Disrupting bias: why specific prejudices require a tailored intervention

Raph Mokades founded London-based recruitment company Rare Recruitment to help people from diverse backgrounds develop careers in elite professions, including law. He tells WIPR that when it comes to tackling deep-rooted bias, a tailored approach is required.

In December 2020 the UK government declared that unconscious bias training was being scrapped for civil servants in England because, ministers said, it doesn’t work. At Rare Recruitment, we came to much the same conclusion about a decade ago.

Over the past couple of years, we have worked with several top law firms to develop the Race Fairness Commitment, which lays out exactly how we believe firms can bring more fairness and equity to their workplaces.

It requires participating organisations to sign up to a series of commitments around ethnicity pay gap monitoring, retention and promotion analysis, anti-racist policies—and training.