Stay local to find your new workers

Hello and welcome to Working It.

I managed to get 30 minutes into a 45-minute internal meeting this week, a) because I didn’t check my times and b) because I was distracted, tired, and depressed about something else. It’s not a professional look 🤢. Especially in front of the global head of human resources at the Financial Times.

Consider this your public service announcement to enable loud meeting notifications on your phones. Mine are now ON. Feel free to make me feel better by telling me about something even sloppier you’ve done recently 🙁.

Read on to learn the benefits of being more proactive when hiring (and promoting) people from minority ethnic backgrounds, and in Office Therapy I offer some ideas to a mentor who needs to avoid a difficult conversation.

Always here for your emails: isabel.berwick@ft.com.

Next week I’ll be in San Francisco filming videos (I know, it’s hard). I’ll be keeping an eye on interesting job trends on the West Coast. My colleague Bethan Staton will write this newsletter.

Take a closer look: How to expand your talent pool 🌊

One of the “hot topics” we address here, and soon in our new Video of Working series – is how to close the talent gap. Employers are struggling to find people with the necessary skills to fill their vacant positions. AI often doesn’t help: too many people apply for each job or systems weed out good candidates.

But there are large groups of (sometimes overly) qualified people who too often are overlooked for jobs or don’t apply in the first place. The potential of those over 50 years of age is already calling attention. Another great cohort caught my eye this week. TO McKinsey report shows that better integration of minority ethnic populations into European workforces “could contribute up to €120 billion annually to the region’s GDP by addressing labor shortages and unlocking untapped talent.” That’s a lot of money and a lot of jobs.

The context of the report is that job vacancies in the EU have increased by approximately 70 percent since 2020, with especially acute shortages in sectors such as software development, healthcare and construction 🏢.

McKinsey finds that, overall, people from groups it labels “ethnocultural minorities” make up between 5 and 18 percent of the population in Western European countries, with an average of 10 percent. Population patterns reflect European history: in France and Belgium the largest minority groups are people of Middle Eastern and North African descent, in Spain they are from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Tania Holt, a senior partner at McKinsey and one of the report’s authors, told me that she had initially been looking at the tight labor market in general, trying to identify where there was untapped potential. “The only group that really stood out was ethnocultural minorities, and when we looked at them at different levels of achievement, they all had a lower employment rate compared to the rest of the population.” With little official pan-European data available, McKinsey produced its own report.

We know what gets more people from minority backgrounds into jobs at all levels: inclusive hiring and retention policies. But when Tania and her colleagues interviewed leaders of large European companies, they found that only 28 percent of them had a clear strategy that focused on ethnocultural minority workers. She told me that “if you compared that to gender, for example, I would assume that 100 percent of them would have a very clear strategy about ‘what we are doing to include women.’”

There are structural barriers to European recruiters finding out more about potential internal or external candidates. GDPR laws and restrictions on the collection of information about people’s ethnic origins (especially strict in France) can make this data collection difficult for employers. (Tania told me that the European Commission recognizes the problems and is thinking about how it could help).

These problems are not insurmountable. All recruiters could, Tania said, expand their inclusive recruiting and pipeline efforts beyond women, to “take an intersectional approach to DEI programming. I’m focusing here on cultural minorities, but for people with disabilities it’s the same and, frankly, maybe even worse.” For not much additional outlay, many companies could go far beyond measuring the objectives and results of simple gender diversity measures.

I found myself nodding vigorously to Tania. The intersectional part of this plan is important: many people are women and are from a minority and lower socioeconomic background, or are women with a visible or invisible disability. I could go on. But it is necessary to expand the channels (now well established) for the advancement of women.

DEI, or at least its reputation, is going through a rough patch. It is a positive step to focus on filling the talent gap with well-qualified hires from the widest possible range of backgrounds. Surely that’s a winning scenario for leaders, managers and colleagues under pressure?

I’d love to hear ideas to help hiring managers find talented people: isabel.berwick@ft.com.

This week on the Working It podcast

Amazon’s “back to office” mandate for staff, asking them to be at their desks five days a week starting in January, has reignited the hybrid/flexible versus RTO debate. (Just when we thought we were finally calming down 🥲.) Then in this week’s episode I spoke with Emma Jacobs from the Financial Times, who wrote a very popular column about how the “boring” office became the center of a culture war, and Kevin Delaney, editor-in-chief of Charter, a media and future of work research firm.

office therapy

The problem: My apprentice is very ambitious. We are in different departments of the same company, so I am not in charge of your career progression. A year into their employment, they have a list of one- or five-year goals and ask me why they haven’t had a promotion yet.

