Speaker 1: There's a Mexican wave sweeping through the creative industry at the moment, hitting every company. The thing with waves is it's one of those things where you see it heading in your direction and you know you need to respond to it, but the moment it arrives to you there's always a sort of like awkwardness to the whole thing, especially if you've never taken part in a Mexican wave before. Now this wave is what I'd like to refer to as the current diversity hiring trend. Companies are wanting to hire more people of colour as well as gay, trans and disabled people and job ads these days are containing sentences such as BAME people especially encouraged to apply. I'm a creative recruiter and I've had an influx of requests from companies that want me to help them find a more varied selection of people. The wave has hit them and they're responding accordingly and in every diversity and inclusion manual it mentions external recruiters like me as one of the solutions to help fill this talent gap. You think I'd be loving this, I've never been more popular by companies as a supplier, but I've got something I'd like to say and it is an urgent appeal to every CEO and owner of a business. By all means please get swept up in the wave, but I'd like you to consider your direction really carefully because there's a chance that a non-carefully considered response could be doing more harm than good and I'd like to explain why. Because it just becomes this really strange pick and mix recruitment game of could we have a black, gay, trans or disabled person, human beings being collected like trophies. Like when you go into reception and you sit there and see an open plan office of people strategically placed, looking at photos on the company website as well of people smiling. Look at us, aren't we diverse, but you can't have the D of diversity without the I of inclusion. As someone who's built their career on creative recruitment with conscience, I'd be doing a disservice to anyone that trusts me to find them a career home if I'm taking part in what essentially could be perceived as tokenism. What do you think would happen if someone from a marginalised background joins a company because they believe in their vision to be more diverse and inclusive. This individual leaves a secure job, throws caution to the wind and they join this organisation. But this company is full of things like microaggressions because the other members of staff believe that this person was only hired because of factors such as the colour of their skin, their sexual orientation or their disability. This new hire would leave because these situations can have such an effect on an individual's self-esteem which can take months if not years to recover from. But not only that alone, it's also expensive. The cost of loss to a company when someone leaves, not only from a reputation point of view but financials alone, can cost a company up to 200% of that person's salary in recruitment and training fees. If you're a CEO or an owner of a business, I want you to ask yourself a set of three really serious questions. One, does your company currently have an open, diverse and inclusive work culture? Two, how do you think your staff would genuinely react if you started hiring a variety of people from diverse backgrounds? And three, how willing are you to proactively fix this? One key reason you might want to is it affects your bottom line. Studies have suggested that diverse teams can increase company performances by up to 30%. And also millennials and gen-zen proactively seek diverse companies to work for so you'd also be missing out on top talent for your company as well. And this isn't when it's just about creative recruitment with conscience. This is when it becomes recruitment with common sense. And Joyce Park's diversity advocate put it best when she said, diversity isn't like choking down spoonfuls of oat bran because it's supposedly good for you. It's literally like eating out at a wonderful new restaurant every day. So I just want you to imagine for a second how much better your company will be if it's full of diverse, motivated individuals who are fully committed to pushing your company forwards because they wholeheartedly believe you're invested in developing them and pushing them forwards too. As a CEO of a company, you have a responsibility to set the tone for your whole organisation. Your employees look to you as their leader. So your influence trickles down to the rest of your company but also in every organisation there's key members of the team where if they're on board, everyone else is on board. And this diversity and inclusion training you're trying to implement won't work if these key people are rolling their eyes and referring to it as a waste of time. Everyone has to be on board with this for it to work. I work specifically within the design and advertising industry and we all know that advertising essentially reflects society back to itself but advertising fails as an industry if it doesn't contain people in boardrooms or design teams that reflect the rich tapestry of the culture that brands are trying to communicate with because it's full of individuals that have the same lived experiences of the people brands are trying to talk to. As people we have so many different identities. Divergent, cisgender, working class, middle class, Muslim, Christian, black, white, gay, straight. An identity is just a part of someone but also our values are what are really important and shared values are essential as well as integration within society and an organisation. When I run industry leaders talks, which is where I ask some of the biggest names in advertising and design, what do you look for when recruiting for a creative for your team and a lot of them said to me, well, along with grit, resilience and creativity, what we're really looking for is that person's voice because what makes a great creative is every life experience they've ever had being expressed into their work and if you want your agency to be producing groundbreaking progressive work that moves society and the world forwards, that's rich in culture, narratives and opinions, well, you need to not only hire diverse voices but you need to really create a culture where everyone feels empowered to express their ideas and to make sure that when anyone talks, that everyone is there to listen and to truly hear their voices when they speak. So as a CEO and an owner of a company, there are three things you can do in regards to diversity and inclusion within your company. One, hire for potential, not just experience. See, when companies come to me and they say, we would like you to find us a woman of colour who has experience working with some of the big sexy clients and some of the big key accounts and have proven experience there, this may not have happened. So what you need to do is hire one to two levels down and you need to be invested in their growth, you need to be their mentor and they need to report directly to you. Two, take a look around you, who already works in your organisation that's already been overlooked? Once you've identified talented individuals that already exist within your company, assign them a mentor, someone that is going to be that voice that will speak up for them in the room when they're not there and be invested in their growth as well. And three, have an external assessor come in and talk to your employees. If you want people to feel they can truly express themselves and their ideas and their opinions on your company and culture, this person needs to be external. Don't use HR because they work for you and a huge part of their job is onboarding people. Just bring someone external in, get them to listen to your employees and report that back to you and be prepared to really listen to that feedback. Also, educate yourself. There's so many resources out there at the moment and you're going to need to make sure you learn, especially to be the right sort of leader to take us into this new world post-pandemic. The veil has fallen, privilege has become openly acknowledged. We need to be allies and we need to educate ourselves. In 2020, we all went through the same storm, but we navigated through it in different boats and realised that our mindsets are the motor and our future vision and dreams are the lighthouse to help us navigate the waves to bring us safely home. I'd like to end with a quote from the great poet Amanda Gorman, for there's always light if only we're brave enough to see it, if only we're brave enough to be it.