Tackling racism in the workplace: a year on

It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago we were in Liverpool eagerly awaiting the launch of our Act Against Racism campaign at Congress.

It was the culmination of a huge effort from many members and College staff, to not only call out the ongoing issue of racism in mental health services but to provide organisations with a practical toolkit – our Tackling racism in the workplace guidance (TRIW) – to help them with the ‘how’. 

The evidence has been there for years, none of this is new. The most recent College survey found that 58% of doctors from minority ethnic backgrounds said they had faced racism at work, 29% of those said it affected their health and 41% said it had an impact on patients or carers.

How people feel and are treated in their workplace matters – for individual wellbeing but importantly for patient care. In the midst of a workforce crisis in the NHS, this is a key staff retention issue. Those values that we hold so dear, including respect, matter.

And it is a business imperative – not only will we see better clinical outcomes, but it is economically far better to have permanent staff that feel they are treated fairly, valued, supported, and want to stay.

We have been delighted to have 15 organisations sign up to our campaign so far and last week brought some of those organisations together at an online event to share learnings one year on.

The meeting was co-chaired by Dr Amrit Sachar and Dr Raj Mohan, the presidential leads for Equity and Equality at RCPsych and we had representation from across England – a mix of EDI and HR leads as well as clinical leads and medical directors – all of whom are on this journey with us. 

It was so encouraging to hear their progress and also to think about ongoing challenges organisations face in trying to make change. 

In her welcome to attendees, President Dr Lade Smith CBE said:

“Racism and discrimination is so ingrained into the way our society functions it often feels like it’s too big a task to tackle.

“But the work we have done over the last few years has shown things can change.  This is about incremental change, if we all start to do something, over time things will improve”.

Dr Shahid Latif, Medical Director and Chair of our RCPsych Trent Division, spoke about the early successes achieved by St Matthews Healthcare as a result of following our Tackling racism in the workplace guidance.

He highlighted the importance of having board support, champions from different units and backgrounds and being visible, which they have done through marketing materials including posters and badges, surveys, roadshows and corporate induction. You can hear more about this in the Breaking Barriers: Tackling racism in healthcare podcast. 

We also heard about the importance of visible leadership, taking a data-based approach, organisational development, staff networks, inclusive recruitment, and anti-racist supervision from Jas Kaur, Associate Director for EDI and Health Inequalities at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, who have prioritised tackling racism under their ‘Value me to reduce inequality’ approach. 

In a meeting attended by many of those who had signed up to adopt Tackling racism in the workplace actions, the participants asked questions and shared their insights and experiences on topics such as organisational inertia, allyship, racial literacy, SAS charter and PCREF. They also discussed the benefits of joining the campaign and how to align it with other initiatives. 

Our aim now is to keep the conversation going, share these learnings and continue to encourage more organisations to take up our TRIW actions for change across the UK.

You can find out more about the guidance and campaign on our Act Against Racism page.

We also have other guidance coming out later this year to support organisations to tackle disability discrimination in mental health services and look forward to sharing more information about this with you.