Black All Year - The End of EDI

Inclusion with Humanity: Eradicating Workplace Bullying and Discrimination

Can adopting "inclusion with humanity" truly eradicate workplace bullying and discrimination? Join Steph Edusei as she welcomes back Ranjit Kirton, founder of Behaviour Garage Limited, who left a 28-year NHS career to pursue a mission of transforming public sector organisations. Ranjit shares her journey and innovative strategies aimed at promoting psychologically safe environments within institutions like the NHS and police services. She also reflects on the personal empowerment gained through choosing clients who align with her values and rejecting toxic interactions.

Is meritocracy being compromised for diversity targets in public sector recruitment? We delve into the systemic challenges, unconscious biases, and the importance of disrupting gender and racial stereotypes. Ranjit stresses the need to transform organisational mindsets and recruitment processes to cultivate genuinely inclusive workplaces that do not merely insert diverse candidates into unchanged environments.

What are the barriers faced by international recruits in the NHS, and how can organisations foster a sense of belonging? We discuss the cultural differences that hinder integration and the need for adaptable policies to accommodate diverse needs. The benefits of cultural celebrations and practical steps for creating an inclusive environment are also highlighted.

Explore how Ranjit Kirton addresses Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in public sector workplaces. Learn about psychological safety, behavioural safety, and strategies to eliminate bullying, harassment, racism, and discrimination. Discover the importance of cultivating cultural architecture for a more inclusive work environment. Don’t miss this enlightening discussion filled with actionable insights for creating inclusive workplaces.

Ranjit Kirton LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranjit-kirton-838793233/
Ranjit Kirton Twitter/X https://x.com/KirtonRanjit
The Behaviour Garage https://thebehaviourgarage.co.uk/

Steph Edusei LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/steph-edusei/
Steph Edusei Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stephedusei/

Original music by Wayne C McDonald, #ActorSlashDJ
www.facebook.com/waynecmcdonald
www.mixcloud.com/waynecmcdonald
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Chapters

• 0:09 Inclusion With Humanity and Behavior Culture
• 10:00 Challenges in Diverse Organizational Recruitment
• 18:54 Cultivating Cultural Architecture in Organizations
• 25:49 Building Supportive Business Relationships

Transcript

[Steph Edusei 0:08]

Hello and welcome to Black All Year. I'm Steph Edusei and today we're going to be talking about EDI, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and my guest is Ranjit Kirton of the Behaviour Garage Limited. Ranjit specialises in behaviour safety, eliminating bullying, harassment and racism and discrimination from the workplace and is on a mission to eradicate all forms of psychological harm by behaviour at work.

She's been educating public sector employees and has spent 28 years within the NHS, starting as a junior and rising to senior leadership. She's registered with the British Psychological Society and has an MSc in Psychology specialising in workplace behaviours. 

Hi Ranjit, I can't believe it is over two years since we last sat talking to each other.

Welcome back to Black All Year. 

[Ranjit Kirton 1:04]

Thank you, thank you for having me back Steph. Yes, two years it has flew by.

[Steph Edusei 1:09]

And you were my first ever guest on Black All Year talking about inclusion with humanity. Talk to us a little bit about what's happened over the last 25, 26 months.

[Ranjit Kirton 1:19]

It was a pleasure to be one of your first guests and ironically Steph, you were one of the first people, as you know yourself, to help me make some certain decisions in life and you were the first person to invite me in to something like that under the umbrella of brand Behaviour. So, the Behaviour Garage Limited is what started at the time. We're going into year three, we're just starting year three in business.

The two focuses for me have been helping us understand harm by behaviour, bullying and harassment and helping us embed, I suppose just as importantly, inclusion with humanity. I suppose a spin on the equality, diversity and inclusion agenda. So, I've been rolling this programme out across health care providers and the police service over the last two years.

