Viewpoint: How we celebrate ‘Black Future Month'
It's important to look to the future as well as acknowledging Black history, says Taks Ndewere. Here's what Compass Group is doing this October to support and progress the Black people in its business
The Compass Within Network aims to promote cultural diversity in our work environment and inspires others to do the same. The community is made up of employees from a range of backgrounds and is representative of different areas of our business, at all levels from frontline to head office. It's a privilege to be part of the Within network, helping everyone thrive and feel a sense of belonging, as well as raise awareness and appreciation of different cultures.
During October we will be marking Black History Month with our own re-imagined Compass ‘Black Future Month'. This is part of our wider equality, diversity and inclusion plan and calendar of events, but throughout the whole of October we will have activities going on around our business that celebrate and support the initiative.
The name perfectly depicts my own view on the importance of looking forward. While we have to acknowledge our history and embrace the lessons and challenges, the focus is to use this initiative to create a platform to shape our future and enable tangible progression of talent and awareness of an evolving community.
We recently announced Our Social Promise – a commitment to provide support to one million people by 2030 through jobs, training, community engagement and development. Part of this has been setting new targets to improve diversity across the company with commitments around gender, ethnicity (with specific targets on Black representation) and the industry's first socio-economic representation targets.
This is a huge step forward and the only way it can be achieved is by building on the interventions needed. Over the coming years we will gain a clearer understanding of the strategy's impact, report on progress and be constructive if we fall short.
Our industry is uniquely placed to support the equality agenda – for many roles you need little or no experience or qualifications to enter. It is a sector that can gain so much from cultural diversity and we can train people on the job. Acknowledging culture and ethnicity is important, because sometimes the pathway to a career goal might be different for different people. To me, there is no doubt that diverse candidates provide unique perspectives that ensure the business strategy and culture is inclusive to all, while also improving staff satisfaction and retention.
My career started in sales at another company and I was fortunate to have a Sri Lankan line manager, who had been through various challenges to reach executive level. This gave me a sense of support from a mentor to navigate a new corporate career and offer a different perspective. From this, a key learning I can share, to the success of promoting Black talent, is via encouraging mentorship. We need to have more champions to support our community's progression and create role models to aspire to.
It's time to catapult this agenda into the future by acknowledging the issues that exist, admitting no one has all the answers and working together to learn and create change, as well as celebrate successes.
Taks Ndewere is business development manager, internal mentor and co-chair of the Within Network at Compass Group UK & Ireland
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