Small and medium sized-businesses have little understanding of the potential commercial benefits of an ethnically diverse workforce and the needs of their diverse mix of customers, according to research published by the Policy Research Institute on Ageing and Ethnicity. It suggests that although compliance with discrimination-based legislation is high, SMEs are failing to engage in the diversity agenda. The study found that, of the 300 SMEs who provided detailed responses, more than three-quarters have less than 10% of their employees from ethnic minorities and nearly 90% didn’t know the ethnic minority background of their UK customers. Evidence also suggests that there is ambivalence amongst SMEs of the benefit of a diverse workforce, as whilst 33.5% of companies believe it does improve business performance, 34% said it did not.
Slavery still exists in the UK, 200 years after it was abolished, according to Contemporary slavery in the UK: Overview and key issues.
The report examined the nature of modern slavery and the conditions under which it still occurs in the UK and was published jointly by the University of Hull and Anti-Slavery International on February 26.
Enforcement agencies in the UK estimate that there may be as many as 10,000 gang-masters operating across a number of industrial sectors.
What’s more, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, many Britiain-based companies rely on people working in slavery to produce the products that they sell, whether knowingly, or through a complex supply chain system, which obscures the knowledge the companies have of the situation.
Contact – Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 01904 629241, www.jrf.org.uk
Women in the workplace
The percentage of women in senior positions in Britain’s medium-sized companies has stagnated according to a report by Grant Thornton, released on March 8.
On the other hand, women in South-East Asian and East Asian countries are going from strength to strength with 91% of senior management positions in China filled by women. The Philippines ranks top with 97% of senior positions taken by women. The UK trails behind with 64% and the rest of Europe does not do much better.
The International Business Report 2007 examined 7,200 privately-held businesses across 32 countries and supports recent findings by the Equal Opportunities Commission, which showed that it will take approximately 60 years for women to gain equality in FSTE 100 boardrooms.
Employers must improve the health of their staff to increase productivity and reduce costs, according to health campaigners at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Working Towards Wellness: Accelerating the Prevention of Chronic Disease was published by PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and sets out a framework for achieving best practice in global wellness, offering five recommendations for business leaders. The Coca-Cola Company, ABSA, GlaxoSmithKline and Hewlett-Packard are examples of companies already designing and implementing wellness programmes within their organisations.
From our perspective in Europe, with our socialised healthcare systems, it is too easy to forget how employee healthcare is a central business issue, whether in downtown Manhattan or sub-Saharan Africa. Sick staff without adequate insurance hit the bottom line immediately. So this report from the WEF and PwC is very timely. After all, this is not just a developing world issue – in George Bush’s home state of Texas, one in four people do not have any healthcare whatsoever.
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