[Steph Edusei 2:03]

Yeah, and it's been lovely to see your journey and popping up on LinkedIn and you know seeing how much you've been out there and delivering your workshops and really I know you'll have been really making people think and giving voice to people as well which is really important. So, it's been fantastic for me to kind of sit and look at you and say wow, look at look at what you're doing and the impact that you're making. So, thank you for the work that you do, you look like you're thriving.

[Ranjit Kirton 2:30]

Oh, I feel good in life now. I think as you know I had a 30 year career in the NHS, 28 years, two years working self-employed but now when I look back at those 28 years for one reason or another, they weren't very enjoyable. If I look back I don't, I'm not filled with thriving memories of fabulous teams and people even though I did work with some fabulous teams and people.

I've worked with hundreds of awesome people but as I talk about a lot in my work now, you could work in a team of 30 good people but it'll just take that one person who's a racist, a discriminator, who's a bully or a bit toxic as a leader, that'll destroy your sanity. Your brain will focus on the one person that's causing you this harm and I think you, Steph, know more than anybody as my coach at the time, I was at rock bottom and really prepared to just, do you know what, I think unemployment would be better than feeling the way I felt towards the end. Two years later I truly now understand what psychological safety is and how much it can help humans thrive in what they're doing because I am now in a psychologically safe environment.

Most of my customers have been fabulous but if anybody is rude or abrupt I don't work with them now. I'm not willing to be harmed by people now.

[Steph Edusei 3:56]

And actually, being self-employed and having the strength to go not willing to work with you is such a great place to be because so often I think people who are self-employed feel they have to take everything that's offered to them. So for you to be able to say no, and quite rightly too because if not you'd be a bit of a hypocrite wouldn't you, if you were putting yourself in that kind of damaging position when you're trying to support people to create a much better working environment and I think that's brilliant.

[Ranjit Kirton 4:30]

I was just going to touch on, I think you're right, as self-employed you have to take the work you've got because it's a very uncertain world and you could have a busy few months and then a few months and I think the reason I reject that type of tone or toxicity now is because it's almost like a PTSD. I've been there I'm not going to be harmed by it anymore but also about being complicit to things. When I was in the NHS if I wasn't, as we talked about, if you weren't active and helping and supporting and trying to put people's problems right which often in that bureaucracy you can't, I felt complicit in that harm whereas now I feel like I'm in a step forward to help reduce bullying, harassment, racism and discrimination and raising that awareness with people has been profound so it's worth the uncertainty and the insecurities that self-employment bring because I think the positives do outweigh it.

[Steph Edusei 5:22]

When we've had that first session you talked about inclusion with humanity, is that kind of still your message to people, or how has that changed over the last couple of years?

[Ranjit Kirton 5:33]

When I delivered it virtually with your Black All Year event, I would say it was very in its early raw days the message I was trying to package together. The purpose of inclusion with humanity and cultivating cultural architecture is my way of introducing public sector organisations and particularly who I work with, Police, Fire and Ambulance and the NHS, is to say is it about time now that we moved away from the EDI title, not the work that goes behind it because we need that, we know that, but the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion title that I know of, 30 years and counting I've heard that. 30 years and counting I've seen on job application forms that will say what I think to 21st century Britain is patronising, we welcome you if you are from our underrepresented groups, if you are BAME or if you have a disability. To me 30 years later there's nobody in the NHS that's thought about rewording that and clearly, it's not working if 30 years later we're still the underrepresented group. There's also an element I think and it's evident from people who I've chatted to, from research that I've looked at, that there is an element of EDI fatigue, people now will roll their eyes, avoid the subject, won't attend the training and you get a bit of a lull as soon as you mention it and if we are getting a lull and we're getting rolling eyes and poor attendance on anything titled Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, well science would tell us that we're not going to solve the problem. 

