Council to use ‘Rooney rule’ to fix lack of diversity at top
Chief exec reveals radical plan to increase number of BAME candidates
ASO-CALLED ‘Rooney rule’ to positively discriminate in favour of job applicants from black and Asian backgrounds, is to be introduced by Birmingham City Council.
The move, designed to address the council’s historic failure to reflect the diversity of the city when recruiting, particularly to top jobs, would be a first step, said new chief executive Chris Naylor.
“We don’t need another review, we know we have a problem,” said Mr Naylor. “We have had people working in good faith on this, but it’s obviously not working.
“We have tried balanced interview panels, blind-name recruitment, bias training – all are important but they are not sufficient.
“So we are actively exploring a ‘Rooney rule’ arrangement in the city council.”
The ‘Rooney Rule’ is a term derived from the American National Football League that requires teams to interview ethnic minority candidates for senior football jobs. It was named after Dan Rooney, a former team owner.
The council move will guarantee ethnic minority representation on job shortlists after a recent probe shone a light on the lack of diversity in the city’s corridors of power.
Mr Naylor added: “People may flinch at that, and say I’m not sure we should be undertaking positive discrimination. In response I’d say this, just look at FTSE 100 companies. There are more FTSE chief executives called Steve than there are women or people of colour.
“If any positive discrimination is going on, it’s in favour of blokes called Steve. We need to work out how Steve always gets the job, and not women and not people of colour. We then need to address those questions inside the council.”
He added: “We will get it wrong, absolutely, and we will get it right, but throughout that process we will have an open dialogue and be as transparent as possible about how those numbers are shifting.”
Mr Naylor, freshly arrived on a oneyear secondment to the city while the hunt for a permanent chief executive goes on, has pledged to work with activists and city organisations on the issue.
All 12 of the top jobs at the council are held by white people, and the next tier of leadership is similarly dominated by white officers.
In all positions, around a quarter of employees are of black, Asian or other minority ethnic origin, while more than 40 per cent of the population is from a black or ethnic background.
Equality advocates have said they are “sick and tired” of hearing the same promises of action, without appearing to see much change.
It is a point not lost on Mr Naylor. He said: “A lot of this rests on whether people believe us this time.
“I’m not going to win trust by sending out a memo from another middle aged white man at the top of an organisation – though it’s important to do that, I need to convince people that this time it’s worth them investing their personal energy and hopes in all of this. I am meeting people who are cautiously optimistic, people who are very optimistic and running towards me at 1,000 miles an hour, and others who are really angry.
“I am not trying to dress this up.
“The Covid pandemic, alongside Black Lives Matter, not dissimilar to the ‘Me Too’ movement, has revealed issues that have been hidden in plain sight for too long.”
He has pledged to continue to listen to employees about their ‘lived experiences’ for as long as it takes.
But he also illustrated his perception that the cohort of people now filling many of the top roles in the city and nationally “who have the right sort of heft and experience to be chief executives” were educated in 1980s and 1990s.
“To some extent what we see today is an echo of discrimination and lack of opportunity that many BAME people and women experienced 25 to 30 years ago.
“That’s not an excuse. To be an exemplar city we need to go hunting around the country for the best people. Equally I can see the profound frustration of people of, say, south Asian staff working for the council who’ve lived in the city all their lives, are passionate about it, hungry for change, who are not having the chance to get to the top of the organisation.
“There are probably two dozen future chief executives in the council right now.
“They might not believe it, they might not trust they can do that here, so my job is to show the art of the possible and that this organisation will be on their side.”