An Update on The HudsonBec Group’s Commitments to Change — March 2021
Nine months ago we published our list of commitments to change across the whole of the HudsonBec Group. Since then, we have been working hard to ensure tangible, considered action followed our words. Not just for the short term — but for as long as the group exists.
As promised, three months on from our last update, we are keen to address how we’re doing publicly.
In that last update we said the major areas that we were looking at in early 2021 were a full review of all of our internal policies; to be rewritten and designed for inclusivity, alongside relaunching one of our businesses Lecture in Progress (now Creative Lives in Progress) to focus even more sharply on improving access to the creative industry.
Both of these main focuses have been actioned, and detail on both is below.
As always, if you have any questions or comments — please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Policies review and relaunch
This quarter saw every single one of our internal policies reviewed and where necessary re-written and designed to be more inclusive. The result of this work saw us remove entire policies where appropriate; for example our ‘recruitment referral bonus’ was scrapped as it encouraged us to look within our network for new hires.
The review also saw additions where necessary, including us adding an anti-racism policy across the whole group.
We also started a huge piece of work to review, rewrite and redesign our appraisals and competencies framework for the same reasons. We see this as a long process, which will be fundamental to us building an inclusive environment in the group. Importantly these will not be designed solely by us as directors and HR, but instead with feedback from the whole workforce and inclusion specialists who can help us understand the needs of people we are currently not attracting to work at the group.
Creative Lives in Progress Relaunch
One of the biggest, most fundamental changes to our group commitment to change was a pivot of our Lecture in Progress business to be more inclusive and reach a broader audience.
I’m excited to say that after 9 months of hard work, we relaunched as Creative Lives in Progress in January. You can read all about the detail of the re-launch here; but the early signs are incredibly positive that we can have much more impact reaching under-represented communities. The industry needs them, and they need our resources.
Kickstart Placements
We’ve been working hard to set up our four Kickstart placements which we can confirm will start at the end of April. Anyways Creative will be welcoming two placements, with one each also joining It’s Nice That and Creative Lives in Progress. Each placement will be filled by a 16 to 24 year old on Universal Credit and will work for us on London Living Wage for three days a week over 6 months. We can’t wait to welcome them in and have been working with Create Jobs on the applications, training and more to ensure we set them up for success.
Team Representation and Recruitment
For the second quarter running we have struggled to reach a minimum of 60% Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic candidates at the interview stage for our full time positions. And although we haven’t had a huge amount of positions open in the last three months, this continues to be an area where we need more concentration, and serious improvement.
We are advertising our roles in a broader range of places including; POCC, Run the Check, Social Fixt and Diversifying — but need to do more and find some other strategies. We commit to increasing our budget for reaching broader audiences in the next 3–6 months to see what difference this will have on our applications. We have lots more open roles coming up, and have the chance to do much more here.
Freelancers and Collaborators
From a freelance and collaborator perspective, at Anyways Creative we’re on track with our ambition to have at least 20% Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic talent joining us within internal project teams. In the last 6 months have welcomed 53 freelancers into the business with 36% of those are from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds.
We have also worked with 28 different collaborators in that time, of which 57% are from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, surpassing our ambition for 30%.
On It’s Nice That we fell slightly behind our 50% mark for Black, Asian and minority ethnic representation in commissions to 48.3%, but have plans in place to ensure this moves back above 50% for the second half of our year.
On Creative Lives in Progress we continued to have over 60% of featured creatives were from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds; and also ensure the attendees of our new portfolio review and Pep Talk events also reach the same mark.
With If You Could relaunch this quarter there has only been one editorial article, so no meaningful data here on representation — but plans are in place for this to increase, and representation targets set for this new strategy.
Advisory Board
This quarter we also saw us appoint our first ever external advisory board, to make sure that the very top of the organisation is regularly seeking for critical opinion from those with different backgrounds, expertise and lived experiences. One member of that board is the diversity and inclusion consultant who originally advised us on setting a roadmap to improve the diversity of our organisation, to make sure we are held to account against our commitments.
Education and Skills Sharing
We have set up an initiative offering our expertise to organisations that we feel are doing positive work in the DEI space around the creative industries. Helping organisations to do what they do, even better, by donating our time to them for free. The first of these projects has seen us partner with Spiral, an organisation who work with underrepresented young people to help equip them for their future careers, to help them reassess and improve their digital presence.
We also continue to be dedicated to educating ourselves; dedicating time in our all-team end of week meet-ups to discuss diversity, equity and inclusion topics. We have also broadened our training for the whole group in this last quarter into other areas of inclusion including a whole-company session understanding Neurodiversity in the workplace.
It’s also worth noting that we received some feedback this quarter on our approach to tackling ageism in the industry — and something we’re looking into educating ourselves on further in the coming months to make sure we continue to be the most inclusive organisation we can.
Again, it feels like we’ve made lots of progress in the last three months — but there is clearly so much more to do, and we all remain committed to improving the group for as long as we exist.
As I said earlier, any questions, comments and feedback are always welcome — alex@thehudsonbecgroup.com
Alex Bec,
Managing Director
The HudsonBec Group