[7:08] So the new revised Cultivating Cultural Architecture is about exactly that, cultivating architecture in your organisation. We talk a lot about culture, culture, bad cultures, toxic cultures, often we don't talk about who are the culture creators, which are everybody that works in your organisation, they are the culture creators, they are the architects of that, what is their behaviour doing that is cultivating the culture in your organisation.

The session looks very much about humanity, including people on the basis of humanity, so if you are human and harmless I'll welcome you into my teams, my lunch breaks, everything we design and deliver, we'll work together and I'll learn about you, I'll learn about your gender, your culture, your food, your religion, what is it, we'll learn and we'll engage as part of humanity. Because the EDI agenda that's been going on for 30 years, I believe if that isn't radically reformed at the top of some of these public sector organisations, it'll still be the same drabby title that we'll have 30 years later, sitting as an umbrella of a very serious and costly problem.

[Steph Edusei 8:17]

Yeah, do you think as well, I mean it's that, it's the title but it's the, it's not just the same title, it's the same actions, so as a woman I am sick of having, oh well we don't have enough female leaders here, let's look at flexible working, let's look at, let's look at childcare, let's look at all of these, and I sit now and I go, actually you're just putting a woman in a box to say because she's a woman, she needs to think about childcare, or she needs to think about caring for elderly relatives.

You're not saying what does each individual person need to help them to thrive. It's always frustrated me because as a Black person, there are certain preconceptions about what I will do, how I will sound, how I will look, what I will watch, what I will listen to, because that's what you do. So then when you're saying, well we need to make things more welcoming to Black people, we want to attract more Black people to the organisation, they either do nothing and just put a useless statement on an advert, or they go down those stereotype roles instead of going, you know what Steph, we'd like more people that are like you, and that's not just about your ethnicity, that's about who you are as a person, and what can we learn about you that will mean we can attract more people in. And that's really at the heart of it, isn't it?

It's about understanding those people and engaging with them and making them feel comfortable to be as much of themselves as they want to be at work.

[Ranjit Kirton 9:59]

And you're right, and the worry I have with this is, you see it a lot where I think we don't employ or recruit people, and again just focusing on public sector organisations, we don't often employ on merit. Sometimes the bigger arms-length bodies organisations will give us targets to achieve and they'll say by the end of the year we need to see better diversity on your board of directors for example, and then that becomes the focus of right, we now need to employ somebody who ticks this box. And often we miss out on targeting people with the right skills, the right intelligence, the right background, no matter where they're from, what colour skin they've got, whatever religion they follow, or however they look, or whatever gender they are, it shouldn't be a problem, we should have the ability now to recruit on merit.

But I think, and I do this, I do a little quirky thing with the audience, and it's worked really well, which is about cognitive biases. We hear a lot in recruitment, oh well when you go through the recruitment process, we don't know if you're male, female, black, white, LGBT, or straight, or whatever it might be, we don't know that because the applications are anonymous. But neuroscience tells us that if we've got a cognitive prototype that says a CEO for the NHS should be a white, male, straight, and I turn up for the interview, it doesn't matter whether they knew my name before I got there or not.

So, it's a lot about understanding the sciences of the unconscious and helping our teams and leaders that I work with disrupting that unconscious mind. Because I do the test with pilots actually, I ask the audience to visualise a pilot, and then I show a picture of a stereotypical pilot, and 90% of the audience will say yeah that's what I visualised. And the worry there is, if they were recruiting for a pilot, and I turn up, or you turn up Steph, we're not going to get the job.

It doesn't matter how much we incognito application forms, and I think it's this radical new science of thinking and cognition that needs to be applied to this problem. Otherwise we will keep discriminating against people, because if it's not a target, you'll find people will recruit people who look like themselves, or like you say, they'll stereotype you thinking you'll do a particular job because you might want to be a mother, or you might be a child bearing age, and it's so discriminative. And I loved what you said on LinkedIn the other day, somebody was talking about bereavement, and you'd mentioned on LinkedIn that bereavement isn't just, bereavement in the workplace isn't just about what the mother needs, it's about what the siblings need, what does the father of that child need.

