Why Care? #22: Nina Goswami - Count, Share, Change
“Often if some organisations or people feel that something is a ‘tick box’- it fails. We see that time and time again. So if you can, through passion and collaboration, create momentum, then that’s what’s gonna keep things going.”
In Episode 22 I am joined by Nina Goswami, Creative Diversity Lead for the BBC, to discuss the importance of inclusive storytelling, representation in the media, and the BBC's impactful 50:50 Equality Project.
Nina’s journey is one many journalists will be inspired by, climbing the ladder from reporter, to producer, to editor and then to her current role of creative diversity lead. She shares her story of why representation matters and how important it was to her as a young girl to see Moira Stuart, the UK's first female Black newsreader, on TV – feeling inspired by seeing a woman of colour reading her the news….”You can’t be what you can’t see”.
Nina’s interest in inclusive storytelling within the news-cycle grew as she discusses the failures in reporting with Grenfell and the initial COVID coverage. Ultimately this interest got Nina involved in the 50:50 Project, quickly becoming the project lead. The 50:50 Project focuses on making the BBC more representative of the population, starting with coverage reflecting the 50:50 split between males and females in the UK. Nina explains the data-led nature of this as well as it’s methodology.
Within the BBC, 750 teams have signed up to the 50:50 Project, with around 150 external partner organisations also taking the pledge. We discuss the different methodologies shown within these organisations, and how merely counting the data is not enough, it must also be shared and actioned.
Finishing our conversation, we turn to the future of the 50:50 Project. Nina shares that it is currently well into trial runs for both ethnicity and disability monitoring. The BBC as a whole follows a 50/20/12 model, striving for 50% women, 20% BAME and 12% disabled visibility, following national population distribution, but regional BBC teams will work towards proportions accurate to their regions.
Links
Nina can be found on LinkedIn at: Nina Goswami
For more from the 50:50 Project, visit: www.bbc.co.uk/5050
The BBC Impact Report 2022 can be found here: www.bbc.com/5050/impact2022
More information on Moira Stuart, the UK’s first female Black Newsreader.
To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.
Transcript
Nina Goswami 00:00
To try and reflect society, and to make sure you have a diversity of voice, you need to be moving as society changes, what the UK looks like in 2022 is very different from what it looked like in 1962. So, without understanding what society looks like, you can't be reflecting that within your organizations, and you can't, therefore, reach your consumer market, because that's what, let's be honest, is the bottom line. How do you get consumers into your business? And you have to reflect them in what you are doing if you want them to come to you.
Nadia Nagamootoo 00:34
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo, Business psychologist, coach, speaker, and founder of Avenir consulting, which creates organisational growth and success by inclusion and diversity. We've been discussing the benefits that diversity brings to a company's bottom line performance for decades with more and more evidence, but there are so many questions organisations still have about how to achieve it. How do you create a culture where people feel valued for their uniqueness and the qualities they bring? I believe it's crucial to the future success and sustainability of every organisation that they find the answer to this question to make sure that each employee is not only supported but also appreciated. With this podcast, I aim to get some of the key challenges to creating inclusive workplaces out in the open and start uncovering the solutions to embracing a culture that cares for everyone. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most inspiring people in different countries and across industries who are pushing the boundaries on inclusion and diversity in the workplace, from topics such as parenting in the workplace, ethnicity, age, gender, mental health, and all things inclusion. I want to create a movement to change society by sharing life experiences and creating more empathy and connection. Why care? I believe that once we have organisations and societies that accept and value everyone for who they are, we become healthier, happier, and better in our roles both inside and outside work.
