Not for the first time the NHS stands accused. This time it’s the Royal College of midwives who have identified that black staff are disproportionately subjected to disciplinary action. Previously the Central Manchester University Foundation NHS Trust was found guilty of institutional racism with the award of £1m to a former manager. The trade union that represented the manager discovered that whilst 2% of the workforce were black they form 25% of those subject to disciplinary action. Why is the NHS disproportionately disciplining black staff?
This is not a situation unique to the NHS, trade unions representing staff across the public sector have expressed concern about the disproportionate number of disciplinary cases involving black staff. Is this to do with the nature of the jobs black staff do in the public sector, are mangers and HR staff quicker to resort to formal process when a black member of staff is involved or do managers find black staff harder to manage? Whatever the reason NHS Trusts and organisations across the public sector will insist it is not racism.
This comes 18 years after the Macpherson enquiry into discrimination in the police first gave us the term "institutional racism". It is clear that some organisations do not understand what institutional racism is or simply refuse to accept it exists.
This organisation is not racist they say. I am not racist nor are any of my colleagues they say. Just because black staff are more likely to be disciplined doesn’t mean it is because of racism. We don’t care what colour someone is we treat everyone the same. These are often the same organisations that resist collecting information on the ethnicity of their workforce not only who they employ and who they promote but who they discipline.
Institutional racism is not is not the deliberate discrimination based on a belief that black people are less intelligent ,less reliable, less ambitious or more aggressive but it is based on a view that they are different from us. Whilst such organisations claim it’s about appointing the best person for the job. What happens all too often is that they seek to appoint the right person, the one that will fit in, the one we feel most comfortable with, someone we could work with who shares our values, comes from a similar back ground, shares our sense of humour, interest in football, dresses like us, talks like us and is like us. Likewise when it comes to disciplinary processes there is a tendency to think people like us respond to a quiet word, people like us deserve a second chance, people like us learn from their mistakes. Whereas people who are different from us tend only to respond to clear boundaries and a formal response.
So what should an organisation do to guard against any tendency to discipline some staff more than others? First recognise that institutional racism exists, understand how it works, undertake ethnic monitoring because it hard to argue against the numbers, introduce a challenge into the process to ensure the informal process has been exhausted. Establish a consistent approach because it is just as damaging for some people to be seen as getting away with it as it is for others to be seen as being treat unduly harshly.
There have been changes over the last eighteen years However black people are still underrepresented in senior posts, a male black manager is still likely to be described as aggressive when the same behaviour from a colleague is called assertive, black staff are more likely to describe their manager as unsupportive and in many organisations black staff are disproportionately subject to disciplinary action.
Blair McPherson is author of An Elephant in the Room about implementing equality and diversity in a large public sector organisation published by Russell House www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