But often we've got stereotyped typical programming, and I do think again, and I talk about this on my training session, it's tribal mindsets. If we all, every one of us, whichever culture you're background you're from, you'll have a fixed tribal mindset, and it's applying neuroplasticity to rewire that tribal thinking to 21st century diverse Britain, just like we have with mobile phones, just like we have with the World Wide Web.

[Steph Edusei 12:54]

Yeah, and I think it's interesting what you said there about, you know, you're right, people get, oh, well, you need to diversify your board or your team or whatever, and people then go out and they, they recruit for people, and I've kind of been in that situation. Now, I think what you tend then to find is you, you do quite often get people who should have been given an opportunity, but that didn't get that opportunity, because there was the, well, we've gone out to lots of people, and we've said that we welcome applications from, but then somebody walks through the door, and they look exactly like you think that a board member should look, and they get the job over the person that doesn't, so all of that. But what then happens is that there's a kind of, instead of thinking we want to make this organisation or this board more attractive to people who come from different backgrounds, they go, let's just go and bring a person from a different background and put them in this toxic pot, because we're not going to do anything, because actually we're okay, there's nothing wrong with the way we are.

[Ranjit Kirton 13:53]

Yeah.

[Steph Edusei 13:53]

And then you get one or two people put into that environment when actually that is not a good environment for them to be, but they've been honoured with the right to be in that environment, and it's just a recipe for disaster, really.

[Ranjit Kirton 14:10]

Well, I think there's, if we carry on with the model that we've got of writing those patronising lines that we've heard for 30 years, a lot of our most talented diverse colleagues won't apply. It's the same drill, they've been there, they've seen it, so we lose a lot of talent if we don't radically reform that wording. But then there's, so a lot of very intelligent Black, brown people, people from all over the world won't apply, because it's the same dross that we've heard for 30 years.

But the other thing is, they'll say you need a more diverse team or board. I think that needs rephrasing to why is the team or board not diverse? Let's get to the problem of why first, because if we then, a team's looking for a say, I don't know, an assistant director, and I applied for that job, but they know that they need to get their numbers up because they haven't got any people of colour in that position.

With us having the right qualifications and quite a background, there's a chance if I did perform well, I might get that job. But if it was only on the basis of meritocracy and what I've got, brilliant, but if it's just to tick the box that NHS England or the arms-length body is, has said you need to achieve, that's not conscious inclusion. As soon as I enter that environment, I'll be attacked, almost like our immune system attacking a virus.

Without meaningful conscious inclusion, we will just throw people under the bus. And currently, we know the bill of bullying, harassment, racism and discrimination in the NHS particular, sits at £2.2 billion a year. We are doing something seriously wrong.

Cost of tribunals, turnover, sickness, all of the investigations. So, is it time now that we started rewiring tribal brains, getting to the reason of why this is a problem rather than forcing it down as a target? Because we will be thrown under the bus.

I've been thrown under that bus.

[Steph Edusei 15:58]

I think we both have in our time. And I think that that thing of, I love what you said there about instead of saying how can we get more diversity, that idea of why do we not have more diversity is really important, because it might be something as simple as, actually, you're working in an area that is not particularly well known to people from different cultures, or it's something so, one of the theories that we had in the ambulance service was that actually, it was seen as a pseudo, it was linked with the police, and actually that that might put people off, or that people were just seen as drivers. So, if you had an ambition to be something that was professional, you wouldn't go into the ambulance service because, well, they're just drivers.

If you want to be a driver, you become a taxi driver, because you'd make more money. And it was that kind of thing. Now, that may or may not have been correct.

But taking the time to understand why are we not more diverse? Why are people who are ethnically minoritised applying to work with us? And even more important, if they do come, why are they not staying?

That is, that's a really interesting way of looking at it. And it sounds sensible.

