The impact of Covid-19 on employees from ethnic minority backgrounds in HTL

How employees from ethnic minority backgrounds in the industry have been impacted by Covid-19

The business case for ethnic and racial diversity has been made in the HTL sector – and significant progress has been made over the last few years. However, The MBS Group’s research finds that while leaders are attuned to many of the issues surrounding ethnic and racial diversity, much of this understanding is not translating into action since the outset of Covid-19. This chapter also provides expert views from WiHTL, and looks at what businesses can do to become anti-racist organisations.

Key themes

A LACK OF MEANINGFUL DATA

One of the biggest challenges the HTL sector faces in addressing challenges of ethnicity and race is a lack of good quality data to plan a course of action and measure progress. The prospect of mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting is forcing some companies to seriously consider the data they hold and what they can do to improve it – however previous research from The MBS Group, WiHTL and PwC found that half of companies in our sector do not accurately measure racial and ethnic representation in their businesses.

As a result, many leaders reported that they have not been able to measure how their furloughing or redundancy programmes have impacted the overall makeup of their business.

A DISPROPORTIONATE IMPACT

Despite the distinct lack of data, leaders told us that, proportionally, employees from a ethnic minority background were more likely to have been furloughed or made redundant, due to the greater presence of those employees in the general workforce and the lack of ethnic diversity representation in senior roles. Indeed, our previous research found that despite 12.5% of the working age population coming from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background, representation at Board, Executive Committee and Direct Reports was much lower – 6.4%, 3.4% and 4.8%, respectively.

FRANCHISE MODELS

A further contributing factor is the prevalence of franchise models in the HTL sector. One restaurant business told us that a large proportion of its franchisees are BAME. As almost all of its restaurants had to shut down, these communities were naturally disproportionally impacted, at least in the early phases of Covid-19.

LOSING ROLE MODELS

Role models have long been considered vital in the journey to achieving representation – and this is especially true when considering ethnic and racial diversity. However, with many Black, Asian and minority ethnic colleagues being made redundant or furloughed during Covid-19, the number of visible role models has decreased across the industry – and will decrease further.

From our conversations with leaders, we identified that businesses across HTL are not doing enough to protect these role models in their organisation. Black, Asian and minority ethnic role models exiting (particularly those individuals who businesses have previously invested in highlighting as diverse leaders) may have a significant long-term impact, affecting how current employees from a minority ethnic background see themselves within the business, and discouraging diverse candidates from entering the industry and applying for roles.

With this in mind, one leader told us that they had pointedly avoided making role models redundant. “I went through the redundancies list,” they told us, “and took out the leaders from our BAME network programme.”

Flexible working Covid-19 has proved to the HTL industry that remote and flexible working is effective and should no longer be a barrier to progression. Leaders across the board indicated a willingness to roll-out permanent flexible and remote working options – even once Covid-19 is over. This looks to be a step in the right direction for employees from ethnic minority communities, who are more likely to have caring responsibilities for elderly relative (according to research from the University of Leeds). Moreover, flexible working policies will help those with religious commitments, such as prayer patterns that might not be able to be accommodated in the office.

RESPONDING TO BLACK LIVES MATTER

While not strictly related to Covid-19, the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests have come to define the last few months. Combined with disproportionate impact of the pandemic on ethnic minority communities, the BLM movement has caused a fundamental shift in the ways businesses think about racial and ethnic diversity in their organisations.

Most leaders reported that BLM has fast-tracked conversations around racism in their business. In the corporate sphere, businesses have had to make quick decisions about how to respond, and have faced pressure and scrutiny from employees and customers alike on their own policies and behaviours.

One key trend in our conversations was that businesses with exposure to the US had a much greater sensitivity to the issues raised by the BLM movement. Leaders from organisations which only operate in the UK did not approach the subject with as great a level of urgency as those in the US. One business – which has a head office in the US – commented: “BLM consumed us for two weeks. We had conversations, we listened, we tried to understand. I think the emotion people felt was exacerbated by the current Covid-19 situation, too.”

