Azmi took on the role of chief diversity adviser to the Cabinet eight months ago. He supports the government in its reform agenda for the civil service — aimed at making the civil service and the government more effective, efficient and diverse. Prior to his current role, Azmi was managing director of equality and diversity at global firm TMP/Monster Worldwide. He founded the British Federation of Racial Equality Councils, the Herefordshire Race Equality Partnership and Race Equality West Midlands.

His experience in the field of equality and diversity has led to a particular interest in the RSA’s work in the fields of ‘fostering resilient communities’ and ‘advancing global citizenship’: “The internet and the potential for global travel have challenged mono-culturalism and forced us to look at our attitudes. Diversity isn’t just about employing black people or women any more; it is about recognising that people are demanding more on a global level. Shareholders and customers are demanding more. We can no longer afford to be complacent.”

Why is diversity so important?

Diversity is what is driving our economy. If we want to ensure our country is competing effectively, we need to make use of all the talents and ability available in the UK. Ten middle-class white men alone are not going to give a realistic perspective. At TMP Worldwide I worked with a global firm that lost a contract worth millions of dollars purely on the basis of a culturally inappropriate joke. It is impossible to do business from a narrow perspective.

In the UK, a supermarket in Manchester recently had to completely reconsider the products it stocked. It had, in the past, sold a great deal of pork and no Halal meat but its stock buyers recognised that the local market had changed and the people they were catering for weren’t buying its products. In order to boost their profit margins, they had to adapt to the people living in the area, who were largely Muslim.

The same is true of public sector bodies. A ‘one size fits all’ mentality just doesn’t work. This goes beyond diversity in the workplace, it also applies to working hours. The view used to be that any divergence from the normal ‘9 to 5’ pattern was a women’s issue but today employers are having to recognise that men also want a better work—life balance, whether that means flexible working hours, additional training or job sharing.

What is the greatest challenge you face?

Promoting an attitude that encourages people to make the best use of the resources we have available. For example, we have to consider the fact that the UK has an ageing population. We are facing a demographic time-bomb and, in order to defuse it, we need to invest in older people and ensure their needs are met effectively. We should also be making the most of the fact that 50% of black and ethnic minorities are below 25.

But there is still a non-committal attitude to diversity: companies say they are committed to equal opportunities but the results just don’t match. And it is the responsibility of every employer to make a conscious effort to use the skills and experiences of all their employees for the betterment of the individual as well as the organisation. The RSA manifesto challenges of ‘fostering resilient communities’, ‘advancing global citizenship’ and ‘developing a capable population’ are crucial to all of these goals.

Your remit is ‘to enhance the government’s efforts to create a civil service that is truly representative of the society it serves, including at senior levels’: how successful have you been in achieving that goal?

In comparison with other sectors we are doing fantastically well. Some 550,000 people work for us (excluding agencies such as the NHS) and, of that figure, 9% are black or ethnic minorities and 52% are women, which is reflective of the population as a whole; 23,000 have disabilities. But we should be doing well compared to other sectors: it is our job to set the standard.

At a senior level, however, the figures drop quite substantially. Currently 27.8% of the senior civil service are women, 3.3% are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds and 2.3% have disabilities. While we can celebrate our comparative success rate and the fact that the civil service is rated as being one of the best employers in the country, we want to go beyond that and increase diversity among our senior leadership.

Are there any initiatives currently in place as a result of the reform agenda?

The Gershon Review and the Lyons Review have taken stock of effectiveness and efficiency and made recommendations based on their findings. We are now taking action to help Whitehall meet the targets that have been set on diversity. We have set ourselves a series of targets to be met by 2008 in order to integrate equality and diversity in business and workforce planning across the service. The agreed targets are: 37% of the senior civil service to be women; 30% of top management posts to be women; 4% of senior civil service to be minority ethnic staff; and 3.2% of the senior civil service to be disabled people. Ultimately, we would like the components of our staff to be wholly representative of the population but, by 2008, there will be visible signs of change.

What is the difference between setting goals and employing a policy of positive discrimination?

Our targets are business targets like any other — the commercial sector has them. Affirmative action or positive discrimination is illegal, so there are no quotas — there are only targets that we have put in place because diversity is fundamental to our country and without it we will suffer as a community. But there are strict guidelines in place and all senior appointments are made on the basis of merit and any sort of discrimination — positive or negative — can be challenged. As a scenario, that would be far worse than not meeting targets so there is no question that all appointments are made entirely on fairness and merit.

Are there any sectors of society for which progress on diversity has been particularly slow? The UK has made huge progress on diversity in many ways but in terms of service delivery and the social environment we still have a long way to go. And I feel a particular sense of urgency on disability. Of course we have come a long way since the 1970s and 1980s where access for disabled people was incredibly limited, but we still need to ensure that people with disabilities have access to the right training programmes and that infrastructures at work are tailored to their needs.

I also think we still have a long way to go with gender equality. Despite the fact that women get better A-level results year on year than men, only 9% of business leaders are women, in a population which is 52% female. I fail to accept that women don’t want senior positions; it cannot be that simple. They want to be rewarded for their merits just like anyone else, but the glass ceiling still exists just as institutional racism still exists. Some of the best-performing companies in the world, in the US for example, are led by women.

[Source: http://www.thersa.org/journal/article.asp?articleID=618]