Black Lives Matter — Taking action personally and within your organisation.
By: Natalie Pearce
Tags: Diversity, Race, BlackLivesMatter, Inclusion, Diversity And Inclusion

Email to my team:

Hi all,

To some of you, this email might be unexpected, or at least different from what you’ve seen from me before. For others, you might have been wondering what’s taken me so long.

I want to talk about racism.

Over the past few weeks, the persistent, unequal and violent treatment of Black communities has been more visible than ever. This has been driven by the recent murders of Black Americans by police officers, however we know that these aren’t isolated incidents. Racial discrimination and violence has been and continues to be prolific, even since the civil rights movements of long ago. In the UK, our entire society is built on systemic, institutional racism and this is something that many of us, specifically those of us who are white, have benefited from.

I feel that it’s our collective responsibility to open up this conversation in our organisation and, more importantly, to take immediate and direct action. It’s certainly not lost on me that we could have and should have been doing more about this already. I’d also like to acknowledge that we could have shared a response sooner, and I’m sorry if you’ve been left waiting. I’ve spent these past few weeks reading, reflecting and learning, while also having conversations with those who know more than I do. It’s important to react and respond in an informed and thoughtful way, which is what I’ve been aiming for.

Having said that, I don’t want to labour on what we could have been doing. I want us to accept and acknowledge that we can do more, and use this current, devastating situation as a catalyst for positive change. I am committed to our cultural value — we take action — and this is what this email is all about.

First, what is our policy?

Before I get into this, I want to state what is, hopefully, the obvious. We have a zero-tolerance stance on racial discrimination, or discrimination of any kind. If you experience, observe or hear about discrimination in your projects, teams or clients, please report this immediately to someone you trust. This could be me or anyone on the leadership team, your Squad Lead, or your local People Lead. It will be dealt with and we will support you.

You can read more about the formal Diversity & Inclusion policy in our Code of Conduct.

Taking action — what can we do individually?

If you’ve watched the news or participate in social media, you may have felt overwhelmed by the amount of information that is being shared. You may be wondering what you can do and where to start. I’ve certainly felt like this, too.

With a lot of support from Kat, who actually wrote her Masters thesis on building inclusive cultures that support diversity and is a fountain of knowledge in this space, we’ve created a list of resources which you’ll find at the bottom of this [article].

First and foremost, we’d recommend watching a video by Rachel Cargle which shares the following framework for how to actively contribute to the fight against racism:

Critical Knowledge + Radical Empathy + Intentional Action

Kat has kindly summarised the framework as follows:

Critical Knowledge.

Take the time to seek out and pool from critical sources to get a real understanding of what is happening, the history behind it and your role within it. Radical Empathy.

This moves past the passive empathy. It moves past the ability to understand or share the experiences of others. It’s a radical empathy that calls you to hold yourself accountable for how you play into the pain of others. This is hard but is a critical aspect of the equation that you can’t ignore. Intentional Action.

We all exist with various levels of access, privilege, platform, abilities. We can all do something. It is not enough to feel sad. It is not enough to be shocked. Indeed, it is offensive to say, “I had no idea”. Do not approach the black people in your lives and ask them “How can I help?” Take it upon yourself to research and find out how you can take action, on a local and global level. The question we need to ask ourselves is “How do we show up as not just an ally, but as an accomplice?” We need to start being uncomfortable. We need to do more.

I’d like to encourage you, especially those of us who are white or white-passing, to utilise this framework and the resources below. If you haven’t yet, I urge you to actively start your journey towards doing the important anti-racism work that needs to be done for real change to ever happen. We all have a part to play.

Taking action — what can we do as an organisation?

The work doesn’t end with us as individuals. Our collective strength is, in many ways, even more powerful than what we can achieve individually. I don’t want us to be an organisation that talks the talk when it comes to diversity, but doesn’t walk it. That is not what we do here.

We take action.

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert here. I have a lot to learn. I struggle to figure out the best thing to do. I am often scared of doing or saying the wrong thing. But none of this should stop us taking action.

I don’t have a roadmap or detailed plan yet, but I want to share with you some of the things I’ve been discussing, as of this week, to paint a picture of where we’ll be focusing our attention. I’d love for you all to get involved and contribute to this.

We will exploring a three-pronged approach, as recommended by Kat:

Building a culture of inclusion.

This involves actively working to create a culture of inclusion which supports the existing diversity within the organisation. This is about ensuring that everyone is valued for their difference and feels like they can contribute fully, be heard, seen and respected for their diverse perspectives. We will take time to self-reflect and build awareness, while also actively seeking to educate ourselves collectively through training. Increasing diversity through recruitment.

This means constructively reviewing and reconsidering recruitment initiatives and potentially implementing new recruitment policies to increase the diversity of applicants that are considered for new roles. Contributing to improving the pipeline of diverse talent.

This involves supporting grassroots organisations and engaging with community action through mentoring and education programmes. Reaching out to those doing the work and seeing how we can support them. This can also include sponsoring community events, and generally doing more to play an active role in supporting diversity within the sector.

What’s next?

This is a start, and I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

We’ll also be engaging with the existing D&I community within [our parent company] to understand what’s already in flight and, hopefully, building and working together on this. As we work through the specifics of how and what, we’ll continually share these with you.

This morning, Rasmus [Head of SPARCK] shared with me a video message from Obama where he offers words of hope which I feel is a great way to finish this email. He said, “As tragic as these past few weeks has been… they’ve also been an incredible opportunity to be awakened and… to all work together to tackle [this]” This is our opportunity to live up to our purpose to make positive change, to better reflect the communities we serve, to design better things and to be more creative than ever. I hope you’ll join me in feeling energised to take positive action towards making this a better place, for all people.

At the next All Hands, we’ll dedicate time to talk about this together in more detail but, in the meantime, please familiarise yourself with the resources below and, of course, feel free to reach out to me if you’d like to discuss any of this individually.

Thank you for reading,

Nat, with a lot of help from Kat!