Talent talks: the first Design Lab Symposium on workforce integration

How does a city’s multicultural demographic become global competitive edge?

This was a central question asked by London’s Deputy Mayor, Debbie Weekes Bernard at our first Design Lab Symposium delivered by DK&A and the Black Leadership Group.  Over 200 business and policy professionals signed up for the hybrid event at City Hall. The starting point was impatience with progress on dismantling racism and overcoming obstacles that hold back talent across vital sectors of our economy.

Lab co-lead, Amarjit Basi, reported on the rapid progress from the interventions and design-led experiments from the 28 employers representing over 150,000 employees.  He stressed the role of  equity-centred design, where power is ceded to groups that are underrepresented and face highest barriers in the labour market.  The approach was well articulated by designer Mo-Ling Chui and EDI expert Tiwonge Cohn, who have been working as a coaching team with companies in the Lab.  They embodied the message: a call to arms for organisational design that is collaborative and evidence-based.

Proof backed up theory.  PwC Director, and Lab Advisory Panel Chair, Dara Douglas, co-presented the Equity Projects in Progress Awards with Paul Deemer of the NHS Confederation.  From the Lab’s first cohort of 11 NHS employers there were 13 new projects.  All were strategic initiatives with imaginative ideas.

Duro Oye, CEO of 2020 Levels connected the employers’ demand-side measures with supply-side talent initiatives.  He introduced one of his own graduates, Aliyah Agyei, who presented her personal career journey. Now in a fulfilling creative role at American Express, her story was deeply moving and a powerful reminder of the importance of community-based organisations.

Poppy Jaman OBE set the tone for a positive plenary on future visions for London’s workforce.  Drawing on encouraging data, she stressed the importance of representation in senior and middle-management.  Leah De Silva, from CIPD Trust, emphasised the role of the HR professions to lead by example and spread best practices.

Indra Nauth, from Action for Race Equality, reminded everyone of that persistent under-representation is market failure and requires constant effort from business, policy makers and non-profits. As if to make the point, Keon Simms, a recent graduate working at engineering firm Jacobs, talked about his own experience as a beneficiary of the GLA’s investment in its Workforce Integration Network (WIN) and the Design Lab.

The Symposium came full circle to how we leverage hyper-diversity for economic advantage. No-one expected a simple answer and the practical ideas shared were multi-factorial.  One thing is for certain.  The road to a fairer workplace, that delivers competitive edge, is a journey to be taken together.  It is a collaborative effort for mutual benefit and the Design Lab is a good model.