Race 2.0 - Time For Real Change

Identify what you are trying to achieve and how you are holding yourself and the organisation to account.
You are accountable to the population you serve, and the workforce you lead, so seek assurance from them on whether you’re making meaningful progress.
It is one thing to say you’ve got a “zero tolerance” approach but if there are no consequences then there is no point.
Embed EDI into an accountability framework.

Make race education a priority to ensure people understand the external and internal context.
Encourage people to join the dots on their own (self learning).
Give people the literature and then challenge them.
Tell people the session starts with the literature, so they know they must read it.

Create space for honest conversations.
Ensure conversations are confidential.
Find skilled facilitators. Shouldn’t always be the HR director.
Consider external coaching, particularly for chairs, to build confidence and capability to lead on race.

White leaders taking the lead on this agenda is essential.
Be fully committed to EDI as you cannot drive change without the support of the board.
Recognise leadership is fundamentally about prioritisation.
Listen to people's lived experience. Understand what it feels like to be excluded.
Get people to express their vulnerabilities.
Be humble and admit that you don't know everything and hold biases. Recognise and acknowledge where you haven't done well.
Personally believe in it and role model it.
Behaviours and actions speak volumes to colleagues from diverse communities.

Call out and challenge things that are discriminatory.
Listen to the experiences of minority communities and the micro-aggressions that aren't called out.
Support staff to stand up to unacceptable behaviour from patients - yellow carding demonstrations that abuse won't be tolerated.

Where the board is not cohesive, this is a positive thing - only by understanding the core views of board members can you start to have more challenging conversations.
Draw on external support so you have someone who can look objectively and challenge your thinking.

Staff networks are like a social movement - they can speak truth to power inside the NHS. A crucial way of checking what is going on.
Networks give people a place to share. This is best done in specific groups i.e not all minority ethnic people experience prejudice in the same way.
Buddy executive champions with your staff networks to help foster trust between staff and the board.
Co-design programmes with board members and the minority ethnic network.
Reverse mentoring - it can be a powerful with white colleagues.
Don't just talk to staff about their live experience, talk to your communities about how they experience your services. Put them in the driving seat in how to tackle inequity.
Link into community groups through their trusted voices and run community-based workshops.
Do more as an anchor institution to offer employment opportunities to the most deprives communities.

Look at all HR processes, recruitment and retention - embed equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
Comply or explain accountability.
Be proactive - we introduced an associate NED post on our board as a development post offered only to candidates from ethnic minority background.
Clear policies and position on allyship, intersectionality, promoting psychological safety within the organisation.
Positive action especially in recruitment.
Criteria used for recruitment searches are as open as possible to encourage diverse applicants.
Ethnic minority representative on all band 7 and above interviews.

It is not about what you say, it is about what is found when research is done on the organisation.
Be an evidence-based organisation which is held to account by hard data. But recognise data alone will not drive change.
Address and make links between data and personal experiences.
Implement systems to cut all data by different characteristics.
Cut waiting list data by ethnicity and deprivation - do more work to discover why ethnic minorities are waiting longer.
Look at the staff survey - recognise that one person's informal performance management conversation is another person's bullying conversation.

Make tackling health inequalities a central part of any organisational strategy - the golden thread.
Put health inequalities into the annual planning cycle.
Provide support for the board on understanding health inequalities across the system - how to prioritise and address.

What good looks like, in your words...