Hello, and welcome to Episode 22 of the Why Care podcast. My name is Nadia Nagamootoo and I am your host. In this episode, I speak to the brilliant Nina Goswami, the BBC Creative Diversity Lead for the 50:50 project. Nina has had a varied career in media as a broadcast journalist, producer, and editor, she has spearheaded the BBC’s 50:50 project since 2019, raising awareness and creating active change to increase representation in BBC content. Nina clearly outlines past errors that have been made due to the lack of representation, for example, in broadcasting stories around Grenfell, Brexit, and COVID, to name a few, and the need to reflect everyone who is consuming content. The 50:50 project 2022 Impact Report speaks for itself, with clear evidence that the project has made a significant difference in female representation, and they are starting to measure ethnic and disability representation too, and not just at the BBC. What I love about this project is that any organisation can become a partner and join the movement to achieve equal representation. This episode proves the impact of diversity initiatives, and it's wonderful to see an organisational giant like the BBC both recognise the need to get better, but also use its power for wider social change. Enjoy.
Nina, it is fantastic to have you on the show. Thank you so much for agreeing to spend some time with me and sharing all your knowledge at the BBC. So, I really appreciate it.
Nina Goswami 03:34
Thank you for having me. I don't know how much knowledge. Let's see how it goes.
Nadia Nagamootoo 03:40
I love your career background. And I think it's fascinating how from reporter to producer to editor, and then it almost feels a little bit, I suppose it’s not completely random, because you're still in the broadcasting field, obviously, but Creative Diversity Lead. Can you just explain how you ended up in the role that you're doing?
Nina Goswami 04:07
Yeah, absolutely. In terms of my journalism career, that's a story that started when I was eight years old, it was always these things. And my brothers, my dad, we were all sitting around the kitchen table, Moira Stuart in the background on six o'clock news, he goes, ‘I could see you doing that one day’. You love Moira Stuart, I love her, she's like one of my heroes. Yeah. And she literally is, I mean, we did a campaign around this about who your heroes are, and I put Moira Stuart. The time when I was growing up, there weren't much ethnic minority faces on TV. So, anyway, my dad points at Moira Stuart, for those who don't know, she was one of the first black news readers at the BBC, and he said, ‘I could see you doing that one day’, and okay, the idea of presenting perhaps didn't necessarily stick with me, but the idea of storytelling did, and that was the beginning of what started for me in terms of journalism. And then I went on and did all this stuff that everyone does, school newspaper, magazine, university magazine, loads of work experience in lots of different places from The Guardian, to The Telegraph, and it was Sunday Times that gave me my first shot through a scholarship, and they trained me up properly as a journalist, because I did law at university, and that's how I got into this world. But one of the things that it's all about for me when it comes to storytelling, is about revealing the world, about telling people what's happening around us.
And for me about, I'd say, maybe four or five years ago, this is around Brexit, Grenfell had just taken place, as BBC News, it felt to me like we weren't necessarily getting it right, that we weren't necessarily hearing the stories or revealing the stories that should be heard. One of the reasons I think we got Grenfell wrong is that we missed it, I mean, four years, from Television Centre, you can see the building where we used to be, and we missed a massive story like that. How could that be? So, I'm asking myself these questions about Brexit, we were always reporting but we got the temperature, the nation, absolutely wrong. But not only at the BBC, across media, but we also weren't on our own from that perspective. But why are we getting it wrong? What's going on? So, what happened to me, was I started working with BBC audiences on something called future-proofing BBC News. And so, this was about looking at, what were the areas that we were missing. What weren't we identifying? And through that, a lot of it was about representation, I don't see myself reflected in the news, and I don't see my story on the BBC. And so, when you start thinking about that, a lot of it has to do with, where are we collecting these stories? What are we doing? And you need an evidence base to understand what you really look like, and who you're actually reaching.
We have audience appreciation results and things like that, but they can only tell you so much. What's the detail in terms of who we're actually reporting on or the stories that we're actually doing? While I was thinking about this, mulling it all over, Ros Atkins, the presenter of Outside Source, which is a TV news programme in the UK, as well as the BBC World said he had been thinking about similar things for women's representation. He'd been on a long car journey in 2016 and hadn't heard a single female voice on one BBC radio station for a really long time, and he was thinking to himself, ‘how can that be in this day and age?’ And he came up with the 50:50 project. And what this project does is, essentially, when we first started it, was it looking at, how can we increase women's representation just by simply understanding where we are as a team and what the data says? And in 2017, the project was born, and essentially, what we do is we count the number of men and the number of women on our programme, so if it's a daily programme, to see if we can reach 50% women over a month. So, that allows for ebbs and flows in new cycles, you might be doing a story that is female-heavy one day and male-heavy another day, but we're trying to reach 50% women contributors over that period.
