The 48th Annual Global Symposium on Racing held recently in Tucson, Ariz., tackled many of the challenges to the horse racing industry with presentations and panels, including one focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion – most commonly abbreviated as DEI.
While other industries have discussed DEI initiatives in hiring and marketing for several years, the concept is still comparatively new to American racing.
A few takeaways from the discussion:
–First of all, it's important to understand the difference in terms, according to Breeders' Cup executive vice president and chief racing officer Dora Delgado. When questioning whether your working environment is diverse, you should ask whether you have equal representation of different races, genders, religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, etc. When questioning whether the environment is inclusive, the question is whether those groups are all being equally heard.
“You can be a diverse organization but you may fail on being inclusive,” Delgado pointed out.
Of course, there's also a fine line; when trying to encourage inclusion in the workplace, Delgado acknowledge that employees can sometimes feel singled out when they're repeatedly the only one encouraged to speak up.
— It's no secret that racing is facing a huge labor shortage – in the barns, on the stud farms, in the officials' stands, and in many other places. Ray Daniels, co-founder of the Ed Brown Society, said it only makes sense to look for future leaders in as many different places as possible. Daniels is a trustee at the University of Kentucky, where he said incoming freshman classes are increasingly becoming more female and non-white than they once were.
“All the other industries are fighting for that talent and those students,” Daniels pointed out.
The Ed Brown Society helps connect young people of color to scholarships and internships in the Thoroughbred industry. Many times, Daniels said students don't realize how vast the sport is and how many different types of jobs it can support until they gain firsthand experience with it.
Daniels also said that since the group's foundation, he has seen the interest in its internship programs grow.
— Racing is also hurting for horseplayers and attendees. The British Horseracing Authority has supported several campaigns to encourage participation in racing from minority groups.
Naomi Howgate, head of diversity and inclusion for the BHA, presented research showing that three in 10 people in ethnic minorities say they wouldn't consider attending racing in Great Britain because they believe they wouldn't feel comfortable or would not fit in there.
The BHA has supported initiatives called Women In Racing, which provides industry guidance on helping women get back into the stable after giving birth; Respect In Racing, which was an awareness campaign to set behavior standards to avoid bullying, harassment and abuse, and Racing With Pride, which creates a supportive environment for LGBT+ fans and participants.
The BHA created a DEI steering group in 2017, and it has 30 British racing groups that have pledged to advance its efforts. Next steps for the steering group will be creating a written policy on transgender inclusion, studying the history of minority racial groups in racing and recognizing that in education groups like museums, and addressing lack of equality at the c-suite level.
— DEI can also improve direct participation in ownership. Daniels said when the Ed Brown Society set out to encourage this, the group's principals wondered whether people of color had the disposable income to become owners, and if they'd be interested in spending it that way. The answer was yes.
“There are people who want to live this lifestyle and have these kinds of experiences,” said Daniels, who added that the groups the society has brought to the track have been met with kindness and curiosity.
— Often, Daniels said, people in racing aren't intentionally leaving out minority groups when making hiring decisions. Instead, it's common for someone to fill an open position with someone they already know, either professionally or socially. This makes sense and saves time, but Daniels pointed out it's also how you create an echo chamber within an organization – if people group themselves together by their similarities, they're not experiencing different perspectives.
One fix for work environments that aren't all that diverse or inclusive is to open up positions outside a manager's personal connections.
Delgado pointed out that while racing makes a great effort to connect with equine programs at universities, there's not much recruitment outside those programs to hire people with equally relevant degrees for non-hands-on horse jobs. (One example may be reaching out to a college with a strong sports journalism program to hire a turf writer instead of only searching within college equine programs, or hunting for corporate positions like legal, HR and others in the same way.) Companies can still hire the most qualified candidate from a pool of potential choices, but if they're casting their net wider, they're more likely to find someone who is qualified and also from an underrepresented group.
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