Embracing greater social justice and diversity in the workplace

“I started volunteering nearly ten years ago when I retired as a lawyer, for an organisation which provides a support and befriending service to isolated elderly people.  So for the past seven years, I’ve been going once a week to see my friend who is 89-years-old and lives in a wardened social housing flat. I help him get out from time-to-time, help him with a lot of tasks, like shopping and his interactions with the social services and so forth. Through this work, as well as supporting local organisations, like HomeStart and youth clubs, it’s been clear to me that small efforts and small donations at a personal level can make a big difference. 

When I became Chair of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), our office was in Canary Wharf. But shortly after I joined we moved to a new office in Stratford. So the organisation has been in two East End London boroughs, very different, but both of them having high levels of deprivation alongside very affluent businesses, particularly in the Canary Wharf area. 

One of my duties as Chair of the FCA was getting out and about and meeting people across the UK’s nations and regions to hear about the challenges they were facing and how they were addressing them. I had some very inspiring encounters with organisations across the East End of London, including schools, Citizens Advice Bureaus and other voluntary organisations helping a wide range of people, from single mums who had no recourse to public funds to groups of children with special needs accessing support at the end of the school day. 

I was incredibly impressed by the difference that quite small organisations can make with limited means. Engaging with a wide range of people in society has benefited me as much as or possibly more than the people that I’ve come into contact with. I think it’s been one of the great privileges of my time as Chair of the FCA to have had those opportunities.  

As a practising lawyer in a City law firm, working very long hours, I was quite disconnected from the communities around London that I’m speaking about.  When I started work in the City of London over 40 years ago, it was a very insular place. It was not a diverse culture at all. People were very inwardly-focused on the interests in the financial sector. Now, the rhetoric has changed beyond recognition, with nearly every organisation expressing a commitment to community involvement and diversity. The aspirations of young people joining banks and insurance companies and big financial sector organisations are to be connected to big social issues and to try and play their part. 

Now that doesn’t, of course, mean that all of that rhetoric has been turned into action. But I think there are far more organisations looking for opportunities to connect to their local communities and support them than was the case 40 years ago. There is still a gap in opportunity, but there are more possibilities to close it. 

For instance, on the introduction of Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow,  I got involved with an organisation called One Million Mentors, which provides mentoring to school leavers and young graduates. The East End has some of the most exceptional schools in the country and the level of academic attainment is extraordinary, but this does not turn into the level of skilled employment that you might expect. During the COVID lockdown period I was able to help my mentee through his initial applications for jobs. And then when he got a job, through the next step to a better job.  Now that I have left the FCA I am looking to do some more mentoring. 

I think sometimes it’s the case that young people don’t necessarily have the family expectation that they can do well because their parents have seen challenges that couldn’t be overcome and sometimes have low expectations of their own children’s ability to progress. That’s one issue. So I think trying, in the educational setting, to engage parents as well as students is really important so that parents understand the value of students going on to further education, gaining further qualifications, and reaching for the best job opportunities.   

I think when people get into the workplace, having mentoring schemes or reverse mentoring schemes can be incredibly valuable so that leaders of organisations come to understand better the challenges that people perceive in progressing within an organisation. Sometimes they have a sense of exclusion or a sense of inequality, as a result of behaviours or structures that can give a perception that opportunity is not equally available to all. I think a good working environment that shares out opportunities fairly and without preconceptions about people’s abilities is very, very difficult to achieve. We wake up every morning, all of us, with a head full of all sorts of biases we don’t know we have. So it’s a constant effort. I think continued training and investment in people is absolutely essential. 

And, it can be done. There are increasing examples of people who’ve made enormous progress. And there’s no turning back from a movement towards greater social justice and greater diversity in the workplace. Firms that have labour and skills shortages are really looking to employ a diverse workforce. This is a huge opportunity. 

To me, the multi-generational effect of helping somebody get a better job is incredibly inspiring. My grandmother was born into extreme poverty in Yorkshire and ended up as a bank teller. My father left school at 14 and started work as a runner for an on-track bookmaker.  I had better chances as a result of the progress they made and my own children will have better chances too. So that multi-generational impact of getting people into higher quality work doesn’t just help them. It helps their children and it helps their children’s children.”