The chairman of Barratt Developments has said the housebuilder’s “white, middle aged [and] male” managers had probably never been questioned by a black woman before John Lewis boss Sharon White joined its board.
John Allan said talking to the chairman of the employee-owned retailer may have been a “life-changing” experience for many of the company’s middle managers.
“I thought, as I sat in on these meetings with her with half a dozen guys talking about the business: they’ve probably never been asked searching questions by a black woman before and this should be life changing for them to have this sort of experience,” he said.
John Lewis declined to comment.
Allan acknowledged that Barratt’s workforce was far less diverse than the employee base at Tesco, where he is also chairman. Allan said he was trying to increase boardroom diversity at Tesco as well.
“Barrett is 10 years probably behind Tesco in terms of this because construction has historically been a kind of, you know, white, middle aged, male activity,” he said on Thursday at an online seminar hosted by PR firm Edelman.
Earlier this week, Tesco appointed the Tate & Lyle executive Imran Nawaz as chief financial officer. Allan said it was the supermarket chain’s second non-white board member after hiring Melissa Bethnal as a non-executive director in 2018.
“I think different companies are at different stages, but we can all do something to kind of push our way along … This is not just the right thing to do, but it’s actually the best thing to do from a business perspective,” Allan said.
Allan, who is also vice-president of the Confederation of British Industry, said any company which claimed there were not enough black and minority ethnic candidates to fill leadership roles was either making “excuses” or “not trying very hard”.
“Frankly there is tonnes of diverse talent out there if you’re prepared to look for it, if you’re prepared to encourage it,” Allan added.
Firms have been reviving efforts to improve ethnic minority representation following the Black Lives Matter protests after the killing of George Floyd by a US police officer earlier this year.
Figures released in February by the Parker review – a government-backed report into ethnic diversity in boardrooms of stock market-listed companies – showed that people of colour held only 178, or 6.8%, of 2,625 director positions across the FTSE 350 index.
The CBI plans to launch a campaign to increase diversity at the top of UK business at the end of October. Signatories – which so far include Aviva, Deloitte and Microsoft’s UK business – will commit to publishing their ethnicity pay gaps and set actual targets for the ethnic diversity of their executive and senior management teams within 12 months of signing on.
