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Back in March, the UK Government finally said it was 'BAME over' for this “reductionist idea” of an acronym, which is frequently used to group all ethnic minorities together. So, are people now confident enough to dismantle the term and recognise the huge differences between the ethnic groups formerly grouped together? Not according to our new Diversity & Confusion Report, which reveals that 40 per cent of UK working professionals are afraid to even say ‘Black’ in relation to race and ethnicity.
The report - which includes insight about how included we all feel in the D&I agenda, the role language plays in how confident we are at work, and what we can do to create more inclusive workplaces - also indicates another emerging ‘reductionist idea’ that sees many different people grouped together: the use of the term ‘diverse’.
The data shows that almost one in five (19 per cent) of working professionals are likely to misuse the ‘term’ diverse to avoid saying what they actually mean by stating specific characteristics. The same amount of people also misuse the collective term ‘diverse’ to signify an individual of a different social or ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation, religion or disability.
These are just some of the findings in our new Diversity & Confusion research report. Through our survey of UK workers, we discovered that the UK workforce is living through a state of diversity and confusion. We discover that the people that 'diversity and inclusion' is meant to support are those most likely to feel excluded from the conversation. We also found that people lack confidence in what they can and can't say in the workplace and fear the consequences of getting it wrong.
You can get a deeper dive of the data and find out how to address this by downloading our report in full on our resources page.
