October is Black History Month — a time when individuals from all backgrounds come together to celebrate the achievements of black people and to listen to their lived experiences.

To mark the occasion, Robert Half’s Black Employee Network (BEN) hosted an uplifting discussion with business guru Tim Campbell MBE to highlight, honour, and discuss how black history is being made every day in Britain.

Tim is an entrepreneur, inclusion advisor, business start-up specialist, and a recognised advocate of talent and inclusion. He has established a ground-breaking charitable foundation and chairs an outstanding school board. He has also acted as an adviser to Lord Alan Sugar on the BBC One show and The Apprentice, sitting alongside Baroness Karen Brady.

Tim and two of Robert Half’s founding BEN co-founders shared their thoughts and experiences to help empower you to confidently support professional talent from black communities and ethnic minorities.

Overcoming the need to wear a mask to succeed

“I didn’t know that I didn’t need a mask,” says Tim. “Lots of organisations say, ‘be your authentic self’, but what they're actually saying is ‘bring your truest self which can integrate with this culture’. But you’ve got to have that explanation of how those two things come together.”

• Cultural masking can be very taxing to individuals who must consider how they present themselves.
• Tim encourages everyone to be cognizant of this emotional tax and the fact that some people carry that burden and wear those masks.

“That resonated with me a lot,” says Jermaine Lynch, Division Manager at Robert Half and BEN UK co-founder. “People that are not part of a minority group don't always see how taxing it can be.”

• Colleagues and leaders can support staff by creating inclusive environments in which minority groups feel comfortable enough to remove those masks and be vulnerable.
• Tim encourages people to acknowledge when certain situations make them uncomfortable and then find someone within the organisation who can mentor or educate them on that issue.

“You need to find sponsors. Someone who’s going to advocate for you when you're not in the room,” says Tim. “And sponsors for me are the earliest examples of allies — those people who have the power and the ability to support others. They can give you a guiding hand, introduce you to the right people, but you’ve got to be able to turn up and do the work.”

The benefits of diverse workforces in the UK corporate world

• The metrics clearly indicate that companies with diverse boards, whether gender or ethnicity, outperform their competitors.

Tim says:

“The clear business case that I speak to Finance Directors and CEOs about is that, in an age of such low unemployment, is your organisation managing the risk of not attracting the widest pool of talent to deal with challenges you have within the business? Because if you’re not, your competitors are.”

• Tim says that by regularly reporting on current diversity metrics and by acknowledging the progress yet to be made, businesses can attract talent despite the current shortage.
• When businesses have the data needed to quantify the change and impact of diverse workforces, they can start measuring tangible benefits.
• Regularly measuring the benefits provides a clear commercial reason to continue progress.

Why it’s essential for businesses to support Black History Month

• Supporting BHM is an acknowledgement of inequities and injustices, both past and present. It shows a willingness to educate yourself about those issues.
• Challenging the narrative and reframing the conversation helps us avoid making the mistakes of the past.

“I think having conversations about challenging the narrative around how individuals from certain communities are perceived, we’re making sure that we have equal representation,” says Tim.

“We can challenge some of those negative perceptions and reframe the conversation about what we’re going to do to make sure we don't make the mistakes of the past. Because we've looked there. So, what are we going to do to make sure the future is better?”

• By offering support to and uplifting the voices of systemically disadvantaged individuals, you're raising awareness and seeking to learn things that may help other groups.
• The celebration of black history isn’t an exercise in excluding everyone else — it’s an opportunity to highlight the intersectionality of all individuals and invite everyone into the conversation.

Jermaine says:

“Black History Month isn’t even necessarily an ‘us’ thing; it’s a chance for us all to learn together. And this is a perfect opportunity for Angela and me to bring other people into our space, our world, and our reality, and to celebrate that.”

The importance of ENGs and issue-based groups in the workplace

• Today's environment consists of binary echo chambers that subscribe to black-and-white thinking, which hinders real, nuanced conversation.
• Businesses should develop employee network groups (ENGs) as well as affinity and 'issue groups'. This recognises that so — such as those around parenting — are intersectional.

“We need to couple safe spaces, the ENG groups, with the corresponding issue groups that can invite those who have the power in to feel included with those conversations,” says Tim.

“ENGs allow you to be your authentic self and have a safe space to say and feel what you need to,” says Angela Ward, Robert Half procurement and asset management manager and BEN UK co-founder. “It lets you know that you’re accepted, regardless of who you are, what your sexuality is, or whatever your beliefs are.”

