How we live together is one of the big challenges of the twenty-first century: at least as serious as the challenge of climate change and even more immediate. At the risk of overstating my case, I would argue that an important tool necessary to the task of helping us create a more equitable and harmonious community, was launched on October 1 2006 with the opening of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Its task is to eliminate discrimination, reduce inequality, protect human rights and build good relations, ensuring that everyone has a fair chance to participate in society.
The previous commissions – the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality, and the Disability Rights Commission – made enormous advances over the last thirty years, helping to change Britain into a fairer place. But much remains to be done.
The EHRC is building on their legacy to achieve change to benefit some of the most disadvantaged and voiceless people in our society. It brings together the work of the three previous equality commissions and also takes on responsibility for the other aspects of equality: age, sexual orientation and religion or belief, as well as human rights.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission acts not only for the disadvantaged, but for everyone in society, and can use its new enforcement powers where necessary to guarantee people’s equality. It also has a mandate to promote understanding of the Human Rights Act. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) established under the Equality Act 2006 – accountable for its public funds, but independent of government.
In our age of difference, demographic and social change is objective – about who we are – but it is also subjective – about who we think we are. In this new world, claims on the basis of age, gender, race, sexuality, disability and faith are all clamouring for recognition. Increasingly, people want to see their differences acknowledged; they don’t want to be trapped in others’ ideas of who they should be and how they should behave. And this, by the way, also goes for categories of people not currently recognised, such as carers.
Women in the workplace don’t want to have to behave like men in order to get ahead; Muslims don’t want to have to sink a few beers down the pub in order to be eligible for promotion; gay men and women don’t want to have to stay in the closet in order to climb the career ladder. Properly managed, the changes open up a fertile new well-spring of talent, as well as untapped customer demographics.
A recent piece of research conducted for the Equality and Human Rights Commission revealed that nearly half of us – 46% – think that we have faced discrimination: and crucially, 74% of people thought that discrimination was most prevalent in the workplace; and two out of five of those who faced discrimination experienced it in the workplace. The National Employment Panel Business Commission estimated in their report published in October 2006 that 250,000 people are unemployed because of discrimination and 83% of employers think they can get away with it. These findings are supported by the intelligence we are picking up on our helpline and the evidence we have from the legacy commissions.
The country at large needs the business sector to address this head on. To be a global competitor, our nation needs to utilise the skills and talents of the entire potential workforce. We cannot afford for increasingly large segments of our population to be working below their potential, or indeed not working at all. Our future success depends critically on high levels of employee skills that meet the demands of a service-led economy and high added-value industries.
At the commission we often now speak about the need to effect systemic change in order to tackle the deep, root causes of arbitrary inequality. The market is the most powerful and pervasive system of resource allocation that we have. But if we allocate resources in a way that leaves some people on the outside, we create both inefficiency and social tension. We need to make changes at the level of the market if we are truly to be a country that is comfortable with its diversity. And to make those changes at this level we need to use the market’s own levers of competition, accountability, transparency and – of course – the pressure of the all-important bottom line.
In working with the private sector, the commission will seek to build co-operative relationships based, we hope, on a clear understanding that our interest is in the success of business. Successful business will employ more people, generate more wealth and have the capacity to play a fuller part in the life of the community. We will seek to understand the needs of business and help them understand the benefits and opportunities a positive approach to equality and diversity will bring.
Here are four ideas that could be adopted by many businesses that I believe would be good for the business and give them important insights into the issues I’m discussing here:
– The first is the creation at board level of an equality champion, much like a chief financial officer, responsible for planning and reporting. This individual would take ownership of the equality agenda at the highest level and would provide a focal point for accountability.
– The second would be the publication of equalities data as a component of annual reporting. We need more and clearer data about companies’ performance in representing diversity. This would generate greater transparency, and would also encourage businesses’ competitive instincts to kick in.
– The third is consideration of equality deficits as part of risk assessment procedures. So real life liabilities such as discrimination cases in the pipeline should be included as part of the due diligence process in takeovers and mergers.
– The fourth is procurement policies used as a lever to deliver greater equality. The public sector has a massive purchasing power, commissioning goods and services from private contractors. The legacy commissions have long urged that the procurement process should include equality audits.
The private sector too can use this as a model of good practice. I am thinking of Barclays, who made this a requirement on their legal panel, and Microsoft who last year dropped a supplier because of their poor record on diversity in the workplace.
There are no quick-fix, silver-bullet solutions here. What we are talking about is bringing about fundamental changes in the ways in which we relate to each other, in the way we live together. My contention is that business has a significant role to play and it should be a player because it is in its best interest to be part of that change process. EHRC is a public sector initiative born out of the changes taking place in our society and designed to facilitate those changes. I hope that we will be able to work with business so that together we can forge the changes in attitude that will be needed to keep Britain competitive in the global economy.
Alan Christie is director of policy at the Equality and Human Rights Commission where his particular focus is on issues of poverty and social exclusion. He is a former private sector director of the Commission for Racial Equality and vice president of corporate affairs for Levi Strauss Europe where he led their communications, government relations and corporate responsibility agendas.
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