Interview: making strategic and sustainable changes to support equality

We spoke with Skills for Care Board Member and leadership coach Munira Thobani about what it means to make sustainable changes to support equality.

Tell us more about your work with Skills for Care and across the sector

I’ve been a Board Member at Skills for Care since 2017 and chaired the Board’s first ever Race Equality Working Group from 2018-2022. During this time, I’ve sought to raise the importance of equality, equity, and inclusion in our work to support workforce development. My work also includes training and development of boards to provide leadership on equality and equity, especially, racial equality.

I joined the Skills for Care Board to work with my colleagues to spotlight the urgent need to address racism and race equality in the social care sector.

What does the Race Equality Week theme of #ActionNotWords mean to you?

It means stepping up and multiplying our resolve to actively tackle racism by all leaders across the social care sector. We need to empower staff to raise their voices and for this to lead to improvements in the experience of social care – both as a provider of care services and as a recipient of care services. We want to see greater representation of black, Asian, and ethnic minority leaders in the sector who are committed to raising the quality of care and the experience of care for all communities. Action not words means transparency and fairness in recruitment, development and progression, and more accountability for delivering this change in the sector.

What are some of the key issues around equality, diversity, and inclusion in social care right now that need to be addressed?

There are longstanding concerns about racism and lack of equality for black, Asian, and ethnic minority people including racism, bullying and harassment; lack of progression; under-representation of senior leaders, and a persistent failure to address systemic and structural issues. There is mounting evidence of disproportionality and racial disparity in all measures of workforce development, progression, and employee wellbeing. We know that to deliver quality care, it’s critical that staff are treated well, respected, and valued for what they do.

We should therefore all be concerned about addressing inequality and exclusion and seek to actively eliminate it from the sector.

There is progress and examples of good practice across the sector, but it's not systematic, and it's not widespread. There isn't a shortage of ethnic minority people working in the social care sector, and I don't think there ever has been, but there has been a gap in terms of leadership. The reality is that we do have a diverse workforce, but what we don't have is diversity that feels equally valued.

What are some of the solutions to supporting greater equality across social care?

I think to do this work well, you've got to engage everybody. There will be some people who benefit from the system now and may be resistant to change that will no longer benefit them; leaders need to say that if you work for organisations that care about equality, then you have to embrace it or you need to be working somewhere else. For far too long we have tolerated ambivalence, it’s time for ambition

I think that to have a real, sustainable change leaders need to put processes in place that create a dynamic for change. You need to present a very clear narrative that everybody understands about why equality in relation to race, disability, gender and so on matters to issues of workforce development and your organisation; you need to create a strong link between equality and the purpose of the organisation.

The next thing is to continue to develop your awareness about the barriers to equality, unconscious and conscious, and to make sure you're not perpetuating these barriers, or indeed creating new ones. So, you need to have a deep understanding of how discrimination and exclusion is manifested. We all need to have awareness of our own power, privilege, and complicity in order to lead with awareness, and consistently with our values of fairness and justice.

Then you have to think about your action plan, which is the difference you want to make and what you're going to be holding yourself to account for. Your organisational action plan should lead to changes in the structures, systems, and processes. It’s our current structures, systems and processes that give us the results we have, so sustainable change is only possible if our action plans and initiatives impact at this level. What we don't want is an action plan that monitors the workforce, for example, and just perpetually looks at how there is little or no change. Leaders and board members have to say, well, why isn't it changing? You need to look at your processes and ask yourselves - if we continue to use these processes, how likely is it that anything will change?

It’s also important to recognise that there is courage required in doing this, so how do you encourage people to be courageous. Well, you can do that in lots of ways by being courageous yourself as a leader and by rewarding people who are being courageous, not people who keep the system and structures as they are.

The other thing that I think is important for leaders to do is to connect to other people who want to see this change and who also have a deep understanding of the barriers and how to overcome them, such as ethnic minority workers groups, or disabled workers groups in the workplace and in communities.

What I think is important for people to realise is that to really address inequality, we need some real transformational changes at a structural and systems level, so any action that we take has got to impact on things that keep inequality in place and dismantle that to create more equality in the system itself.

But it does require leaders who are committed to making this change, who are confident in enabling and empowering diverse voices, and are prepared to challenge existing norms. To do that, you've got to open-up the organisation to having conversations about equity, fairness, justice, and quality of care, and that's what inclusive leadership in practice means. That's what it looks like and by doing these things you transform the organisation, you change its structures, you change its systems, and you strengthen the drive for something better for everybody.

Good leadership is about focusing on what's not working right and doing something about it rather than finessing it away and we need to be held accountable for it. So, the question then becomes who is going to hold us accountable? Well, we need to hold each other to account. In the absence of real accountability on these issues there's no pressure for change. If you want change to happen, you've got to create pressure and urgency for change, accountability can mean constant gentle pressure to be better.

Going back to #ActionNotWords, I think we need to see impact and measurable change – all our leaders in social care need to step up. This is a long term endeavour that requires all our efforts.

Munira Thobani has created the Thobani 6C Model to support leaders in managing equality and inclusion:

Find more resources to support with managing diversity and equality on our website.

Have a look at our #ManagingChange spotlight for more information and support on leading change.

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