In contrast, leaders who operate in the UK alone reported a much higher level of tentativeness. Almost all these respondents told us they did not feel completely comfortable that they had made exactly the right decision or responded in the right way to the BLM movement. Many told us of lengthy internal debates about which stance to take, or about whether to make an external statement. One executive articulated: “I think our leaders have struggled a bit on, ‘What should I do? What shouldn’t I do? What should I say? I’ve definitely noticed people struggling with it a bit.” Some respondents told us that the levels of engagement in BLM had not been high from their workforce, and so responding was not high on their list of priorities. However, this probably reflects the whiteness of the workforce in those organisations – and is worth examining in and of itself. Indeed, one executive told us: “All our internal pressure was from Black employees, or employees with Black partners.”

One hospitality business told us that the BLM movement had sparked a review of its entire business: “It felt so stark,” they told us, “and it made us realise that we have very few guests who come from a BAME background. Looking ahead, we have to ask ourselves: ‘What’s the guest segmentation? Why don’t BAME people come and stay with us? Have we got a broader issue here actually in our business that we’re not seeing?’”

As an example of a positive step to come out of the BLM movement, one senior executive told us that it had established employee networks. “Employee networks are the way forward. Particularly, around race and ethnicity – as I think it’s often quite lonely as a black person. And actually bringing together a group of ethnically, racially-diverse people, who can together articulate a world view, and have that conversation with management - or just amongst themselves - feels like a good way forward.”

UNDERSTANDING NOT TRANSLATING INTO ACTION

While the last six months – Covid-19 combined with the Black Lives Matter movement – have certainly accelerated the conversation around racial and ethnic diversity, we found little evidence of specific policy designed to tackle racism or encourage representation.

Looking to the future, business leaders should examine ways to translate their new-found understanding of the importance of race into specific policy, and update their D&I strategies accordingly.

Expert views

Joanna Aunon, Director at WiHTL, spoke to Sonia Meggie, Inclusion & Diversity Consultant at Business in the Community about what leaders can do to increase their focus on D&I during this time.

Why is the collection and benchmarking of data so critical to effecting real change? The lack of any meaningful ethnicity data is a common theme and the biggest bugbear for professionals like me in the inclusion space. If you do not have accurate data, you cannot create a credible action plan or monitor progress. This is why capturing ethnicity data and publicising progress is one of the five commitments companies make when they sign the BITC’s Race at Work Charter.

We know that collecting accurate data is a challenge, largely due to a lack of trust from employees to submit personal information such as ethnicity. What can companies and employers do to build more trust? It is key for an organisation and its leaders to effectively explain in an engaging way why the data is needed. However, any vision and communication need to be backed up with action. Businesses really need to think about where and how they position the importance of race and their commitment to change.

How can organisations show their commitment to change? As I mentioned, the key thing organisations can do is to act. I think many people from ethnic minorities have reached a point where they have heard it takes time to make change for years and are now pressing for action. I think you’ll find that the response to the lack of action will be that time has run out via pushback from both your employees and your customers. Signing the BiTC Race at Work Charter is a good place to start. It is also important to compare yourself to others and to see how you are progressing and moving forward to build real trust. Employees want to be employed by an organisation that is visionary and proactive and also has their best interests at heart.

Once the decision to act has been taken, the proof is always in the pudding and one of the first steps is to assign budget to any initiative. There is generally very little investment or budget assigned to race in the workplace and without the commitment of financial support, any action will be seen as ‘lip service’ and will serve only to reduce trust even further.

Often, the lack of trust also comes from the lack of role models in the organisation. Leaders also need to look at how they position, promote and support talent from an ethnic minority within the business as well.

There may also be a natural distrust because of your experience as a person from an ethnic minority and how you may have been treated in the workplace, including bullying and harassment that has existed or continues to exist. If there is very little done in relation to bullying and harassment, then people are likely to think what’s the point if things keep going full circle regardless of what they’ve personally heard, experienced and seen?