Nadia Nagamootoo 08:12
And is that because you're trying to represent the country in terms of the audience, around the ballpark 50:50, and so that's what you want to see? Is that where that number comes from?
Nina Goswami 08:24
Yeah, exactly. So, the world's population is just over 51% women, so we're trying to reflect the society in that sense. What Ros did is, he used Outside Source as a guinea pig, and they were counting every day, and seeing if they could reach 50% women over that month period. Essentially, what they did is prove the model that, by understanding what the data says, we can better represent women on our programme, and we can do better storytelling by enriching our content with different voices. And so, you can see, his project was very much where I was thinking about, what are we doing wrong? What can we do to improve our representation in storytelling?
Nadia Nagamootoo 09:07
But also, the outcome, actually being able to predict and see, with Grenfell, as you were saying, actually be able to look more deeply at the story and hear the different voices that weren't being heard in that particular story.
Nina Goswami 09:24
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, you can take literally any story. So, COVID for example, when COVID first happened, the data showed that women weren't being properly represented in BBC content. So, our teams who are collecting that data at the grassroots, so they're collecting it for themselves so that they can identify what they're doing. They were able to make the change immediately, they didn't have to wait a year down the line when the audience appreciation figures come out, they can make the change there and then because they've already identified that women weren't being represented, their voices weren't being heard. And so, they could make a shift and they could make a change. If we'd had that before with Grenfell, would we have seen something different? I don't know, in terms of our coverage.
Nadia Nagamootoo 10:07
Say, for example, something like COVID, what do you think is the root cause of just not seeing and hearing female voices? I suppose I'm trying to understand well, why? There's obviously a bias in the system in terms of where we're getting these voices from, is that right?
Nina Goswami 10:22
Yeah, absolutely. Using the UK as an example, we’re historically a patriarchal society, and that has been born through the careers and all the different sectors and specialisms that we see. So, when we're looking at who the spokespeople are, that have been put forward by organisations, they tend to be the chief executives or the directors and they are going to be male-heavy, what we're trying to do is change the narrative around that, we're saying, you don't need whoever's at the top of an organisation, you need the expert. And if you start looking for the expert, or the specialist, then all of a sudden, women start coming into play, because you're seeing them at the mid-levels. Obviously, this is changing very slowly in culture, at the moment, we've got a very long way until we see women at the top of most organisations, but it is happening. But there is an inherent built-in thing around that system because women are in those leadership positions. So, it's about getting organisations to perhaps think differently about who they are putting forward as their experts, and raising the profiles and visibility of other diversity of voices.
Nadia Nagamootoo 11:26
I love that the BBC’s 50:50 seems to have such wide impact and reach, and implications for organisations and for society more broadly, because let's face it, whenever I have any workshop around bias, one of the sources is the messages we get from the media, from the film, from TV, from adverts, just in general, the media, and news obviously being one of them. So, for me, this is a really fundamental way of root cause getting to the bias and shifting things. So, these young children listening to their parents talking about what they've heard, can hear the different voices, can see the different voices. So, I think it's so powerful.
Nina Goswami 12:11
Yeah, in terms of inspiration for younger generations, the old adage of, “You can only be what you can see”, so that's always going to be extremely powerful. And using my own example of Moira Stuart, who are going to be those inspirational role models that we can take forward? And I'm pleased to say that obviously, we're seeing that real change across BBC Children's at the moment, which is fantastic. And there's very much, so many of my colleagues’ hard work from a creative diversity and D&I perspective, which brings me back to actually answer your question, which was, how did I do the jump from journalism to creative diversity? And it was all because of this project, because of 50:50.
