NGOs must check their bias amid staffing cuts, expert says

NGOs forced to make staff cuts amid the funding crisis will need to consider where those cuts are falling and if they are disproportionately affecting minority employees, an industry expert has warned. Speaking at a Devex Pro event, Lorriann Robinson — who spent her career in international NGOs before helping to develop The Equity Index, a project to evaluate equity in the U.K. development sector — warned that ethnic minorities are more likely to bear the brunt of job cuts and reduced hours in the wider economy. “Will the development sector be any different?” she asked. “I think we need to ask some difficult questions about that.” Many NGOs have been hit by reduced funding due to the pandemic, as well as recent government cuts in the U.K. Research by Bond, the network of U.K. development NGOs, suggests that a quarter of U.K. organizations have already made staff redundant, and 34% are planning further redundancies in 2021-22. Despite the Black Lives Matter movement prompting commitments from many organizations in the past year, separate Bond research recently suggested that 89% of development professionals feel their organizations aren’t committed to diversity and inclusion. “Both of those research findings should serve as a warning sign that this really is a moment to ... think about the internal dynamics of equity in terms of the make-up of our staff and the make-up of our organizations,” Robinson said. “I think that leaders need to be ... mindful about the potential for bias when it comes to closing programs, redundancies, scaling back staffing time and hours.” She suggested simple steps leaders can take to mitigate this, including acknowledging the potential for bias, being transparent about how decisions around cuts are being made, and assessing how any proposed restructure would affect particular demographics or the organization’s overall staffing make-up. “There is nothing worse than the perception that the … [scale-back] process is unfair, that it isn’t transparent, and that there’s nothing you can do. It’s a moment where you can feel incredibly powerless,” Robinson said. She added: “If as a leader you’re presented with a business case for why the operation needs to change from one model to another, ask what does that mean for equity, ask what does that mean for the make-up of our organization, is there a potential for a demographic bias in what has been presented? So acknowledge that possibility and ask some of those tough questions.”