Royal Horticultural Society strives for greater diversity
NEW EXECUTIVE HOPES TO MAKE GARDENING MORE INCLUSIVE AND APPEALING TO MINORITIES
GLEN WILLIE has spoken to Eastern Eye about his mission to change how the Royal Horticultural Society is perceived as an exclusively white, middleclass organisation as its first “diversity, inclusion and wellbeing manager”.
The pandemic has, ironically, been good for the RHS whose membership has grown the fastest in its history over the past 18 months to stand at nearly 600,000.
According to the RHS (founded in 1804), the number of people who have taken up gardening now totals 30 million, an increase of three million over the course of the pandemic.
“So many people got into gardening, got into plants as a result of being stuck at home over lockdown and wanting some kind of outlet that is therapeutic and also connected with nature.”
Willie, who was recruited from the fire service, which he describes as an “alpha, male” world, was speaking to Eastern Eye in the scenic setting of RHS Wisley, in Surrey, the second most visited paid entry garden in the UK after the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Wisley’s origins go back to 1878.
Willie’s brief changed even before he started. He was meant to begin in April last year, but his start was delayed until August. “We had the George Floyd murder, so Black Lives Matter really elevated diversity inclusion. So, my remit changed before I even joined the organisation.”
Of the 600,000 members of the RHS, more than 90 per cent are thought to be white. And at the RHS, which has 1,030 staff, only “1.4 per cent” are non-white.
“What happened is my role shifted into external facing as well, and how we positioned the RHS in that diversity and inclusion space. It was from a perceived starting point of being incredibly elitist, incredibly middle class, incredibly white, posh, and inaccessible – we aren’t all of those things. But, sometimes, you have to battle perceptions.”
Willie’s first job was to take a look at the culture within the RHS. “I was very internally focused, how we educate our people talking about inclusive workplaces, how we celebrate different cultures or events, or how we support different events to make us a more inclusive organisation. The last thing I want is for our people to be using inappropriate or unwanted language in our workplace.”
This is the kind of exercise being undertaken by companies across Britain. But with the full support of the RHS’s senior management, Willie is trying to go much further by analysing the way new staff are recruited into the organisation. In some ways, he is trying to change the image of gardening.
“There are some people who say gardens are incredibly British or incredibly English. Actually, when you look back at the history of gardening, we’re using models of gardening that have come from Asia. Maybe, there are some Islamic themes. You just need to walk around Wisley and you will see 90 per cent of the plants or trees aren’t native to the UK. There’s a mindset to change around how we view the English garden or the British garden or the kitchen garden.”
On recruitment, some of the language in job advertisements is being changed.
Willie explained: “There’s quite a lot of science now behind using masculine or feminine language in adverts and how that can influence people. If you see words like ‘expert’ or ‘command’ that potentially can put women off joining an organisation.”
“Excellent speaker of English” might not always be necessary to emphasise in an organisation with a wide range of jobs.
“One area where we’ve probably fallen a little bit short is where we advertise our roles as well. So it’s building up relationships with recruitment agencies that specialise in advertising to inclusive organisations.
“We want to attract a more diverse group of people to work for us. It’s about showing the people already working at RHS the benefits of having more diverse people work for you, to be more inclusive. The benefits you get from different ways of thinking, of
different ideas or different experiences bring different conversations to the table.
“In our sustainability strategy we’ve given ourselves a target of being representative of UK society by 2030. What’s important for us is we do that in an authentic way. What we don’t want to see happening is managers feeling pressured to recruit people from different ethnicities or people from different genders or different sexual orientations because it’s a target. It’s got to still be the best person for the job. But what will really benefit the
RHS is being able to recruit from the widest pool of talent possible.”
Willie referred to unconscious bias. “I’m not saying this happens. Suppose you had two identical CVs in front of you. One of them is a British sounding name, and the other is an Asian sounding name. Unconscious bias might make hiring managers favour the white British sounding name over the Asian sounding name. We need to make our hiring managers aware of that.”
The RHS is supported by 1,500 volunteers in about 100 different roles. “We have about 1,000 of our volunteers working on gardens. We’re trying to change the demographic of the volunteers as well.”
It has also endeavoured to develop links with community groups. At Wisley, for example, it engaged with a Muslim group from Woking on the subject of food. Willie said: “Our communities team at Wisley has 78 different partnerships with community groups. We don’t need to go out and try and engage with more community groups. What we do need to do is enhance those partnerships that we
already have.”