Nadia Nagamootoo 12:52
Lured in by Ros’, I get it, I would have been.
Nina Goswami 12:56
Yeah, so at the time I was using 50:50 on the BBC’s News at 6 and 10, which is the TV's National Domestic bulletins, and 50:50 was growing organically, word of mouth just across the news. And then the previous Director General, Tony Hall heard about it, Ros had knocked on his door, of course. And when he heard about it, he just went, ‘this is great, we want to make this big, we want to make this spread across the BBC’. And that's when I left the newsroom to help propel this to where we are now.
Nadia Nagamootoo 13:28
It’s quite timely, our conversation, because obviously, the 2022 Impact Report, for 50:50 has just come out. I'd love for you just to offer some highlights.
Nina Goswami 13:38
Yeah, of course, no, I am really excited to be able to share how we've done for 2022. It's now an annual thing that we do, which is to publish the BBC’s figures, but also how our partner organisations are doing as well. But I'm going to stick with the BBC and how we've done. So, we've got now 750 teams across the BBC.
Nadia Nagamootoo 13:59
That’s an incredible number. Just to pause you there, because you haven't made this mandatory, which is what I'm curious about. So, I know that you haven't answered my question on the impact report yet, but let's just get to this. So, teams have volunteered to join 50:50, so how do you get 750 teams volunteering to spend time and energy doing this? What did you do?
Nina Goswami 14:20
So, I look at it as a pincer movement type thing. So, when 50:50 first started, we started as a project around word of mouth, people were going, ‘Oh, that's a great idea, we can see what's happening with Outside Source or what's happening on the news at 10, and then really making a change. Why don't we have a go, we can do that.’ And you're seeing that that's happening at the grassroots, people are really passionate about it. Yeah, we wanted to try and change women's representation for such a long time. We were always in this constant state of trying, but now look, we've got a really simple tool that fits into our day-to-day journalism, and that's one of the biggest things with 50:50, it takes a couple of minutes to do in terms of monitoring, so as a busy journalist, it's really quite simple to do. Yeah. So, when you start factoring all that in, teams are like, ‘yeah, let's have a go, let's see what happens’. So that's the bottom pincer, and the top pincer is obviously if you've got that buy-in from the director general going, ‘yeah, we love this, why don't more people do it? Let's do it’, then that's going to help propel that from a mid-level editorial perspective. So, you've got your grassroots who've always wanted to make the change, and then you've got that leadership buy-in as well. And when you see that happening, people will volunteer, because why wouldn't you?
Nadia Nagamootoo 15:37
Back to your story, 750 teams?
Nina Goswami 15:40
Yeah.
Nadia Nagamootoo 15:37
So, what has the impact been then?
Nina Goswami 15:42
Yeah, so 750 teams have signed up, so it was an extra 150 on the previous year, there's been a lot of change in the BBC. So, across all of those particular teams who took part in what we call the March challenge, so we published the figures for the March of every year, 61% reached 50:50, compared to 35% when they first joined the project, so you can see that massive difference across the board. So, this is for women specifically. And what I quite like looking at is also the figures across a longer period. So, for those who've been in the project for four years or more, 69% of teams reached 50% women in the month of March compared to 31%. So, you see that actually, there's progress over time as well. So, the more consistent you become, the more likely you are to reach that 50%. That seemed very exciting.
Nadia Nagamootoo 16:33
Is there a pushback on this, of saying, ‘well, are we just looking for an expert because they're female, and putting them in front, but they're not necessarily the best person?’
