Ethnic & Cultural Diversity: The C.A.R.E Framework & Alpha’s Journey

Jamilla Adeline, Jasmin Jotangia

Alpha’s Ethnic & Cultural Diversity (ECD) Committee have been working to develop a framework to help us, and hopefully others, address ethnic, racial and cultural discrimination in the workplace and to promote and enhance diversity at all levels.

Whilst discrimination of this type is not something new, 2020 saw a surge in dedicated, hard work by employees and leadership teams to implement initiatives to eradicate the issue in their organisation.

There are a number of initiatives and policies that can be put in place to support the needs of your employees from an ethnic minority background.

Understanding which are best for your organisation and what your current state is can be a daunting and difficult exercise. In order to help navigate our journey, the ECD Committee has used research within the Asset Management and Consulting industry and beyond to develop a framework – Communicate, Act, Respect, Educate (C.A.R.E).

Eradicating discrimination, promoting diversity and being effectively inclusive are all markers on the journey to ethnic & cultural diversity. This journey, although still in its infancy, will have varying levels of maturity which can be assessed using a number of quantitative and qualitative factors. Each organisation is likely to have different routes to reaching the journey goal as a ‘one size fits all’ approach does not recognise the intrinsic differences between organisations.

Starting the Journey

Having launched the Ethnic & Cultural Diversity Committee in April 2020, Alpha has started the journey to understand and improve our ECD initiatives and practices.

The Maturity Curve below illustrates a high-level outline of the journey to a more ethnically and culturally diverse workforce and company culture. Alpha’s ECD team will be plotting our progress through a series of articles focusing on what we have implemented and how the C.A.R.E. framework is helping our journey.

 

What next?

Look out for upcoming articles detailing our journey and what we’re doing at Alpha to create and foster equity, diversity & inclusion. In the meantime, please contact us if you wish to find out more from our ECD team.

About the Authors

Jamilla Adeline
Consultant, AWM

Jamilla is a Consultant at Alpha and is the Co-Lead of the Ethnic & Cultural Diversity Committee. Jamilla has over 4 years' experience consulting in Asset and Wealth Management. She has experience working with a range of clients on strategic initiatives including business design and strategy, target operating model development, product strategy and vendor selections.

Jasmin Jotangia
Consultant, AWM

Jasmin is a Consultant at Alpha and has been a member of the Ethnic & Cultural Diversity team since it first started in 2019. Jasmin has specialised in Asset and Wealth Management for 3 years, supporting on a number of strategic and transformational projects across the industry, most frequently in the Alternatives and Technology space.