The galvanising impact of the murder of George Floyd is being felt throughout society – and our industry is no exception.
Organisations are committing themselves to the work of anti-racism; broadcasters are pledging explicit targets for greater representation; funds are being ring-fenced for BAME-led Indies; and a pledge has been made that more editorial control will be put in the hands of people from under-represented groups.
Welcome as these announcements are, I can well understand if there’s a degree of wariness among our BAME colleagues. Over my 30 years in TV, I’ve witnessed countless initiatives, promises, and commitments from ‘On High’ – from Greg Dyke’s pledge to reform the ‘’hideously white’’ BBC, to the launch of the CDN – yet the stark reality is that things have only got worse. It’s hard not to feel some cynicism.
This, though, does feel like a historic, epoch-changing moment. My hope is that – with collective action, working together and consistently – change will finally come.
For our part, providing the tools and training to help diversify our industry has been at the heart of what we’ve tried to do with www.thetalentmanager.com.
Our USP from the outset was to professionalise how companies recruit, to shift them away from simply hiring their mates/ the ‘’usual suspects’’ by giving them the tools to take a more forward-thinking, strategic and creative approach to crewing up. We wanted to build a platform that was shared across the industry, was open for anyone to join, and was free to apply for jobs or be found.
A few years ago, we built functionality to enable companies to get detailed reporting about the diversity of the numerous ‘'talent lists’' they stored on the TM.
This way they could see which of their networks were underrepresented, and how – by race, religion, gender, disability, age or socio-economic background – so they could review their recruitment processes, and proactively address this.
We also built a ‘Diversity Search Engine’ and ''Unconscious Bias'' tools. (Read more here.)
We did all this behind the scenes – it was available and viewable to bona fide registered companies only.
Today we’re making it visible to freelancers, so you can get a better sense of what we’ve done, why we ask for your Personal Information, why we give those from BAME backgrounds or people with disabilities additional promotion, and so that you can help us bring pressure on companies to make full use of this suite of tools. Together we want to nullify those hoary old excuses like ‘’we couldn't find suitable people from a BAME background.’’ This is a time for action.