Nina Goswami 16:43
Of course. So, this comes to our core principles. So, 50:50 has three core principles. The first is we collect data to effect change so that we understand, what are the products, and the content that we're putting out. We only actually count what we control, so that means that if we're doing a piece around COVID again, and Boris Johnson is doing a press conference, as the British Prime Minister, we wouldn't count him because we can't control that he is the British prime minister, and we didn't count Theresa May when she was prime minister, so we removed that. So, it's what's in the control of the particular team. So that would be the expert commentators, some of it will be presenters, some reporters, it depends on what type of team. And then the third one which answers your question is, the editorial is paramount. So, you always put the best contributor on. So, it doesn't matter, if you end up that month being at 37 women, because you can't find women who are the best contributors, then that's just it, you now have an evidence base that shows that actually, for some reason, there are no women in this particular area. A great example of that, is we're not at a place yet, if you're just looking at pure construction, where women will be overrepresented, if you're reaching 50% women, then you are over-representing women. However, if you look at civil engineering as a whole, then women are closer to 50%. So, it depends on what you're looking at. So that's why the most paramount thing is, what is best for the editorial? By increasing women's representation, we are enriching the voices within our content, but we're also finding great men as well. One of the biggest problems that I think news and all current affairs programmes were suffering from, is that they weren't looking outside their own contact book. So, if you're not looking for new voices, then you're not going to get a diversity of opinion and thought, it doesn't have to be a woman, it can still be a man, but you don't know they exist because you're not looking for them.
Nadia Nagamootoo 18:33
You're just looking at this. I mean, this is the age-old, from a recruitment perspective, if you're just dipping into the same pool, then of course, the same fish come up. You need to put your rods in different sources and different seas, and then you'll get something that's different. Yeah, absolutely. So, let's move this conversation, I'm really interested in how you've managed to engage partner organisations, because you've got over 140 organisations, not just in the UK, there are a number of organisations around the world who have all signed up to 50:50, have all committed in their own industry, so it's not obviously all just broadcasting field, to make this happen, and to create equal representation. So how have you done that?
Nina Goswami 19:17
Yeah, so this has been a really interesting journey for us as well. So yeah, we've got now more than 145 organisations in 30 countries, taking partners, as you say, it's not just in the media, we’ve got academic, universities, we've got conference businesses, we've got law firms, we've got those from the corporate world as well, all taking part. And the idea from a BBC perspective is that the more people who are trying to or more organisations that are trying to be representative of their own societies or audiences and populations, the more likely the pool is going to widen for us to find contributors. So, if for example, I'm a construction organisation that has only got 2% women representation, but actually the construction sector is at currently 11% women representation, if they're not representing what's happening in their sector, we're not going to be able to represent it properly, it's as simple as that. And this is the second year that we've asked our partner organisations to take part in the March challenge month, and 70 of them did take part, and of those, I think these are really impressive, 73% saw an improvement in their women's representation compared to when they first joined the project, 73%, which is a testament because they have a lot of cultural difference, that means that for some, it's very hard to increase.
Nadia Nagamootoo 20:40
Do you get a sense of what… do you collect information about exactly how they've done that? I mean, they will potentially use different initiatives, and different techniques to get that shift. Do you collect that information? Do you know what they've been doing?
Nina Goswami 20:54
No. So again, because everything is voluntary, what we do from a core 50:50 perspective is, we just ask them to share their overall data. But what we do is we have regular contact meetings with each individual organisation, and so, they can share what their struggles are, and then we can go, ‘Oh, actually, this is what we've done at the BBC, or oh, this organisation in Australia, ABC News for example, tried this, and actually, that worked really well for them. So, maybe you could try that.’ And so, we're acting as an intermediary a little bit in terms of…
Nadia Nagamootoo 21:26
Sharing and collaboration.
Nina Goswami 21:28
Yeah, exactly.
Nadia Nagamootoo 21:30
Tell me, what's the best, or maybe you have a few, the best initiatives or the best ways that you've heard certain of your partner organisations using to get their representation?
