The Importance of Diversity with Rax Lakhani

Through the Line with Andy Bargery

According to the PRCA's recent census, 89% of communications professionals in the UK are white, and 67% are female. In an industry tasked with creating impactful communications to reach an increasingly fragmented audience, that's not a particularly diverse pool of professionals to draw on. There are lots of commentators suggesting that building a diverse team is essential for injecting some much needed fresh thinking, which in turn delivers performance. In this episode, I talk with Rax Lakhani - a long time PR man and also Co-Chair of the PRCA's Diversity Network. We chat about why agencies need to think about diversity and the practical next steps for how to make a change. We cover starting at the top with the business plan to steps like blind reviews of CVs to identify new talent. It's clear there are significant commercial drivers for communications teams to think about diversity, which go way beyond box ticking exercises. Resources mentioned in the podcast: PRCA Census 2019: https://www.prca.org.uk/sites/default/files/PRCA_PR_Census_2019_v9-8-pdf%20%285%29.pdf Mckinsey's Gender Diversity Study: https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/Organization/Our%20Insights/Gender%20diversity%20a%20corporate%20performance%20driver/Gender%20diversity%20a%20corporate%20performance%20driver.ashx To contact Rax: rax.lakhani at gmail.com https://twitter.com/raxlakhani https://www.linkedin.com/in/raxlakhani/