What can individuals do to drive the collection of accurate data? If you are from an ethnic minority and your boss or your organisation shows commitment and starts to actively listen, it is important to participate and speak up. So when there’s a staff survey, complete it .Where there are questions in any form about diversity and wellbeing, answer them and if you are asked to complete your personal data, don’t just go for the questions that you have to answer, answer all of them as

what gets counted gets done. If you do not take on that responsibility and opportunity of being able to share and be heard, then we are continuously at Groundhog Day trying to get this agenda moved forward. So, participate, speak up, go to network meetings as networks are only as strong as the numbers. If you do not participate, how can a network speak on your behalf or support amplify agendas if they do not have your participation, support or your input?

With regards to budgets, the hospitality, travel and leisure industry has been decimated by Covid-19 and D&I budgets and teams have been cut significantly. Do you have any advice for companies and leaders that are truly committed to change but are struggling at the moment to provide a significant financial commitment? Commitment and trust start from the top. Putting D&I, and race in particular, high on the business agenda does not cost anything. For example, it is common for gender statistics to be fed into the board on a regular basis. Race also needs to have the same weight. Employees – and leaders, too – need to see that those above them are active sponsors and champions, whilst listening and engaging with people from across the organisation. For example, if a company has an employee resource group, members of the Executive Board need to join meetings regularly to effect real change. You need those with power and influence present to hear the reality of shared experiences and suggestions to make progress. In other words, the minority need to influence the majority. Leaders also need to be made accountable for change, whether through the achievement of targets or the success of initiatives implemented to make a difference.

You can also be creative. For example, for employee networks that may have seen their budgets reduced, join and collaborate with networks from other companies. This can include working together to run an event, including the offering of food which is still the best way to get people to turn up to a network event! We can see from the research, many companies in our sector do not feel they have responded to the BLM movement properly. Is it now too late for them to respond in an authentic way? Some companies chose not put a statement out or post the black square on Instagram on ‘black out Tuesday’. The reasons for this ranged from companies being honest they had not done the work, to companies not knowing what to do at this critical point.

For any company, it is not too late to respond effectively and authentically. There are many quick wins so start now, do the work and gather your learning. Start with listening to your employees through doing focus groups and listening sessions. Start employee networks and join them to hear their worries, concerns and ideas. You can also conduct a staff survey and diversity audit. All of these are quick wins and have a minimal cost apart from time and commitment. On the back of the listening and internal learning, look to create an action plan that is specific and targeted. Share these plans with your employees and get their thoughts. Once an organisation has gone through these steps, it can plan its internal and external response.

Any action plan must have depth and not become a ‘tick box’ exercise and initiatives must be considered holistically and not in isolation. For example, many companies will roll out unconscious bias training to leaders to show action, but not measure whether the training has had impact, like if a team has become more diverse or if the attrition of employees from an ethnic minority background has reduced. Also, I believe it should be called ‘conscious’ bias training as that’s what it is. This also means ‘safe’ spaces need to be created for leaders to work though potentially difficult conversations or themes that arise from the training.

So, if you do (un)conscious bias training, I always say challenge yourself and do the Harvard implicit bias test at least two or three times a year. When you’ve done the test, check to see if there are any changes in your score and whether you can see if the training has had an impact.

The research shows people from an ethnic minority have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. What are your thoughts on this? The HTL sector has been severely impacted and if you think about who predominantly works in your space and who comes from minority backgrounds, whether it’s from a cleaner to front of house, you can see they have been disproportionately impacted either through being furloughed or being made redundant. Households are really feeling the impact, even before the pandemic, a Black African family had 10p for every £1 of wealth a white family had.

The disproportionate impact on people from ethnic minorities has also meant there are many who are hurt and feeling quite bitter about the way they have been treated. However, if we can work together to try raise the issues and move this agenda forward, whilst ensuring that those voices are heard, your industry can start to build back better.