Nina Goswami 21:41
We all follow very similar ideas, I mean, the ones that are quite different for organisations like the British Fashion council. So, they are acting as an umbrella group, which is really exciting for the fashion industry. So, what they do for the London Fashion Week, which is three times a year is, they ask the design houses to sign up to 50:50, and then they collect their data for them. And they’re not looking just at the catwalk, because obviously there would be 50% women's representation in London Fashion Week, but they’re looking at behind the catwalk, who are the people who are putting the shows on? Who are the actual tailors, the hairdressers? Who are the people who put everything together? So, they're looking at it from a very different perspective than other organisations at the moment, they decided that they were going to create a QR code that people scan, and then they just fill out a quick form, and then that data goes into the council, and then the council then distributes it out to the design houses afterward. So, then the design houses can use that information for the next Fashion Week. And so, they're halfway through an 18-month pilot at the moment, so we'll see how they get old.
Nadia Nagamootoo 22:49
Again, it's another example of making it easy, right? Making it simple, this can't be a lengthy, challenging thing that people just add to a long list of things that they have to do, because you'll just never get it back. You'll never get the data.
Nina Goswami 23:03
Exactly. And what's really great about it is that it still sticks to the core principles, use data to affect change, counting what you control, and never compromising on quality, still has the three core principles of 50:50, but they've taken it to a different space, which is really, really fascinating. One training organisation, they've realised that when they started collecting their data, they just hadn't trained women to be spokespeople.
Nadia Nagamootoo 23:28
What a realization.
Nina Goswami 23:30
Just because they had the data. And so it was a real simple fix for them in terms of getting to 50:50, they knew the women that they wanted to train, it was a realisation that actually, though they thought these women were experts in their field, and they would be bringing in spokespeople, the women themselves didn't have the confidence to put themselves forward for an opportunity. But with a bit of media training, and now they see a lot more increase in the women that are put forward as spokespeople for them. So, sometimes the data just show you something that is actually really, really simple that you thought was happening, but actually wasn't. So, it could be as simple as that.
Nadia Nagamootoo 24:08
Yeah. Do you at the BBC attain 50:50 actively targeting certain industries because you have an idea, like you just said, construction, right? There's just in general, an issue within that industry that there just aren't as many women. So, do you therefore actively try and get partner organisations in that industry? Or how do you get partner organisations engaged? I suppose this is my broader question.
Nina Goswami 24:33
We do have an External Partners Manager who's the point person for these new organisations, and also the current ones, but we're not that organised, let's be honest.
Nadia Nagamootoo 24:44
You take whoever's interested.
Nina Goswami 24:45
Well, do you know what though? I know it sounds funny, but that is the best thing because those people and organisations are passionate about creating change. There's no point fighting an uphill battle, if people aren't interested, why should we spend time chasing that particular organisation? If they're keen and want to make a change, then those are the people that we're interested to work with. That's one of the beauties of 50:50 being voluntary, is that the people who are involved in it are super passionate about creating change, and that's why it's successful. Often, if some organisations or people feel that something is a tick box, it fails, we see that time and time again. So, if you can, through passion, and collaboration, you can create momentum, then that's what's going to keep things going, that's what 50:50 survives on, it strides on passion.
Nadia Nagamootoo 25:43
This whole momentum that you're talking about, needs to be a collaborative thing, right? It can't just be one person in the organisation trying to go, ‘yeah, we'll sign up for it’. And then it needs to be led from the top, what are the success factors for organisations wanting to sign up to 50:50?
Nina Goswami 26:06
For the 50:50 projects, what we tend to look for are, as I say, those passionate people, and it doesn't have to be from the top. That's all. It didn't start at the top of the BBC, it started with some journalists, and then it became something that grew. We're looking for organisations who are happy to just have a pilot and have a go, I call it happy fail. So, you have permission to try something, and if it doesn't work, so be it, you will learn something from it not working, and then you'll be able to reiterate and try again. So yeah, it doesn't have to be the boss at the top. So, EMAP is a great example of a 50:50 project, the leader Martin Quinn is absolutely passionate about women's representation, and it was he who started it. And though EMAP is a publishing organisation, he found one magazine that was willing to do it. And so, they piloted it, tried it out, and there are now 13 titles across EMAP who are doing it. But it does start with one person because there has to be someone to lead what's happening, but it's through collaboration that the expansion happens, that the actual change takes place. And one of the things that's really important is, yes, it might start with one person, but we need to make sure that everyone has the same opportunity to keep driving it forward. Because what happens if that one person decides to leave the organisation? Where do things go after that? So, that old idea of succession planning then comes into play.
