The Power Of Reverse Mentoring
The Reverse Mentoring Scheme for PRs was founded last year to help bring some much-needed diversity in the PR profession. As the second year starts, Christian Koch explains why the transformative power of reverse mentoring is so important to the future of the industry…
The Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020 were a wake-up call to the corporate world, illuminating entrenched racial divisions and forcing many leaders to look at the diversity of their teams and inclusivity of their cultures for the first time.
For those working in PR, it may have been an uncomfortable experience. As the CIPR’s State of the Profession report highlighted, something of a monoculture exists in the profession: 92% of PR professionals described themselves as white. Even more appallingly, ethnic diversity had actually declined in the industry, from 11% in 2015 to just 8% four years later. Meanwhile, horrifying anecdotes abounded from ethnically diverse PRs (many recounted in the CIPR’s landmark 2020 Race in PR report), who had faced discrimination against their accents or hairstyles.
Creating an inclusive culture is much more than increasing headcount or the number of ethnically diverse graduates.
The amount of new diversity and inclusion initiatives introduced by businesses has trebled since then, according to a recent survey by Multicultural Britain. While these schemes can do brilliant work of raising awareness, many fail to tackle the systemic problem of poor ethnically diverse representation in the higher echelons of PR firms.
“Creating an inclusive culture is much more than increasing headcount or the number of ethnically diverse graduates,” says Avril Lee, chair of CIPR’s Diversity and Inclusion Network. “Where are these people in the organisation? Are they decision-makers? It doesn’t give us the role models at the big firms or the decision-makers who’ll be shaping the industry… At the CIPR, we thought a reverse mentoring scheme is the best way to get senior leaders to take this on, rather than HR.”
The Reverse Mentoring Scheme for PRs was launched by the CIPR with the Taylor Bennett Foundation (which helps create job opportunities in PR for ethnically diverse candidates) in September last year. Over the next 10 months, 14 young PR professionals from ethnically diverse backgrounds mentored white senior leaders from companies such as Google, Cicero, National Grid and Cowshed, sharing their insight and experiences about being a minority working in the industry.
The mentors – all top-level PRs such as Frances Abebreseh (Netflix), Deepak Kumar (TfL) and Shanil Nayee (Harvard PR) – may not have decades of experience under their belt (mentors couldn’t have more than 10 years’ working in comms), but they could give their mentees invaluable suggestions about how to improve internal culture or foster greater diversity within their organisations. The scheme is also believed to be the first of its kind in the industry.
“The role of the scheme wasn’t for mentors to convince leaders that D&I is important, but to absorb what it means to be ethnically diverse and from a different socio-economic background and how they can create the right sort of change,” says Lee.
This change can involve placing their new workplace diversity policies and schemes under the microscope. “After the murder of George Floyd, we quite rightly saw a surge in initiatives,” says Lee. “But are these the right initiatives? Do they have the right tone? Will they deliver long-lasting change?”
The strong rapport forged on reverse mentoring schemes can also give bosses a ‘safe space’ to talk about uneasy issues, that they’d feel reticent to discuss in the office.
“As a senior leader, you probably have many questions you’d like to ask about race but can’t because such a sensitive area,” says Lee. “The scheme gave mentors and mentees the chance to be honest in conversations: no question is a bad question.”
Reverse mentoring schemes have a proven success in boosting career progression. Social impact organisation Moving Ahead – which runs the 30% Club’s cross-company mentoring scheme and pairs, say, junior staff from an SME with the head of a multinational – found 47% of mentees on the scheme had been promoted within three years.
Lee hopes the Reverse Mentoring Scheme for PRs will help stem the flood of ethnically diverse talent leaving the profession or going freelance after “realising they couldn’t get on in the industry – it’s been psychologically and emotionally hard work for them to fit in every day and feel part of the culture.”
Such schemes could help senior leaders grasp cultural sensitivities too. “To tackle the challenges of diversity, we need some personal understanding about the day-to-day realities [facing ethnically diverse employees],” says Lee. “For example, as a boss, you wouldn’t necessarily think about dedicating an area of the office as somewhere to pray if you didn’t come from that background.”
The feedback from the first cohort of the Reverse Mentoring Scheme for PRs has been overwhelmingly positive, with Lee noting “the mentors said they’ve learned so much”.
“We’ve got to give people the exciting, rewarding and progressive careers they deserve,” says Lee. “And it has to be senior leaders taking responsibility for this, because that’s the only way we can create inclusive cultures and more lasting change.”
New Reverse Mentoring scheme for PRs | Taylor Bennett Foundation
