In Conversation, with Toby Mildon

Hello Toby, could you start by introducing yourself and the work that you do?

I describe myself as a ‘diversity and inclusion architect’. What that practically means is that I help HR heads design strategies for attracting, retaining and progressing a diverse range of candidates within their organisation.

What kind of work do you do for organisations?

Most of my time is spent helping clients create their diversity and inclusion strategies. That starts with getting our hands on data, understanding the demographics of the existing workforce, measuring the inclusivity of the employee experience and how people from minority groups experience the workplace in particular. So it could be looking at what it's like for somebody from an ethnic minority background in the company versus someone who is white, or what it’s like working as a woman in a technology department that has a gender imbalance in favour of men.

Once we understand the employee experience, and examples of exclusion that people face, I can then help my clients create a strategy that, first of all, helps them attract and recruit people from diverse backgrounds (so they represent the communities and geographic locations they are based in), but then also retains and progresses people in the organisation once they're there.

You’ve spoken about the problematic perceptions that some people have with the idea of unconscious bias training. Where do you see issues?

We all have unconscious biases as human beings, partly created by our brains wiring, but largely through the social conditioning we're exposed to growing up. Sometimes bias actually helps us in some situations, but, in some cases, it can hinder us or hold us back. And, of course, in the world of work it can lead to unjust and unfair treatment of others, whether intentional or not.

But unconscious bias training has, understandably, developed a mixed reputation, because of the impact that it makes (or doesn't make) in an organisation, and because of fundamental misunderstandings about the ways to measure that impact and the purpose of undertaking such training in the first place.

A lot of unconscious bias training does a good job at raising awareness, but, once you have the awareness of your implicit biases, the onus is on you to take action and mitigate its negative effects. And a lot of people struggle to know how, in small and practical ways, they can go from awareness to action.

In my work with You Can Now, we’re placing the emphasis on ‘conscious inclusion’ and among people with insights into small but purposeful behavioural shifts and ways to proactively get ahead of their inevitable biases.

Which leads us into the SEEDS model. Why do you find that so helpful?

When running workshops, I always refer to the NeuroLeadership Institute's SEEDS Model ® as it’s really practical and really memorable.

SEEDS is an acronym that stands for Similarity, Expedience, Experience, Distance, and Safety biases. These are five core themes than dozens of other kinds of biases and heuristics fit within.

For example, am I warming more quickly to a potential candidate for a new role in the team because we share the same background? That’s Similarity bias. If I'm a busy team leader, and I give somebody an important piece of work because I know they can get on with the job quickly and with minimal supervision from me even if there may be someone else on the team who could do with that development opportunity? In which case that’s Expediency bias. They’re very recognisable, and it’s always an enlightening exercise to take teams through them.

The SEEDS Model ® helps us take people through each step in turn, reveal recognisable examples of each and then intentionally explore ways that we might mitigate them.

What are some of the key starting points for that?

Two recurrent ideas across most steps with the SEEDS Model ® are to intentionally slow down our thinking, and build more time into our decision making — even if it’s just a walk around the block — and to pull in other people’s perspectives. There’s a great idea in diarising decisions, and not reaching them until the date has arrived. And in our workshops we look at some pretty powerful tools for getting multiple perspectives when we’re on our own, like Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.

You’ve mentioned the idea of gathering data as a key stage in any project. What are some good starting points for smaller organisations that might not feel they have access to much?

It doesn’t have to be a complicated or long winded process. You can capture some simple diversity demographics and inclusion feedback in a survey on something like Smart Survey, and follow up with some focus groups or interviews with colleagues to dig a bit deeper into the data. I always say to get clear on the questions you want answers to, and frame them as simply as possible.

Representation or diversity is just half of the picture; you need to collect data to see how people feel respected, whether they belong, that they can progress and feel empowered within the organisation. These are the 4 cornerstones of an inclusive culture.

It’s definitely not something that only big companies should be thinking about. The only issue with smaller companies is that you have a smaller dataset so it’s harder to keep it anonymous (but it’s not impossible to work with diversity data in a small organisation).

You have a new workshop in the works. Could you tell us a little about it?

The workshop will be in June this year. It's designed for, typically, heads of HR, people that are new to the diversity and inclusion job. A lot of people move into D&I from doing a general HR job like an HR business partner type role, and therefore they need to get up to speed on D&I and D&I specialism training.

Our first focus will be how to get your hands on that diversity and inclusion data, how to use it to create both a strategy and a story that, vitally, gets your senior leaders bought in around the business case for diversity, and able to articulate that themselves more broadly.

What do you see as emergent themes within the DE&I space?

Menopause and mental health are both being discussed more openly and more widely among organisations and teams, and well-being is being adopted into the diversity and inclusion agenda which is a brilliant and long-needed step.

And the opportunities for hybrid work that will remain after the pandemic, which may not have been possible beforehand, are breaking down employment barriers. The pandemic has highlighted inequalities in society, but it has also opened up a lot of opportunities, like flexible work, for more people.

What books should we be reading in 2022?

The first book you should read is Inclusive Growth, of course! When it comes to bias, I think Daniel Kahneman’s ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow,’ is a great read but quite academically framed. 'Blink,' by Malcolm Gladwell is fantastic, and much more accessible too, and full of everyday examples of bias showing up in society.