Earlier this month, the Global Business Travel Association announced it
had launched a diversity, equality and inclusion committee. It followed a
similar initiative by the fledgling Travel and Meetings Society in 2020.
Some corporate travel professionals might wonder whether such groups are
needed in an industry where, those interviewed for this analysis agree, overt racial,
sexual or gender discrimination is rare.
But even if less obvious than a white police officer’s knee squeezing the
life out of a prone black man’s neck, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem –
either in the corporate travel sector or for minority business travellers.
In fact it was last year’s protests in the United States over the death
of George Floyd which prompted travel manager Carol Fergus, European lead for
the new GBTA D&I committee, to start thinking about diversity in her work
for the first time.
“I raised my head and realised there were very few people like me,” says
Fergus. “A lot of organisations will say they are non-discriminatory but when I
look at the number of people of colour in the travel industry, they are not
doing enough.”
In particular, Fergus adds, there aren’t enough people of colour at
senior levels. “Companies need to ask what they can do as an organisation to
create the ability for people to move up the ladder,” she says. “They have to
open up that Pandora’s box and ask what it is.”
The explanations – and one of Fergus’s priorities for the GBTA committee
is to research the subject properly – are likely to prove complex. Some may result
from unconscious privilege and bias on the part of employers. But there is also
the need to overcome the impostor syndrome felt by some communities.
“You sit in the corner. You don’t want to rock the boat,” says Linda
Bekoe, who runs hotel representation company About Partners and is one of the
leaders of the TAMS D&I committee.
“People don’t come with their whole selves to work. It’s to do with how
you are brought up. There are certain questions you wouldn’t ask because you
are grateful for that opportunity just to be there. When I worked in hotels, I felt
I had to sound a certain way because it fitted in.”
Impostor syndrome extends well beyond race or gender. Fergus says a drive
for inclusivity should aim at people from all backgrounds whose opportunities
are limited and need support. She is particularly keen to encourage internships
and apprenticeships for any young person “who would normally walk past a building
and think ‘someone like me wouldn’t be able to work there’.”
Fergus also wants the GBTA committee to focus on inclusivity for people
with mobility and mental health issues. “I don’t think that’s been as big a
discussion as it needs to be,” she says. “There’s still a discomfort talking
about it.”
The big question is how to convert these worthwhile intentions into action.
With the corporate travel sector devastated by the coronavirus pandemic,
nothing will happen overnight, says Fergus. Looking farther ahead, however, she
believes that when the sector does eventually recover, there will be an
opportunity to rebuild with D&I baked in from the beginning, including a
different attitude to recruitment.
Travel buyers can play their part in advancing the agenda even though
they are not the company CEO, says Jafles Pacheco, the Switzerland-based head
of indirect material spend management for Oerlikon. They can make smaller, incremental
differences through recruitment decisions over which they have influence and by
drawing attention to D&I in supplier requests for proposal.
“You can ask a question like: ‘Please explain your D&I strategy
toward guests and employees’,” says Pacheco. “At least if you raise awareness,
the sales manager might Google ‘What is D&I?’. If others ask the same
question, then they will say ‘there is an interest here’.”
Travel managers also have a responsibility to mitigate the risks for
travellers facing discrimination during business trips, says Carolyn Pearson,
CEO of Maiden Voyage, a company which offers training in looking after diverse
travellers.
However, it is a topic which needs approaching with some sensitivity.
“You can’t ask an employee if they are worried about going to Russia because
they are a black gay man,” says Pearson. “But you can ask all employees if they
are worried about going to a destination.”
Beware a misplaced sense of care as well. “An executive at a major bank
told me he wouldn’t send a woman to Saudi Arabia because it wouldn’t be safe
for her,” Pearson says. “It should be the woman herself who decides that. It
might be important for her career that she goes. She may need to meet certain
clients in the region. If she isn’t taking some opportunities, she may gain a
reputation that she can only go so far in her role. It’s better to ask ‘are you
comfortable taking this trip and do you have any special requirements?’”
There are other ethical complexities. For example, Pearson says companies
should inform travellers about destinations where homosexuality is illegal and
even punishable by death. As a result, they can take preventive action, such as
removing photos of themselves with partners from mobile phone home screens, or
rainbow stickers from laptops.
Yet doesn’t that mean some travellers are effectively being advised, in
Bekoe’s words, to suppress presenting “their whole selves”? Again, says
Pacheco, it’s a question of informing travellers so they can make their own
choices. “As a traveller I would be less flamboyant in the Middle East or China
because I could be imprisoned,” he says.
“But you’re not going to say to travellers: ‘be less flamboyant.’ You’re
going to say: ‘be aware of local sensitivities around gender and diversity.’
That’s enough to tell me to scan my environment.”
Travel managers will also want to ensure none of their travelling
employees is made to feel uncomfortable by preferred suppliers. Most directly,
that probably means checking amenities are appropriate for travellers with
mobility issues.
But, after encountering passive hostility during a recent weekend at a
hotel in Glasgow, Fergus knows that even in the 2020s racism can still haunt
the travel sector. It’s why she believes suppliers need to revisit D&I
within their own HR strategies, because if employers do right by their
employees, they will also do right by their customers.
“You used to get signs up at accommodation
saying ‘No dogs, no Irish, no blacks’,” says Fergus. “It’s not as obvious as
that any more. But if suppliers such as hotels get their own house in order,
then by default problems such as unconscious bias and white privilege will go
away.”