CEO blueprint for achieving racial equity
From an article by Just Capital
Based on recent events and previous research, to drive meaningful change all businesses need to conduct a racial equity audit. This assessment should take a hard look at how a company and its industry have benefited from racist systems, and should include a vision and concrete plans for how the company will repair those systems to support a liberating, antiracist culture.
The set of actions featured below are meant to be a starting place to catalyze conversations and action plans:
Inside the Company
a) Design HR policies and practices that are actively anti-racist, not merely “not racist”
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Collect and share racial equity data on compensation for all personnel, leadership, and board members on an annual basis
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Conduct a pay equity audit across all positions and levels by race, ethnicity, and gender; identify and correct any pay gaps; and release the results publicly
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Conduct a living wage audit to determine whether employees and on-site contract workers earn enough to cover the cost of local basic monthly expenses, including housing, food, health care, and transportation; increase wages to ensure all workers earn a living wage
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Extend benefits to all employees regardless of part-time status
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Set specific targets to hire, retain, and promote a diverse workforce, leadership, and board that mirrors the diversity of the nation; publicly disclose diversity and equity targets
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Adopt advancement practices that serve employees of colour at all levels of the company
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Provide ongoing racial implicit bias training to the board, leadership, and employees
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Create, maintain, and track an antiracist culture of belonging
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Contribute to updating ESG and accounting metrics to ensure that they actively drive racial equity
b) Expand worker power and voice
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Allow workers to organize and share their concerns and ideas with management in a respectful and meaningful way
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Create board positions for workers of colour
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Create grievance mechanisms for employees to report instances of discrimination
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Provide additional antiracist training to those responsible for handling grievances
c) Design products and services that ensure racially equitable outcomes
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Actively analyse and discontinue products, capital, and services that explicitly harm communities of colour (e.g. predatory credit card lending)
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Actively analyse the implicit and unintended impact of your products, capital, and services on consumers of colour so that you can redesign or discontinue those products (ask questions like: Is your AI software exhibiting racial bias? Is everyone able to equally access what you are creating or providing?)
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Invest in inclusive R&D (money, partner organizations, and staff) so that the business can actively address racial inequities (e.g., banks create products that reduce the racial wealth gap; pharmaceutical companies develop innovative solutions to reduce health inequities experienced by people of colour)
d) Design operations and supply chains to ensure racial equity
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Collect and publicly share data on suppliers of colour as a portion of your overall supply chain
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Assess underlying causes inhibiting the growth of suppliers of colour and actively collaborate with peer companies to strengthen the ecosystem of suppliers of colour
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Proactively assess and discontinue forced labour in supply chains
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Eliminate internal policies that prevent small businesses of colour to be part of the supply chain
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Establish operation standards for all suppliers, helping to ensure equity in the workplaces that support your company (e.g., developing strict standards for equity similar to those common in the apparel industry for child and forced labour)
Read the full article here which continues with ideas for business actions re the local community and society in general.
Although this article is 'business' focused, the principles apply to all organisations..
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From an article by Just Capital, 08/09/2020