What would be the impact for an organisation to do nothing? They will get left behind. Leaders needs to think about the risk to their business and understand where the momentum is and the intention of those who have decided that they’re going to do something. Right now, if you look, you’ll see that most organisations that have engaged more on diversity and are recruiting D&I professionals at a far more senior level, often reporting straight into the Board. Businesses are recognising that in order to remain competitive and profitable, they must ensure diversity and inclusion is just a normal, everyday part of achieving business success. What can individuals do?

Think about what you can do with your own space in your own platform. While you are an employee, you are also an individual, so use your influence. For example, if you see articles that are of interest, share them on LinkedIn and on your social media feed, you will be surprised by those that have seen or heard what you’ve done. Speak up, use your voice, use your space and amplify the message right now.

And as for leaders, think about the influence and privilege you have and how you can best use your voice and platform, both internally and externally, to make a difference.

So be an ally, be a sponsor and commit to continually listen and learn. More importantly, ensure that race and wellbeing is on your Executive agenda as a key business KPI so that you and your teams will be held to account. As a senior leader, if you are walking the talk from the top down, the business will follow.

Sonia Meggie has worked at BITC over the last seven years. She has led on Race Equality training, gender pay gap, diverse recruitment, mentoring, awards and diversity policies and strategies. She currently supports organisations such as Sky, Deloitte, Hachette, Michael Page, Tate and Pearson to name a few; helping them to understand their D&I strengths and identify business improvements, enabling them to re-prioritise activities and rationalise their priorities. She helps organisations review their existing talent attraction strategy and recruitment principles to identify where bias may exist through processes or behaviours.

Sonia is well networked and connected to senior leaders globally. Over the last 15 years Sonia has supported businesses with their employee engagement and outreach, and profiled hundreds of leaders on her panels in Parliament, Channel 4, BBC, ITV and the UK Supreme Court.

Alongside her diversity role she runs an awardwinning social enterprise that is focused on empowering women, Black, Indian and Asian professionals and young people. She was shortlisted as Stylist Magazine’s Inspirational Woman of the Year and has won multiple awards and press for her inspirational and empowering work.

How can we become an anti-racist organisation?

One of the remarkable examples of the hospitality, travel and leisure industry coming together to educate, raise awareness and take action has been the development during the pandemic of a series of webinars designed to support leaders across HTL to drive forward race equality in the industry.

The series was developed in partnership with Greene King, the UK’s leading pub retailer and brewer and saw speakers from ENAR (European Network Against Racism) and Business in the Community (BiTC) address a range of key issues to tackle race equality in the workplace including an exploration of the barriers faced by women from ethnic minorities, how to create inclusive approaches to accommodate religious beliefs and practices, and practical insights into the importance of understanding how racism and discrimination at the interpersonal level impacts the mental health and wellbeing of employees.

In the first webinar, Juliana Wahlgren-Santos, Senior Advocacy Officer, ENAR, addressed what it means to be anti-racist: “racism is not something that can be tackled in a passive mode. You have to demonstrate action in order to tackle it. Racism is an issue where if you are not actively trying to change it, it will just continue. It’s a question of actively working to make sure everyone has the same privileges.”

She shared that at an organisational level, becoming an anti-racist organisation means that the organisation works to actively denounce racist behaviour, taking action to dismantle systemic discrimination and institutionalised racism. Making a declaration to highlight an organisation is anti-racist was one piece of advice she shared that a company could do. “How are we going to become anti-racist? – a great question I will start to ask when engaging our leaders. With only 2% women of colour in our business, we definitely have a problem,” said one attendee.

WOMEN FROM ETHNIC MINORITIES IN THE WORKPLACE

In a poll run during the first webinar exploring the issues faced by women from ethnic minorities in the workplace, the problem faced by the HTL industry was made clear. 56% of attendees said we are not doing so well or we are doing poorly as an industry in terms of inclusion of women of colour. Strikingly, 72% said they have fewer than five women from diverse ethnic backgrounds in senior roles in their organisations.

