An Update on The HudsonBec Group’s Commitments to Change — June 2021
It’s been a full year since the tragic events of 2020 saw us publish our HudsonBec Group commitments to change. This, our fourth update in response to that article — maintains our promise to publicly update every quarter to ensure we are held accountable to those commitments.
So much reflection, education and hard work has happened in the past twelve months, but we have barely scratched the surface of our ambitions to improve what we do as a group.
This quarter has seen no end of commitment from the whole HBG team; none more-so than our 20-strong internal DEI team made up of employees from all different parts of the group. As always we’ve managed some great progress in some areas, and strive to do more in others.
Team representation and recruitment
The area of our business that we knew 12 months ago needed the most priority, has continued to be an area we’ve worked hard in for real, tangible progress.
In the past two updates, I’ve made reference to us not reaching our target of having 60% Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic candidates at the interview stage for our full time positions; and despite renewed approaches and a concerted effort we are still not at this level.
As stated in the last update, we continued to up our investment in recruitment testing out new job boards that reach different candidates and have seen improvement; with this percentage moving from an average of 33% last time, to 44% this last three months.
We’re also pleased that this level is continuing to the second interview — at 42%.
As we’re still not where we need to be, this next quarter we are investing more budget into specific recruiters who we are convinced can help us move the dial here. These initial introductions have come from our external advisory board, so making sure we are not just reacting from our own, potentially narrow perspective.
Freelancers and Collaborators
I’m pleased to report that we have seen continued positivity in the representation of the freelancers and collaborators we’re working with across the group.
At It’s Nice That, against our target to have 50% of all creatives, writers and speakers in 2020/21 Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic — we’re currently at 52% across a huge 157 people. A good improvement from our 48% last quarter.
At Anyways Creative we’re on track with our ambition to have at least 20% Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic talent joining us within internal project teams. In the last 9 months have welcomed 36% freelancers from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds.
We have also worked with 37 different collaborators in that time, of which 57% are from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, almost doubling our ambition for 30%.
On Creative Lives in Progress we committed to having 50% coverage of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic creatives featured within content and we’re currently surpassing that at 60%.
For the first time we also had some meaningful quantity of editorial content to track on If You Could Jobs — and we are tracking in line with our target to have 40% of all creatives contributing to editorial content be Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic talent.
Alongside this work on the internal teams — work also continued with our ongoing redesign of our appraisal and competencies system by working with a diversity and inclusion specialist and hope to be able to share our changes there soon.
Our Kickstarters joined us
More positive news from an internal team perspective saw us welcome Salve, Lyla, Mark and Joey who joined us last month through the Kickstart scheme. Each role has been filled by a 16 to 24 year old on Universal Credit and will work for us on London Living Wage for three days a week until November.
They are all getting on brilliantly and we’re so impressed with how they’ve managed to contribute so ably already whilst working remotely — which is hard for all of us let alone for those coming into a new environment. Their enthusiasm and new perspective on our work has been a breath of fresh air, and we’re excited for the next five months.
This quarter we also successfully completed our first set of work experience placements through Spiral (an organisation empowering young people) too, with some great feedback form the participants.
Using our Platforms
We know some of the biggest impact we can have as a group is through the reach of our platforms It’s Nice That and Creative Lives in Progress, and we continued to use them to encourage change in the industry this last quarter.
The tragic killing of a group of East and South East Asian women in Atlanta in March, and the skyrocketing of Anti-Asian hate crimes since the start of the pandemic saw It’s Nice That (and specifically Jyni Ong from our team) publish an incredibly poignant and powerful piece and poster in support of the ESEA community.
On It’s Nice That we also continued our commitment to donating banner space with the brilliant Thiiird Magazine this quarter and have two more partners lined up for September.
I’ve mentioned a few times in these updates how important it’s been in these last 9 months for us to pivot Creative Lives in Progress to be more inclusive and reach a broader audience. We relaunched 6 months ago, and this quarter saw us survey our audience for the first time since relaunch, and the results show a marked broadening in the demographics we’re reaching. We’ll share more final data in our next update.
Education and Skills Sharing
Finally, lots of work has gone into our teams continuing to educate themselves and share our skills with other organisations who could benefit from them. Our educational book club continued to encourage us to uncover more varied lived experiences and opinions, with our next set of books dedicated to helping us educate ourselves around racism towards the Asian community.
This quarter we partnered with Say It With Your Chest to continue to deliver talks that serve as an introduction to the creative industries and an exploration of what it means to work in creative roles. SIWYC is a not-for-profit based in London who work with organisations across the UK, focused on helping young people to thrive and build a better future for themselves — and run personal development workshops for young people in the UK aged 11–25, with a particular focus on helping to develop soft skills like communication and resilience. Check them out if you’ve not heard of them.
As always, progress has been steady these past three months, and we continue to be committed for the long term to improve our work as a group for as long as we exist.
Our next update will mark one year since we set our specific annual targets, and will share our progress against these in our next update.
Any questions, comments and feedback are always welcome
Alex Bec, Managing Director
