Ethnic Diversity and Inclusion in Insight

We wanted to find out what was going on behind those numbers, so conducted twenty depths with people of colour across the industry – within Basis and at other agencies, at varying levels of seniority, across consumer and social research. We recruited participants via snowballing and via LinkedIn, with posts on our profile and on CORe’s. Naively, we hoped that these conversations would reveal ‘action points’, things that we could immediately put into practice to make Basis more inclusive.

What really happened, was that over the course of these twenty interviews, my mission became to give voice to the experiences of people of colour in insight. For me personally, the process of conducting these interviews has been emotional. On the one hand, it was validating to know I wasn’t alone in some of my own experiences as a POC; on the other hand, it was disheartening to be reminded of how normal it was for these things to happen.

It became clear to me that our industry as a whole needs to recognise that there is a problem in the first place: that all of the inequality and discrimination that occurs in wider society is very much present and insidious in our workplaces. That’s not to say that people of colour are suffering negative experiences every minute of every day: the people I spoke to enjoyed their work and had been successful in it. But it is fair to say that their experiences clearly show that our industry is far from truly inclusive.

Some of the people I spoke to had also had more explicit experiences of racism. At a work lunch, a woman of Arab heritage had to sit through a client talking about how Arabs in the Netherlands ‘don’t work and live off the state’, while her more senior, white, male co-workers stayed silent. In this instance, her colleagues’ silence was just as disheartening as the client’s racism. In another depth, a black researcher told me about having her hair touched at work: ‘It marks me out as different […] I’m actually worried when I have my hair done and I’m going into work, because I know what’s waiting for me – I’m not an animal in the zoo.’

Some had also experienced or witnessed being blocked from work opportunities, with a strong sense or actual knowledge that race had played a role. One researcher told me that she once started moderating a focus group with a mainstream UK audience, only to be pulled out and told that the client had requested her to be switched for another (white) moderator, as they were worried she ‘wouldn’t have the cultural insight’ to moderate. A few people at senior levels told me that they felt like they had to try harder to get POCs promoted, that concerns would be raised about their abilities that they didn’t encounter when advocating for the promotion of white co-workers.

Experiences like these and others, contribute to a sense of not belonging. But more widely, this feeling stems from the simple fact of being minority ethnic in a majority white environment. It starts from the moment you walk into an agency: ‘I felt horrible going in. No one looked like me.’ And it’s a feeling that doesn’t go away with time: ‘When we’re catching up on Monday morning about the weekend, it’s like different things are important in our lives – I feel like I’m watching them’; ‘I’ve felt like an outsider […] It’s like I’m less complete in a way.’

The sometimes ‘boozy’ culture of agencies presents a harder barrier to belonging for the Muslim researchers I spoke to. Since they don’t drink, they miss out on social opportunities to build relationships with colleagues, which in turn, affects work opportunities and progression. One person told me they had forced themselves to ‘perform that “fun party person”’ in the past, because they ‘felt like that was more valued than [their] work’.

The Muslim researchers I spoke to also talked about the difficulty of getting their faith taken into account more generally, of having to ask in the first place and sometimes, not being taken seriously when they did. For example, one researcher whose agency wouldn’t consistently provide a room for prayer, forcing her to spend her lunch break travelling to the nearest mosque and back; another researcher who had to break her fast in between moderating groups in Ramadan.

Against this sense of not belonging, POCs in this industry feel the need to adapt to fit in. Several researchers explained this to me through the frame of “worlds”: ‘I feel like it’s two worlds. You have to fit in to enter this world’; ‘When people come from the same place, it manifests in their way of being and talking – it’s a different world.’ Along the same lines, others told me, ‘It’s my job to blend in’, ‘I can’t be my whole self’, and ‘I’m always thinking, “How can I make myself more digestible for them?”’

The world that POCs have to adapt to fit into is specifically white middle-class. A lot of the time, POCs have had to adapt to this world before entering the insight industry: ‘I’ve always had to manage multiple worlds’; ‘You get acclimatised to that in higher education – I’ve normalised it. It’s just part of having a professional job.’ Several people also described times when they actually couldn’t enter that world, usually centred on lacking middle-class cultural capital: ‘It’s being out of step with the people around you. You don’t have the same frame of reference in food, the things we do...’; ‘My friend who’s also Asian went to a MR networking event and everyone was white and talking about skiing.’

Race and class also intersect with gender – several women I spoke to said that this is especially the case when it comes to negotiating salaries and pay rises. These women were often the first in their family to go to university and / or to work a white-collar job; they didn’t have anyone in their family to help them navigate negotiations and didn’t realise that they should be doing any different. On top of that, as women, they felt aggressive or pushy for even trying to raise these things. ‘I never felt empowered to ask for what I deserved. I just sat there and got frustrated’; ‘I’m just grateful I’ve been picked for the job.’

Many people talked about how these things in turn make them highly conscious of how they’re perceived in the workplace. The mental energy expended here, in ‘worrying’, ‘questioning’, ‘double-guessing’, ‘walking on eggshells’, can at times be considerable. Many of the examples I heard about were centred on two themes: firstly, being “good enough”. Of course, people of all backgrounds can worry about this, but researchers’ doubts here related specifically to being a POC – ‘I joined at the same time as a white male grad. I was nervous about fitting in anyway but also worried that we were being compared […] I thought they’d regret hiring me’; ‘Will my intellect be questioned? Will my work be scrutinised a bit more? Will I have to prove myself more?’ The second theme was around the possibility of being a token hire: ‘[When I got there and there were no POCs on my team,] I was reading into it like, “Was I a token hire?” I didn’t want people around me to think I got the job but didn’t deserve it.’

