Charity leaders must be open and transparent about redundancy proposals and should pause to consider how systemic oppression may be affecting their judgement, campaign group #CharitySoWhite has said.
The messages came in a collection of articles issued by the group reflecting on how a recent wave of restructures and redundancy processes across the sector risks “defaulting to white supremacist notions of whose work is most valuable and worthy of retaining”.
In recent weeks, Sense has reported making 50 jobs redundant, the National Trust has confirmed 500 roles have been axed and the NSPCC has said it will lose 235 posts.
Citing statistics showing that charity sector staff diversity lags behind other sectors, #CharitySoWhite warned that job cuts among lower-paid workers were likely to disproportionately affect global majority staff.
‘Transparency about what work will be stopped’
The group added that staff who remain in post still face an emotional toll and, without strategic capacity reviews, can end up with an increased workload after colleagues depart.
Among a series of pointers around navigating redundancy while living up to anti-racist values, #CharitySoWhite urged sector bosses to “make clear and transparent decisions about what work will be stopped” as part of redundancy processes.
Failing to do so “not only leads to overworked staff post-redundancy, but it can undermine arguments about why a person or team is redundant if the work they do will continue anyway”, it said. “That puts the organisation under significant risk but is also a sign that bias is at play in your process.”
The group stressed how vital openness is to planning redundancies in an anti-racist way.
#CharitySoWhite said leaders should be transparent around organisations’ financial situations and their decision-making, and “be open with staff about things you wish you could do, and ways in which you aim to embed the organisation’s values within a very restrictive process”.
‘Take time to ask yourself hard questions’
“Take time to reflect on how systemic oppression is impacting your judgement,” it added, and urged charities to ask “hard questions” about how biases may affect how people or the work they deliver are perceived.
This process should factor in systemic racism, sexism, ableism and their intersections, it said.
#CharitySoWhite also said organisations planning job cuts should undertake equity impact assessments when identifying at-risk roles, and create safe spaces for staff from the global majority and marginalised backgrounds to raise concerns around systemic oppression.
“Build resources for at-risk staff that take systemic barriers into account,” the group said.
“Understand global majority staff will face systemic racism in their job search and offer support where you can”, it advised, such as CV writing support, time within work hours to job hunt, coaching and counselling.
