How to recognise and nurture BAME talent

This article is written by Harj Dhesi**, UK public servant in the Home Office.**

When you’re trying to strive to the top in your career but don’t have the networks or the know-how, the journey there can feel like you’re looking up at a mountain with your feet solidly planted at ground-level.

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I’ve spent nearly 20 years in the Civil Service and as an Asian woman, this is a feeling I’ve experienced multiple times throughout my career.

Over the years though, I’ve mentored people by placing my younger or more inexperienced self in their shoes and have answered questions in the way I would have liked them answered when I was at their level.

I’ve had mentors myself, but because there was never a BAME senior civil servant (SCS) who could mentor me, my experience was that their investment in me was nil and interest was minimal. Questions were answered philosophically, or on a higher plain, and I’d come out the other end feeling despondent, either thinking I was inept and hadn’t understood, or that I just hadn’t grasped their magical strategic language. No one laid out to me what a career plan was, what specialisms I should follow, no one stopped to ask what I was interested in. Managers never encouraged development nor gave praise. I realised I was at sea by myself, and if I wanted to get anywhere, I’d have to steer my own ship and plot its course too.

You don’t have to go to great lengths to make the playing field more level or approach anti-racism as though it’s rocket science. Just genuinely spend time giving others a proper helping hand with meaningful actions that represent interests in all your staff

Getting ahead isn’t just about development. It’s about developing capability for the now and the future. Those organisations who recognise this, undoubtedly have happier staff. Although the Civil Service is a great place to work, it, however, has a long way to go to address the inequalities faced by BAME staff. To put things into context, it is well recognised that departments are ethnically diverse in areas where there is a greater proportion of operations or frontline work, and grades in those areas are heavy at junior to mid-junior level. E.g. Home Office in immigration and Borders, Department for Work and Pensions in job centres, Ministry of Justice in courts and tribunals etc.

Offering initiatives that place value on talent is great, but we need plans that support people on how to apply and share knowledge using past experience, as accessing promotion and accelerated schemes are not usually something junior staff in operational roles, for example. are exposed too.

Putting more people in a position to take the leap

Departmental Race Action Plans amongst other activities need to address cultural barriers, for example where mentoring is seen as a weakness. In my experience as a mentor, not everyone wants mentoring if they are very junior and have limited experience or are confined to one skill set. And if they do want the exposure, opportunities are scarce and are coveted.

This doesn’t help a great deal of people, instead it can breed environments of resentment or hostility. I remember when I was in Immigration, everybody on the floor would apply for a single vacancy regardless of grade. Whoever got it lost friends and esteemed colleagues. It didn’t give a larger group of people the leap they desired, so they resigned to stay where they were or simply didn’t want to go up the career ladder. Fast forward to the present and not much has changed.

Plans need to focus on the following, but should not be limited to:

• Making every SCS responsible for having a personal objective in their appraisals to actively engage in activities that promote equality, including making diversity and inclusion training on recruitment panels, fair representation and interviewing mandatory for all grades;

• Ensuring there is a Race Champion in each business area or unit at the local level, not just at Director level, who junior staff do not have access to;

• Stopping with the tokenism by making BAME staff poster people where you lack representation in your business area;

• Mentoring people through taking a real interest in their applications and ambitions, as well as ensuring all staff have a career plan and they belong to a profession;

• Raising standards in skills, so when each end of year performance is assessed, it’s done using proper metrics which eliminates bias and micro-aggressions;

• Encouraging staff to be more autonomous in their decision-making and stop with the reliant culture. This is quite common within BAME circles, where politeness and respect for senior people in general impacts them to seek clearances on even the basic things. This can have a knock-on effect on their progress, including in some cases their performance;

• Moving from mentoring to sponsorship, so that talent is spotted early on organically and let people attain development through a fluid system of interchange opportunities and expressions of interest akin to apprenticeship schemes but in more informal settings;

• Advertising jobs more regionally to close the gap on BAME representation everywhere, instead of just focusing on London;

• Consulting and empowering BAME staff at all grades on departmental decisions to gain a greater insight into dealing with local issues that impact them and society – give them a voice at actual boards or shadow boards;

• Attracting home grown talent at more senior grades, both under the SCS or leading to it by advertising more jobs internally, and by doing so closing the pay gap between external and internal recruits. This will incentivise BAME staff to stay within the Civil Service and plan their careers, instead of having them walk out of the door permanently;

• Moving away from recruiting in your mirror image, e.g. requiring candidates to be Russell Group educated.

You don’t have to go to great lengths to make the playing field more level or approach anti-racism as though it’s rocket science. Just genuinely spend time giving others a proper helping hand with meaningful actions that represent interests in all your staff. — Harj Dhesi

Take a look at: allinmentoring.wordpress.com

(Picture credit: Unsplash)