Race Inclusion Reports - Report 3

Ensuring equality of career progression opportunities

Holmes J, Brown D |   | CIPD | Mar 2021

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The Race Inclusion reports, which are informed by CIPD research (conducted between 29 November 2019 and 10 January 2020), discuss the ways in which employers and the HR community can act to eliminate racism in the workplace. Employers are in a strong position to make an impact, through actions such as reducing discrimination, training line managers, establishing employee network groups, and building trust with people from all ethnic minority backgrounds.

The series looks at three key areas that employers need to consider in order to make progress towards improving race inclusion and equality in the workplace:

  • talking about race at work
  • ethnicity disclosure and reporting
  • career progression inequalities

This third report in the series, addresses career progression inequities related to race, identifying factors in the workplace that are enablers or barriers to progression. The report discusses a key finding of our survey, that 22% of the BAME group respondents said that their career progression has failed to meet their expectations because they have experienced discrimination compared with 15% of the white British ethnicity respondents. This suggests that employers need to act to reduce risks of discrimination in their career management processes and to build trust in these processes among employees of all ethnic groups.