[Ranjit Kirton 17:16]

It does, I believe, from the work that I do, from the research that I've read from all of the res, des, the workforce race equality standard, disability equality standard data, all of the staff service that are publicly available, we seem to be going round in what seems to be a 30-year whirlwind of the same documents, the same wording, the same problem, the same sort of solutions. And it seems to be as though we're trapped in this whirlwind. The biggest reason I believe people are not staying, so once we've got the diverse workforce, we're welcoming them in, the lack of public sector action on perpetrators of bullying, harassment, racism and discrimination to any part of humanity.

I'm not just talking about us, me and you being victims of it, I'm talking about anybody who enters the system of public sector working, anybody that reports harmful behaviour, whatever that may be, should be taken with the highest amount of seriousness and priority. But sadly, what we see is, and I've seen it, I've witnessed it, I talked to thousands of people over the last two years of people who have said, I was surrounded by people who failed to do nothing. I was surrounded by leaders who failed to take action.

I reported it several times and nobody did nothing. But isn't it a sad state of affairs, Steph, that once it gets to tribunals, we're paying out millions of pounds as being just put in the bin because of racism, discrimination, bullying and harassment. Arguably, the most hostilest problem the NHS faces today is harmed by behaviour and it's destroying people.

So, we have international recruits coming from all over the world. And I was having this conversation yesterday with a trust that I was in, and I don't want to mention them because they're fabulous, the work they're doing is amazing. And they were saying, oh, we've recruited internationally, we've recruited all these people from this country, but they took them all at lunchbox and then the lunchbox was just not in their food, their culture.

So often when people come into this country, they're met by system biases and by that I mean, we'll recruit internationally into the NHS. I've seen it myself over the years and that's fabulous, the internationally educated intelligence coming to work with us. But then we'll have system biases like the food will always be fish and chips on a Friday.

I'm not saying we should get rid of that culture, of course we shouldn't, but should we bring in other food cultures to mix in with that? The holidays will be maximum of two weeks. You can have three if you're really allowed and you ask politely.

So, some of our international recruits can't go back home and visit their loved ones. We invite diverse populations into the NHS, but we've got a bereavement policy that is a one size fits all. And that bereavement policy, for example, will say your closest relatives are your mum, your dad, your siblings or your grandparents.

In many cultures, that's not the case. And you'll have a standard five day bereavement period for everybody. In many cultures, they have funerals within 24 hours or they'll have spiritual prayers that go on for weeks.

But we fail to accommodate or adjust systems. Therefore, we create biases. So, we create that, we hinder that sense of belonging.

And it's not that much work to do really to resolve this. Yeah, I hope that's making sense what I'm trying to get out there.

[Steph Edusei 20:29]

It does. Yeah. And I think it's that.

So, if we take things at Christmas, Christmas is a really good example. So, Christmas we do, we do all of that big build up to Christmas. And, you know, I always have this discussion with people that if you're Hindu, you still enjoy the celebration of Christmas, you don't go, Oh, that's not for me.

People still celebrate even though it's not their faith. But actually, somebody may be happy to work Christmas Day, because it's not their faith. But what they would expect to have is Diwali, for example.

And having that kind of conversation with somebody to say what are the key dates that you would say are your key dates when you want to be off for your faith, if you're faith based? And how can we make that happen? And how can we compromise on that?

But what we get is I think people suddenly become quite polarized. So, it's the well, people get Christmas Day off. If you're not in a clinical environment, or 24 seven, you get Christmas Day off, you get boxing day off.

Because you have those days off, you can't have Eid off. Yeah, well, you've had you've had your religious days, even though they're not my religious days. So, because I know that's coming, I then get myself all wound up about Ramadan and Eid and how I'm going to ask for that time off, when I should just be able to say, you know what, I know I'm office based.

But I'd rather work Boxing Day, if you don't mind, I'll do some work on Boxing Day. And then I'll bank that bank holiday. And I'll take it off for Eid.

