black and minority team members, with the proposed content, to ensure that they support the messaging, or better yet, ensure that you have a paid person of colour in the team to do this work. To be clear, this is additional emotional and professional work for these team members and should be acknowledged and treated as such. You may also find that your team has different ideas and opinions on what is appropriate and different ways they’d like to be communicated with, Black people and people of colour will each have their own experiences, needs and priorities. Your role is to facilitate a process through which everyone feels heard and you can find a way forward that is inclusive.
Use your voice
As an ally, once you’ve begun to learn and act for yourself, you have immense power to influence others.
- Use your social media platforms, newsletters, articles, blogs etc. to share resources to educate and talk about the work you are doing as an organisation to become actively anti-racist. Continue to post, not just this week, but into the future, so much can be learnt by your process, successes & failures.
- Do the research on what diversity looks like within your industry. The movement has surfaced systemic discrimination in almost every industry, from tech to publishing to higher education to the arts to healthcare. A quick search will likely reveal how it looks in your sector, so you can advocate for better.
- Centre and amplify Black and minority voices. Find the people who are doing great work in your sector and share their work. Check out the #sharethemic campaign as an example of this.
- Work with others in your industry to set what good looks like. Collaboration & mutually agreed practices will reset the norms for what is accepted behaviour and hold you accountable to the wider community.
- Lobby partners/industry bodies/governing bodies/regulators to also take a stand. These organisations represent you so they should reflect your views.
Connect to your local community
Your organisation does not exist in a vacuum. Strengthening the local community protects the most marginalised. Explore your local community, the organisations, institutions, charities, people, schools, religious groups and public spaces around you. Are you connected with them in a meaningful, positive way?
- How can you build long term relationships with them?
- Look to host work experience placements for local young people.
- Have paid internships or explore having an apprentice.
- Talk in schools about what you do.
- Support local minority owned businesses.
- Share your resources with grassroots community groups. (e.g. office space, tech no longer in use, surplus food etc.)
- Offer your products and services pro bono/at a reduced rate for the local community.
- Sponsor and support fundraisers/events/campaigns (in big or small ways) that are about achieving racial equality.
A couple of notes:
Environmental justice is racial justice — your impact on the environment is intertwined with racial justice across the world. Think critically about how you minimise your environmental impact as well as contribute to regenerative practices.
Intersectionality matters — We’ve focused on racial justice here as we are responding to this moment, but the work is incomplete without considering inequality based on sex, gender identity, class, sexuality, disability or immigrant status and how these often intersect within people’s lives. Much of what we’ve suggested could also be done through one or multiple of these other lenses.
Resources for individuals
Many of these have been shared far and wide, but here are all the ways you can support the movement as an individual:
UK focused list of everything you can do to support Black Lives Matter, including petitions, emails to send, places to donate and where you can learn more.
Donate to US bail funds for protestors who are arrested in the US
Support Black owned businesses in the UK.
This is very much intended to be a working document, we hope that we learn of many more ways to evolve to be more socially just as businesses and support our Black communities and communities of colour to flourish.
There is a risk that this change feels overwhelming or perhaps even too radical for some. However, we’ll leave you with these thoughts from Solitaire Townsend, Founder and CEO of Futerra:
‘Not sure your business can be this ambitious? Do it anyway. Acknowledge, humbly, how far away from this justice agenda your business currently is. But, equally recognise that justice is the only context you can set your 2030 sustainability ambition within. This year demands nothing less.’
At Impactful, our mission is to work with businesses to unlock their ability to contribute to lasting social change and environmental sustainability. If you’d like to work with us we’d love to hear from you. Email us at hello@impactful.world.
