Scale of BT’s diversity and inclusion challenge laid bare

BT January 21 2020

The mountain that needs to be climbed to achieve a gender-balanced and ethnically representative workforce that truly reflects the different regions in which BT operates was brought to the fore at a special branch forum last week.

Organised to update branch reps on the efforts that are being made to address the issue by the company’s new Diversity and Inclusion team, the meeting began with a detailed presentation on the team’s work over the past six months.

Now meeting quarterly with the CWU’s own national team dealing with personnel issues with monthly conference calls in-between – demonstrating a shared determination to address a raft of equality issues that the CWU has done much to highlight in recent years – BT’s recently appointed Head of Group D&I started with an explanation of BT’s strategic priorities in the area.

In addition to striving towards a balanced workforce that truly reflects the communities BT serves – an aim which the company admits may take up to 10 years to realise – key targets include:

Creating an inclusive and innovative culture in which people feel respected and engaged – with the focus on diversity extending to the physical working environment to ensure that things like disability access issues are addressed from the outset and do not end up as after-thoughts.
The establishment of clearly understood and consistently applied policies that ensure everyone is included – including consistently applied flexible working policies and policies that recognise the challenges of an ageing workforce
Leveraging BT’s strengths to improve outcomes for disadvantaged groups in wider society
BT becoming recognised within wider industry as a leader and influencer on D&I issues through its success in tackling serious and complex D&I issues and the subsequent sharing of best practice .

A necessary first step, both the union and the company agree, is a massive improvement on the currently low level of diversity declaration rates – especially involving ethnicity, disability and sexuality – across all lines of business.

Amid a shared conviction that only robust diversity data will provide irrefutable pointers as to where interventions are required to boost inclusion, BT has already conducted a pilot to test the effectiveness of different messages to employees encouraging them to self-declare that information.

To the agreement of all those present at Thursday’s forum, CWU assistant secretary Dave Jukes stressed he believed the union could have a positive role to play in encouraging members to respond in far greater numbers than they did in the pilot.

“In large part it’s the robustness of this information that gives the union a very clear insight into the very glaring deficiencies in the recruitment of women and people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds in Openreach in particular,” Dave pointed out.

“Trust clearly needs to be built surrounding how the data BT collects is going to be held and the limitations as to who has access to it. Above everything, however, explanations are needed as to why that information is vital if the D&I agenda is to be progressed – and addressing the central issue of trust is going particularly important with regards to disability where self-reporting levels are particularly low.

Despite general agreement that the collection of accurate data is crucial, and that the CWU has a potentially pivotal role to play in explaining the reasons why to members, branch delegates present – at least half of whom were equality reps – didn’t mince their words about the scale of the D&! challenge that BT needs to address.

Particular concerns highlighted in a refreshingly frank two-way discussion with BT’s D&I team included:

The disproportionate vulnerability of employees with disabilities in not just the current redundancy and site rationalisation exercise in Enterprise, but also BT’s longer -term site consolidation strategy – made worse by the company’s increasingly prevent rejection of homeworking as an option for team member grades
The difficulty experienced by employees with disabilities in getting ‘reasonable adjustments’ made by the business
Different interpretations of ‘flexible working’ and ‘agile working’ in different lines of business, combined with a growing tendency for managers to expect any flexibility to come from the worker rather than the business
Inherently unpredictable working patterns exacerbating entrenched gender imbalances in parts of the business– notably in Openreach where contracts issued to engineers post-2013 require holders to give up to one hour’s ‘personal travel time’ (PTT) at each end of the working day, creating huge difficulties for those with child-care responsibilities
The difficulties faced by some BAME members in obtaining time off for religious celebrations – notably Eid and Diwali – in contrast to the established flex arrangements that exist for Christmas.

Focussing in on the issue of personal travel time (PTT) in Openreach – a contractual requirement that is currently being challenged in the CWU’s Our Hours campaign – Dave Kauffman of South East Central Branch said: “As far as I’m concerned, the elephant in the room is Workforce 2020 contracts – because people don’t have flexible working and field engineers have to give PTT, so if you’re looking to employ more women into field engineering the fact they do not know what time they will finish and go home impacts massively on childcare and other caring responsibilities , apart from everything else.

NEC members Tracey Fussey pointed out that, even in the call centre environment, where women were traditionally employed with attendance patterns they could work around, a decline the businesses’ flexibility and willingness to accommodate childcare and other issues was resulting in an increasingly male workforce.

Chair of the CWU’s BT personnel national team Tracy Buckley added: “If I was BT I’d want to know why only 22 per cent of its workforce across the country is made up of women.

“I’d also be interested in understanding why, even in call centres, which were traditionally majority female – 75 per cent women just five years ago – that figure is now down to 51 to 52%.”

Welcoming the unfettered exchange of views that was made possible by last Thursday’s event – as well as branches’ positive response to requests from headquarters to send their lead equality rep – Dave Jukes concludes: “It’s very encouraging to see BT’s new D&I team seriously seeking to address a whole range of issues over the proportionality of the workforce that the CWU has been highlighting for a long time now – and there’s no doubting the sincerity of the attempts that are being made to make inroads into some pretty intractable issues.

“At the end of the day, however, success will be measured in the extent to which fine words and great intentions translate into tangible change – and to achieve that there will need to be genuine buy-in by operational management at every level.

“Needless to say, the CWU will be watching closely to see how this progresses.”