The answer to that question is: “Because you don’t have the experience or skills yet to get a promotion.” I’ll skirt around this, but I haven’t said it directly. If I’m too honest, I’ll crush his spirit. Is patience a thing of the past? What else can I do constructively for them?

Isabel’s advice: Well, yes, patience is a little old-fashioned, especially among younger workers. There are advantages to this change. Boomer/Gen Nobody misses that world.

I get asked many variations on this mentor/mentee question. The digital/age/cultural divide seems especially wide right now. My advice is to go online and see what workplace content your mentee is likely receiving. TikTok and Instagram show many shiny-haired people in control of their own productive, wellness-filled lives. They are telling managers that no, they will not pick up that extra task at 5:31 p.m. In short, they kill. You will also laugh/make a face of recognition 🙄. (My Gen Z kids like to send me ““clueless mom” TikToksI can’t understand why.)

It is not your job to facilitate internal career progression. That’s for a direct superior. You are the big picture person. Inspiration, even*. What can you do, as a mentor, to open doors for your mentee and other young colleagues? Networking opportunities? Training? Hooking up your mentee for coffee with someone who does their dream job? Reframe your ambition around your ability to help them realize it and go from there.

*We often underestimate our impact when we are generous with our time, expertise and contacts.

Do you have a workplace problem for in-office therapy? Send to isabel.berwick@ft.com. We anonymize everything.

🚨 Office Therapy will alternate here with Jonathan Black’s extremely popular “Dear Jonathan” career advice column. Send your professional dilemmas to dear.jonathan@ft.com.

Five notable stories from the world of work

1. Getting started: Here’s what you need to know. I really enjoyed this summary of views and advice from graduate students and trainees across a range of sectors. Lots of enthusiasm and advice – a great article to share with the young people in your life (and workplace).

2. The trust deficit leading to workplace dysfunction. Andrew Hill offers an unusual and fresh take on workplace dynamics through the lens of a new novel set in a warehouse. help Wanted by Adelle Waldman.

3. What Rick Astley can teach us about giving up: Emma Jacobs interviews the ’80s star, who left at the height of her fame but has recently found a second act. There’s a lot of good advice here and a refreshing dose of honesty and perspective.

4. Labour’s lofty education goals need external innovators: Miranda Green reports on new projects to help families access better education, mental health and employment opportunities. These include a newly built neighborhood in London called EdCity, with affordable housing, a school and a youth club, built by Ark, the academy school chain.

5. The trends shaping graduate hiring: The job market is tough and Andrew Jack explains why. One of the key points is that many recruiters look for internships and work experience over academic achievements.

One more thing. . .

This week’s recommendation comes via a Substack recommendations newsletter (I realize this is a bit meta): Links I would chat with you if we were friends by Caitlin Dewey. In ‘The Department of Everything‘, from The Hedgehog Review, Stephen Akey remembers working in the telephone reference division of the Brooklyn Public Library between 1984 and 1988. The team answered thousands of questions, with the help of a library of reference books they had been trained to use. . Some of the timeless advice from the memorable department head, Milo: “Don’t take anything for granted; don’t trust your memory; look for the context; put together two, three and four sources, if necessary.”

Read this lovely essay and then send it to anyone who asks, “How did people find out things before Google?” 👀

A few words from the Working It community

In last week’s newsletter About non-executive directors (Neds). I asked readers for advice on organizations that help and support people who would like to take on these roles, as well as any relevant experience they would like to share.

Many people had thoughts, particularly one reader who reminded me that my column was optimistic: “What your article about Neds doesn’t say, but this is the reality, since I have the scars, is that getting a role as Ned is enormously! competitive! It is as cruel as aspiring to an executive position.” That seems fine to me. (Maybe I should try it myself and see what rejection feels like 🙈).

Other good clues to keep in mind: Readers like it nurole, which is a specialist non-executive search firm, with lots of support and webinars to help people thinking about taking this step. and there is a new report from executive search firm Norman Broadbent with up-to-date statistics and survey information from real Neds.

Good luck to everyone 🍀.