Advice to businesses just beginning to focus on retaining and recruiting diverse talent

“If you're just starting your journey, you're very lucky. There's so much information and data out there that you can find great places to start the conversation. Whereas if you’d started 30 years ago, you wouldn’t have had that,” says Tim. “I don’t think it’s fair to expect managers and leaders to automatically know what to do.”

• Small steps are being made in the financial services sector now that regulators have begun requesting reporting on organisational diversity.
• Tim feels it's unfair to expect business leaders to have immediate knowledge of what needs to be done to promote equity. Instead, he points to the vast number of DEI experts and champions that can be brought in to assist.
• Diversity must start with the tone from the top — business leaders must be able to articulate why this issue is important, or people will see the inauthenticity and disconnect.
• Tim advises that a truly inclusive environment involves more than rhetoric. Employees will be looking for programmes, infrastructures, and policies that support DEI in a tangible way.

Tim says:

“It's interesting having had the legal protection around race discrimination, gender discrimination, and everything else, that we still don't have many associated outputs that are measurable when it comes to lots of equity conversations within our organisations.”

Angela says:

“I think it speaks for itself. There are so many companies out there — especially after George Floyd’s death — that have set out on this journey. And it stopped pretty early on and hasn't continued. There's nothing tangible to show after that. But two years later at Robert Half, not only are we gaining momentum, but it's becoming part of who we are as an organisation.”

How individuals can get the conversation started within their business

• Tim recommends blending ‘the emotive with the informed’ — making examples of companies who are breaking new ground with DEI, combined with personal stories, and the lived experiences of minoritized and marginalised colleagues (providing they feel able to share these).
• The world is rapidly embracing technology and technological advances, creating a new meritocratic environment that values speed. Only the most diverse businesses are opening themselves up to consideration from the right talent in the market, who are more likely to align with an employer that represents them.
• Tim advises that, during difficult economic times, businesses must return to a value-add perspective and focus on the problems they solve well. In order to thrive, they’ll need top talent in their ranks.

“It's making sure that we bring the right people, the best people, along with us because a bad hire is very, very expensive,” says Tim.

• Tim recommends referencing exemplary businesses who are living their values — the competitive element can get you to the table to have that conversation.

Adopting a diverse hiring mindset

• When hiring, business leaders should ask themselves whether they’re sharing the opportunity with the widest pool of talent possible or chasing timeline requirements by defaulting to what they feel comfortable with.
• When thinking about diverse hiring, Tim advises businesses to consider a wider context, one which incorporates social mobility too. By “opening-doors” to developing talent, allowing them to see themselves in your business, ultimately you can create a more diverse pipeline of talent

“For recruiters, it's about working with clients to understand how they can incorporate an inclusive recruitment activity. To make sure that they are de-risking the process of missing out on talent that they didn’t know about.” says Tim.

Jermaine says:

“When we're recruiting people, and they're asking, ‘what's your company doing on X, Y, Z?’, if you haven't got anything set up, it doesn’t bode well, especially in a world where information is so accessible. Employers will lose out by not educating themselves on DEI.”

• Through a government campaign, Tim found that individuals who’d been given an apprenticeship stayed longer and worked harder because they were motivated to prove their worth in a dream role.
• Tim feels that contracts and salaries must align the opportunity to an individual’s personal motivations to get the best from them.

Connect, thrive, and grow: Tim’s advice to his younger self

Connect

“I think I’d connect with who I am rather than who I wanted to be,” says Tim. “I always had to chase somebody else or look to somebody else for who I wanted to be or who I should be, not trusting that I had enough within me to own who I was and know that my value was in the difference I brought.”

Thrive

“I think to thrive, my big thing is just continue to be generous. To share stuff. If you learn it, share it with other people because that’s the only way you're really, really going to fly. My goal is to make everybody win.” Says Tim.

Grow

“In order to grow, I'd say to younger Tim and younger individuals: every opportunity that comes up, grab it. Don't box yourself into what the pathway was.” Says Tim. “Do random stuff. Take every opportunity. Don’t say ‘no’ to stuff unless it’s going to hurt you. Put yourself outside of your comfort zone.”

You can find more information on Black History Month here or learn more about Robert Half’s Black Employee Network (BEN) and other ENGs here.