And when it comes to calling out negative experiences to do with race, the majority felt this was extremely difficult to do. They fear possible repercussions: ‘I don’t want to play the race card all the time – it doesn’t get you anywhere’; ‘Everyone’s really nice but it’s nice because I’m not raising anything. That would make my life difficult.’ They also fear being perceived negatively as a result: ‘I just bite my tongue. I don’t want to be seen as aggressive or negative.’ It’s especially difficult to call things out when you’re more junior: ‘I didn’t feel good to speak up, I didn’t want to be “that person”, especially because the others were senior. I didn’t want them to think I was being difficult or political.’

For several, these fears had been proven true in their experience, or in the experiences of other POCs in their agencies. One researcher told me that they were ‘labelled rude, obnoxious and a trouble maker’ for raising issues around diversity and inclusion; another told me that a woman in his agency who had done the same was ‘seen as banging a hammer. She was seen as quite radical and people would say things like, “You know what she’s like…”’; one woman I spoke to had raised the issue of a gender and ethnicity pay gap confidentially, only to then overhear someone outside of that conversation talking about it and saying that her raising it had been in ‘bad taste’.

These fears often extend beyond raising specific issues, to talking about race at all: ‘There’s a stigma around it, of being that loud BAME person. It feels like you’re putting yourself out there’; ‘I don’t want to be the angry black girl. […] It feels exposing to talk about my views and experience’; ‘’I’m scared of rocking the boat’; ‘I’m always tiptoeing around it.’ Again, several had had these fears realised: ‘Whenever we talk about putting more diverse agencies on the roster, it’s like the air gets sucked out of the room’; ‘You can see the discomfort when you talk about these issues. […] It’s much easier for them [white, especially senior colleagues] not to think about it – the work still gets done.’

Still, there were mixed feelings amongst the people I spoke to, as to whether they wanted to talk about race at work in the first place. While hopeful that change can happen, they feel pressure, as POCs in un-diverse workplaces, to take action; and at the same time, frustrated that this responsibility should fall to them almost by default. ‘I’m frustrated, like why does it have to be people of colour who push this [D&I] and make people remember we exist?’; ‘Why is it our responsibility to make white people more comfortable?’

As a result of these mixed emotions, some choose to opt out. ‘I’ve got to the point where I don’t say anything. I feel like the onus is on me to say things and represent ethnic minorities. […] I don’t want the pressure’; ‘I hope [the D&I initiative] would be transformative, but I’m also thinking it’s extra work on top of just the daily life of being a black person in this company’; ‘It’s not my job to educate people.’

For those who do choose to get involved in D&I initiatives, it’s a heavy responsibility, involving lots of mental and emotional effort and energy. ‘I could be doing other stuff like training and learning new skills or whatever. I don’t want to do this, it’s not fun, but I know no one else is going to’; ‘There was a turning point in my awareness that made me think about how we recruit. We need to bring that into the workplace, but you also don’t want to bring that racial trauma in. It’s nice to have a day off.’

In putting this piece together, I’d like to thank everyone who gave their time to speak with me and share the, sometimes very painful, experiences they’d had in the insight industry. I wish I could have built the sample to capture the specific experiences of different ethnicities: “BAME” is not one homogenous group. Still, as this report shows, there are commonalities in the experiences of people of colour in this industry, at least amongst this sample:

• The experience of microaggressions at work, and for some, explicit racism that resulted in loss of opportunities

• A sense of not belonging in their workplaces – especially for the Muslim researchers I spoke to, who are barred from participating in ‘boozy agency culture’

• Needing to adapt to the white middle-class world that insight and research represents

• Heightened consciousness of how they’re perceived, as people of colour specifically

• Fears about raising experiences of racism and talking about race at all – fears that had proven true for several

• Mixed feelings about participating in D&I initiatives: while hopeful that change can happen, there’s pressure to act and frustration that the onus is on “us”

• A feeling of heavy responsibility and serious devotion of time, energy and effort for those who do get involved

When it came to talking about how our industry and individual agencies can become more inclusive, there was a sense of resignation that some things can only change with more diversity. Usually: the feelings of not belonging, of needing to adapt to fit in, of consciousness around perceptions.

But beyond the need for more diversity in hires, three key recommendations emerged for enacting long-term cultural change to make agencies more inclusive – these are guiding principles for carrying out D&I initiatives:

1. Make it a priority

‘Don’t just “tick the box”. If it really matters, you need to put time and money behind it.’

Cultural change doesn’t happen without hard work. Make sure people have the time for it and that it doesn’t fall to the wayside – these are risks when project work can be demanding and the days long. And where needed, bring in resource and specialists from outside the company.

2. Involve everyone, not just people of colour

‘It needs to be a shared responsibility.’

Cultural change doesn’t happen if it’s just being advocated for by a minority. Everyone has a responsibility to understand the issues at hand and do their bit. For POCs, speaking about race can provoke fear and working on D&I can be an emotional burden, so support and allyship are incredibly important. By that same token, don’t assume that POCs automatically want to get involved with D&I.

3. Involve senior leadership in particular

‘If you don’t have senior support, you’re always going to feel like a thorn in their side.’

Cultural change doesn’t happen if it’s just being advocated for by juniors. Seniors set the tone of the agency; they’re the ones who can make D&I a priority and make sure everyone’s involved.

The first step in all of this is to acknowledge that there is an issue in the first place, that our industry is not always inclusive for people of colour. We hope that this piece can play even a small part in raising awareness and starting conversations, and encourage people to share it with others in their agencies, their clients and suppliers, and across the insight sector more widely.