Every October, workplaces across the UK mark Black History Month. Posters go up, a speaker is booked, reading lists are shared on the intranet, and a message from the chief executive lands in everyone’s inbox. Then November arrives, and the conversation quietly stops.
None of that is wrong. Celebration matters. But if October is the only month in which race and inclusion are discussed openly, employees notice – and so does your retention data. The harder question is what happens for the rest of the year.
What does your data tell you?
Meaningful inclusion begins with honesty rather than aspiration. Research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that Black, Asian and minority ethnic employees were significantly more likely than white British employees to say their career progression had failed to meet expectations – 44 per cent of Black employees, against 31 per cent of white British employees. One in five said discrimination had played a part in that, compared with around one in ten white British colleagues.
Business in the Community found that 74 per cent of Black employees wanted progression, compared with 42 per cent of white respondents, yet a third felt their ethnicity would be a barrier to their next move. That concern was shared by just one per cent of white employees. Ambition is not the issue; access to opportunity is.
So, look at your own numbers without defensiveness. Who is being promoted, and how quickly? Who is on the high-potential list? Who receives the stretch projects and client-facing work that lead to promotion? Who is leaving, and what do they tell you on the way out? Ethnicity pay gap reporting remains voluntary in Great Britain, but many employers publish anyway, because measuring is the first step to changing.
Progression, not just recruitment
Many organisations pour their energy into attracting diverse candidates and far less into helping them get on once they arrive. When the CIPD asked employees what would most improve their progression, the answers were strikingly practical: more transparent career paths, access to mentors, better quality line management at key career moments, and seeing people like them already succeeding at senior levels.
Clarity is a cheap and powerful intervention. Where promotion criteria are vague and decisions informal, those who progress tend to be the people already closest to the decision-makers. Writing down what “ready for the next level” means, publishing salary bands and recording promotion rationales benefits everyone and removes the places in which bias thrives.
Mentoring helps; sponsorship changes careers. A mentor offers advice; a sponsor puts your name forward in the room you are not in. If senior leaders are not actively advocating for Black talent in succession and promotion discussions, make that an explicit expectation of leadership, with accountability attached.
Everyday experience is where culture lives
Inclusion is felt in small, daily moments: whether your idea is credited, your name pronounced correctly, a “joke” challenged, or a concern raised without you being labelled difficult. CIPD research into building inclusive workplaces found that minority ethnic employees were significantly more likely to say they had to change aspects of their behaviour to fit in at work – an invisible tax on performance.
Line managers carry most of this weight, usually with the least training. Equip them properly: how to hold a career conversation, how to respond when someone reports racism, and how to interrupt a microaggression without creating a spectacle. Make sure your reporting routes are trusted, with outcomes people can see.
Practical steps for the rest of the year
- Build a twelve-month inclusion calendar, so learning and listening are not compressed into four weeks, and report progress to your board with the rigour you apply to finance.
- Review promotion, pay and performance processes annually for disparate outcomes, and act on what you find.
- Resource your network or employee resource group properly – with budget, sponsorship and time – rather than relying on goodwill and unpaid lunches or evenings.
- Never assume Black colleagues wish to lead this work; invite rather than expect and recognise or reward those who contribute.
- Keep October celebrations but connect it to commitments: pair every event with a measurable action and report back on it in the Spring.
A final thought
Meaningful inclusion is not a campaign. It is a set of habits. It looks less like a themed lunch and more like a manager who develops everyone in their team, a promotion process people trust, and leaders who ask uncomfortable questions in March as readily as in October.