Is that all right with you? And we should be able to have those conversations. It is that what's important to you.

[22:04] At the hospice, I talk about the fact that with patients, we say what's important to you? Who do you love? What do you believe?

What food do you like? What what music? Yeah, what TV?

What do you like to do? And then because it's important to the patient, it becomes important to us. And we we do our best to meet that need.

And that we should do that for all of our colleagues as well. If we take that kind of view of what's important to you, it's important to you, it's important to me, and we'll find a way to make it happen. To me, if everybody did that, the world would be a wonderful place.

[Ranjit Kirton 22:37]

Yeah, it would. And I am quite proud to say, I went into one trust in the middle and some of the work this organisation was doing was absolutely incredible. They were really going all out to look at who do we invite into our country internationally?

And how do we meet their needs? And what I say, so if there was anybody listening to this, you have the power to do something. What I would say is, if we look at it as a project management approach, so you've got somebody managing this project, and the project is, we're going to cultivate cultural architecture across the organisation.

And it can be done quite quickly with a project group, comms, catering, all the key players in a board of director for approval of things, just the key players, organisational development, the apprenticeship service, clinical leads, matrons, get a few people together who can make a difference, definitely comms, catering, the key areas. And then work together on having a list of the countries you've invited to your organisation, and what does the organisation do to adapt that? So, what is catering going to do for the menus?

What is comms going to do for having their agenda and dates? And I do see this happening now. Also, perhaps having cultural dress days.

We do it a lot now, don't we? We have LGBT celebration days, and we have cultural days, which is the way forward, isn't it? People say, oh, we shouldn't be doing this, we're here to work.

Well, yeah, like you just said, Steph, Christmas is a big thing. I don't celebrate Christmas as a culture, I never have, but I do love the celebrations. I still wear a Christmas jumper, I'll put a tree up.

But if I was to want two weeks off for, say, Diwali, as you mentioned, it would be a bit like, it's not a big deal, but actually Diwali for us is a festival of light, it's a festival of new beginnings, it's a time where we harvest our metaphorical crops and reseed the future. It's quite a big time for Sikhs, you know, it's a huge thing. But yeah, I think there's not much work, I don't think the project to resolve this problem is as big as all of these documents and paperwork and surveys is pushing forward to us.

[24:38] I think the solution is quite simple, I think, and the solution lies with the architects of your culture, which is everybody who works in the organisation. And I talk about this a lot, just like we do health and safety, we do have to start considering what other cultures do people have, what do they need? We can't just bring them here and say, right, I don't care where in the world you've come from, this is a white, straight, able-bodied environment, and you have to fit into that, because that has been a practice that has gone on for many, many, many decades, that if you are white, straight, able-bodied, you will fit into this environment.

If you are anything out of that remit, then oh my God, you're a problem, we need to put in all of it. No, I think diversity among humanity is business as usual now in 2024. It's not going to change in our lifetime, let's rethink the whole agenda, let's put the whole wording and gumushal that hasn't worked in the past in the bin, and let's start looking at this very serious problem with new neuroscience, behavioural science, new terminology, and disrupt unconscious bias, or conscious in many cases.

[Steph Edusei 25:48]

Fantastic, Ranjit, I think that's just a great, great place to finish. So, thank you so much again for being a guest. I'm going to just continue to watch you growing and thriving and smile to myself every time I see your post, and we'll have to catch up and have a cuppa at some point.

[Ranjit Kirton 26:04]

Thank you, we will, Steph, and likewise, I love everything you do, and we do support each other in business. It's been an absolute privilege doing this, so thank you for having me back. 

[Steph Edusei 26:13]

Take care.

[Steph Edusei 26:14]

I hope you've enjoyed that episode of Black All Year. It would be great if you could subscribe and review, because not only will it make sure that you get the content, but it will help other people to find it too. Take care.