In terms of actions, ENAR talked about the importance of adopting an intersectional approach to remove the exclusion and inequality experienced by women of colour. They outlined a three-stage process that employers may want to apply:

a) understand the issues at the different intersections for example gender and race

b) work to transform the organisation

c) empower women of colour

Juliana shared the Woman of Colour journey from entering to exiting the organisation via the different stages of the honeymoon period, tokenism, microaggression, denial of racism and retaliation.

The “Problem” Woman of Colour in the Workplace

The Woman of Colour enters the organisation White Leadership

Honeymoon • the Woman of Colour feels welcomed, needed, and happy Tokenised Hire

Denial of Racism Repetitive Injury & Microaggressions Reality • the Woman of Colour points out issues within the organisation • she tries to work within the organisation’s structure and policies • she pushes for accountability

Response • the organisation denies, ignores, and blames • the responsibility of fixing the problem is placed on the Woman of Colour • People of Colour are pitted against one another

Target & Attack Retaliation • the organisation decides that the woman of colour is the problem and targets her • the organisation labels the conflict as a “communication issue” or claims that she is not qualified or “not a good fit

The Woman of Colour exits the organisation

RACE AND RELIGION IN THE WORKPLACE

In a second webinar in the series, leaders learned how to take a positive approach to issues in the workplace related to race and religion. Julie Pascoët, Senior Advocacy Officer at ENAR highlighted the barriers faced from those from diverse religious backgrounds and how companies can accommodate the needs of others in an inclusive way.

Key actions to positively approach race and religion in the workplace included:

Create a ‘quiet room’ - a space not just for prayer but for all employees to use as a place to take time for reflection or meditation.

Be mindful of asking individuals to do something that might conflict with their religious beliefs such as serving alcohol. If it is an integral requirement of a role it should be explicitly clear as such. Be seen to actively value difference – at a strategic level religious diversity increases the cultural and religious understanding of all employees. This awareness is necessary, not only in a global business environment, but also at the local/regional/national level to reflect the diversity of the customer base and society as a whole.

Assess the purpose of neutrality such as restricting freedoms to wear religious garments or symbols. Is it a legitimate policy with clear benefits for the workplace? Or does it single out some employees, creating a hostile and unequal work environment?

EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RACISM AND MENTAL HEALTH

In the final webinar, Sonia Meggie, Diversity and Inclusion Consultant at Business in the Community (BITC), shared some eye-opening statistics on the factors impacting race and mental health.

According to research by the Runnymede Trust, for every £1 of wealth a white family has in the UK, a Black African family has just 10p. She also shared that according to research by BITC, 33% of Black employees feel that their ethnicity will be a barrier to their next career move (compared with 1% of white employees) and that 31% of Black employees feel likely to wait for three years for a promotion (compared to 23% of white employees.)

With these facts in mind, it is clear that those from ethnically diverse backgrounds face greater challenges than white people in the workplace, without the added complication of the disproportionately negative impact of Covid-19.

The cumulative impact of micro-aggressions faced by those from diverse ethnic backgrounds was also highlighted.

If we are to overcome some of the challenges faced by those from diverse backgrounds in the workplace, it is important that leaders across the industry are adequately equipped with the knowledge of how to tackle racist behaviour in their organisation. They not only need to be familiar with a number of terms but also be aware of the impact that racist behaviour in different formats (such as in the form of micro-aggressions) can have on their team members. In a poll regarding familiarity with the term ‘micro-aggressions’, 51% of the webinar attendees were not familiar with the term, 46% were familiar with it and the remaining responders weren’t sure.

In a subsequent poll, asking if leaders were aware of the connection between ‘microaggressions’ and the impact on a person’s mental health, 58% were familiar with the connection and 42% were not. When asked how well-equipped leaders felt to support a member of their team that may be living with a mental health issue, 9% felt well equipped, 60% adequately equipped and 31% inadequately equipped.

