BBC to set working class employee target
THE BBC is to set targets for the proportion of working class employees it has, following accusations that the broadcaster lacks diversity of thought.
As part of this year’s workplace census, staff have been asked to declare whether they attended private school, if they were eligible for free school meals, and what their parents did for a living.
The results will be used to set a “meaningful target” to take on more working class people – the first time that socio-economic quotas have been set.
The BBC’S critics accuse it of drawing staff from too narrow a pool, creating an organisation with a mindset that fails to reflect the views of millions of voters.
One working class radio presenter who arrived at the BBC after doing jobs in “the real world” told management the corporation seemed “like a gated community for the privileged”. The class target is part of new measures in the BBC’S new Diversity and Inclusion plan.
In another first, the BBC will begin counting the number of non-binary people it employs. And it will arm staff with an “inclusion toolkit” of resources “to tackle non-inclusive behaviours”. They will be taught “how to embed inclusivity into our day-to-day work and management practices, including a framework for anti-racism”.
At least 95 per cent of staff will have completed mandatory unconscious bias training by January 2022, the BBC said.
It is part of its aim to be “the industry gold standard for workplace diversity and inclusion”. Tim Davie, the directorgeneral, has stated that within five years the BBC workforce must be 50 per cent women, at least 20 per cent BAME and at least 12 per cent disabled employees.
The targets will be announced in July, once all data have been collected.
Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, told the BBC last year that it needed to broaden its outlook. He said: “I don’t just mean getting authentic and diverse voices on and off screen, although this is important, but making sure there is genuine diversity of thought and experience.” Mr Davie has said the BBC is to employ fewer people with private school education and Oxbridge degrees.
The BBC has attempted to measure socio-economic background before but only 58 per cent of staff chose to respond. “Through our 2021 census we want to boost declarations to 80 per cent and use that data to set a meaningful target,” the corporation said.
Figures in the BBC’S latest annual report showed that of those who responded, 61 per cent were from a family where the main breadwinner was a professional or senior manager, compared with just 26 per cent with the
‘You’ll rarely hear or see anyone like me on BBC TV or network radio. This has to change’
highest-earning parent in a routine or manual job. Questions about background in the new survey were devised by the Social Mobility Commission.
The BBC has not outlined precisely how it will use the data but plans to “radically overhaul” recruitment practices and expand an outreach programme to attract candidates from communities that are under-represented in the BBC’S workforce.
The Diversity and Inclusion plan features the thoughts of Mike Sweeney, a veteran DJ on BBC Radio Manchester.
“I’m from an impoverished, northern, working-class, Irish Catholic background,” said the former singer of the punk band the Salford Jets. “I left school in 1962 with no qualifications and worked in the ‘real world’ as an engineering fitter, coal miner, docker and van driver.”
He spent 33 years in commercial radio before joining the BBC seven years ago. “In the commercial radio world, my background was a huge positive. But I feel that the BBC can seem like a gated community for the privileged.
“I firmly believe that at this time you’ll rarely hear or see anyone like me on BBC TV or network radio. This has to change,” he added. Elsewhere in the plan, the BBC said that it would increase the number of apprenticeship places in an effort to hire people from more diverse communities.
It will also expand the pool of senior leaders from diverse backgrounds.
The corporation has been criticised recently for removing Kamal Ahmed, the only BAME executive on its news board, in a purge earlier this month.
The BBC missed its gender and BAME targets for senior leaders last year. It hit the disability target and exceeded the LGBT target. Overall, 8.9 per cent of BBC staff have declared on the census that they are LGBT, against a national figure of 4.6 per cent.