在19世纪危机期间，企业不能让种族平等差距扩大

后作者形象。 桑德拉·科尔

桑德拉·科尔, Race Equality Director at Business in the Community (BITC) shares her thoughts on the COVID-19 pandemic and how the economic impact on black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups in the workplace can be mitigated.

在我们努力阻止COVID-19大流行蔓延的同时，负责任的雇主将需要采取战略行动，解决病毒及其后果将给少数民族背景的人带来的问题。

我们知道，现有的种族不平等已经导致了COVID-19对来自BAME背景的人产生了极不相称的影响，这些人的就业更不稳定，健康状况更差，经济困难。万博体育电脑网页版

雇主需要克服不适为了避免2008年上一次经济衰退后灾难性的重演，我们不得不谈论种族问题。

Lessons from the 2008 recession

Evidence shows that ethnic minority groups fared significantly worse during the 2008 recession than the white majority, with higher unemployment, lower earnings, lower self-employment rates and higher housing costs and decimated savings.

Runnymede报告为什么资产很重要？发表于2008年两年后的一份报告称，英国黑人和亚洲人中有60%的人根本没有储蓄，黑人群体没有储蓄的可能性是白人群体的两倍。

Low pay an important factor

Low pay will continue to be an important factor throughout the pandemic as the lowest income households are occupied by Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and black families.

我们也从卡内基信托英国公司的报告中得知，劳动力中的种族不平等BAME的员工更可能从事某种形式的不稳定工作。例如，他们签订零工时合同的可能性高出47%。

雇主能做什么？

由于COVID-19不可避免的具有挑战性的经济影响，现在有一些问题必须解决，但我们希望雇主知道，有可用的支持。以下是每个负责任的雇主可以采取的十项行动：

  1. Ensure that diverse voices are around the virtual key decision-making tables being established at this time.In light of this, employers should take a race equality impact assessment approach to key business decisions, to examine if there will be a disproportional impact on BAME employees. This may occur because they are larger proportions of BAME employees in certain functions in the organisation.
  • 寻找机会将BAME员工分散到组织内的其他角色，以保障就业万博体育电脑网页版. There may also be some career defining roles that employers need people to move into and this should include the examination of their pools of BAME talent to ensure fair access and opportunity for these roles.
  • Review and monitor the population of employees earmarked for furlough to the Job Retention Scheme而不仅仅是应用一个先入先出原则. Assess the skills needed within your organisation for continued operational effectiveness and consider redeployment of skilled people who can pivot into new roles across the organisation as appropriate. For example, if you have 10% BAME employees in your workforce, you would expect to have no more than 10% BAME employees on furlough.
  • 招聘的雇主必须使用当地的人口统计数据来设定招聘目标. 确保过程中没有偏差。监督选拔过程的每个阶段，直至任命和聘用。上个月，BITC为领导人发布了一份情况说明书，其中包括top tips on setting ethnicity targets.
  • Employers should pro-actively check in with employees nowand ask about their health and wellbeing and that of their households, in the light of this pandemic.
  • 监督和审查任何内部员工困难基金的使用情况。鼓励员工提出申请，因为住房成本过高和/或储蓄有限，一些差异可能与财务挑战有关。
  • Ensure that there are clear signposts to additional government support where appropriate. 雇主可以采取额外的措施，确保雇员了解政府的建议和支持，因为可能存在语言障碍，或者英语是第二语言。
  • 签署工作竞赛章程：约有250名雇主已经签署了合同BITC的工作竞赛章程. Signing up means taking practical steps to ensure their workplaces are tackling barriers that ethnic minority people face in recruitment and progression and that their organisations are representative of British society today.

Take the short Race at Work Charter 2020 survey and share your story.There is a short survey open for employers to quickly asses themselves against宪章五项原则. 雇主也有机会分享他们根据COVID-19采取的任何良好做法或行动的例子。与我们分享你的故事so that we can share it with the wider landscape of employers in the UK.


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