As it is clear that significant physical and mental health disparities already exist in Black, Asian and ethnic minorities within and outside of the workplace, if employers do not take specific action to combat the negative impact of Covid-19 on those from ethnically diverse backgrounds, the long-term negative impact on mental health not to mention the economic impact for such individuals will be severe.

Key actions that were recommended for employers to implement in the short term:

Words have power - educate yourself and your employees on language, terminology and things that are not acceptable to say to those from ethnically diverse backgrounds

Check in – it is recommended that employers ask all managers to check in with employees now about how they are coping during Covid-19

Signpost – flag any financial resources available to your employees, and actively encourage them to apply for them, supporting the application if necessary

Employers must convene big conversations in the workplace for active listening, and then make plans on agreed actions together with their Black employees. Employee resource groups can be useful feedback and support mechanisms

Work to ensure government advice has been understood

Monitor ethnicity in your workforce at this time in order to track and report progress against race targets in the future

Ensure there is not a disproportionate percentage of employees from ethnic minority backgrounds earmarked for redundancy

Remember intersectionality: Black, Asian, Indian and minority ethnic women are part of your overall gender totals

Look at internal occupational segregation and make plans to redeploy talent now

Sponsor and support the Race at Work 2021 survey and encourage employees to participate in the survey. Sign the BITC Race at Work Charter.

In the medium to long term, it was also recommended that employers take the following actions:

Capture data so that the intersectional nuances of women of colour from each census category can be considered

Set targets and monitor by ethnicity – monitor each stage of the recruitment process by ethnicity and gender from attraction to hire

Conduct skills assessments – assess the skills needed within your organisation for continued operational effectiveness, consider redeployment of skilled people

Actively encourage senior leaders to sponsor black talent in their workplaces

THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING AND ENACTING CHANGE

The webinars represented an opportunity for leaders from across hospitality, travel and leisure to listen, reflect, be curious. Leaders were encouraged to take the next step and enact change, create an ethos of psychological safety, openness, honesty and empathy.

Tania Holcroft, People and Culture director at Greene King, commented: “We’re really pleased to team up with WiHTL and ENAR to be part of these webinars to promote race equality in the workplace. It’s really important that at Greene King, and as part of the wider hospitality industry, we continue to focus and develop our position on inclusion and diversity. At Greene King we’re continuing to listen and learn to help us understand how we can create a more diverse workforce. WiHTL’s new report into the Impact of Covid-19 on Women and Ethnic Minorities in HTL provides much needed data which will inform our strategy in supporting women and ethnic minorities in our company going forward.”

Michael Privot, Director, ENAR added: “ENAR congratulates WiHTL and its members for seizing the opportunity of the current #BLM momentum to move forward decidedly on improving the full inclusion of racialised people, people of colour and Black and ethnic minority People in the hospitality, travel and leisure sectors, which are among the largest employers of people from a diverse background. Reaching out to ENAR – which has centred its D&I approach on Human Rights and full equality as making total business sense – is a clear sign of the dedication of the sector to go beyond announcements of good intentions, but to engage in a concrete journey towards progressive change, whatever it will take.”

The three webinars formed part of WiHTL’s ‘Inclusive Leader Programme’ – the most comprehensive cross-industry programme ever put in place to support leaders across HTL to create, nourish and sustain diverse and inclusive environments. Over 2000 leaders have already signed up to join the Inclusive Leader Programme from across hospitality travel and leisure which runs until October 2020.

Tea Colaianni, Founder & Chair, WiHTL commented: “By educating leaders of all backgrounds across the industry on the importance of their role in creating diverse and inclusive environments that do not tolerate racism, we hope to see real industry progress in people from diverse backgrounds feeling comfortable that they can bring their ‘whole’ selves to work and progress their careers in the HTL industry.”