Nadia Nagamootoo 27:35
Yeah. What springs to mind here? Because I'm absolutely 100% about data-led DEI, I think that data leads to change, and it really helps in understanding what's going on, it can tell you so much. You've given so many good examples of how organisations just didn't realise that they'd never trained women, for example, that everyone that has been put forward is men. And I love that. I guess I'm curious about if we're focusing on data, what else needs to happen in order to create the inclusion piece? We talk to our clients around… well, you can count the numbers, but actually, how do you make those numbers count? How do you make sure that genuinely, when you have those women, for example, we're talking about gender representation, they are valued and that they're seen and heard, and given that voice? Now, it's quite clear, I think, from the broadcasting perspective, how you're giving them the voice when you've got the numbers, because it's right in front of us, and we're hearing their voices. Does that translate as well in different partner organisations, the British Council, for example?
Nina Goswami 28:39
Yeah, so I boil this down to three words. So, count, share, and change.
Nadia Nagamootoo 28:45
Count, share, change.
Nina Goswami 28:47
Yeah. So, it's pretty simple. And when you put it like that, so once you have that data, and you understand what the data is, you share it with other people in your organisation, and together, you come up with the solution, and then you make the change. Sounds really straightforward, right?
Nadia Nagamootoo 29:00
Yes. But actually, I imagine a lot of organisations might be like, ‘well, we've counted the data’, and then they stop there.
Nina Goswami 29:08
That's it, you need to share it, you need to then work out what the actions are to make the change, and then you keep the counting going. Because there's no point counting, as I say, I'm an advocate of accounting every day, if you get it, depends on what you're doing, obviously, but the more data you have in real-time, the faster you can react to it and adapt and change what you're doing, identifying the gaps of the process that needs changing, and then making that change. To try and reflect society and to make sure you have a diversity of voice, you need to be moving as society changes, what the UK looks like in 2022 is very different from what it looked like in 1962. So, without understanding what society looks like, you can't be reflecting that within your organisation, and you can't be therefore reaching your consumer market, because that's what, let's be honest, is the bottom line. How do you get consumers into your business? And you have to reflect them in what you are doing if you want them to come to you. So, count, share, change is my answer to pretty much everything, I use it for literally, like even…
Nadia Nagamootoo 30:13
What do you want for dinner?
Nina Goswami 30:14
Yeah, exactly. You had spaghetti bolognaise two days in a row, you're not having that again. So, it could be, literally, I live my life by it now. So, it doesn't matter what organisation it is, it doesn't matter if it's the branding of your organisation, or whatever it may be, just using those three ideas can really, really make a difference. And visibility is so important in terms of when you're trying to give people a voice, so internal comms have a real piece to play in organisations. So, when we look at organisations that aren't media organisations, one of the first places that we ask them to start using 50:50 is in their internal comms and in their external comms. Because if they're creating visibility in those two spaces, then the likelihood is that inclusion is starting to take place within their organisation.
Nadia Nagamootoo 31:07
Yeah. So, I know from reading the report that you are starting to look at representation across ethnic minority groups, and also disabled contributors at the BBC. So, is that the next step? Or is there more that you're going to be looking at?
Nina Goswami 31:23
Yes, innovation always. So, we're 18 months into our use of the 50:50 monitoring for disability and ethnicity.
Nadia Nagamootoo 31:32
You have different statistics, right?
Nina Goswami 31:33
Yeah.
Nadia Nagamootoo 31:34
Because you're measuring it based on representation across society.
Nina Goswami 31:37
Absolutely. So, if you took the UK, we're working towards the BBC’s workforce targets, which are 50:20:12, 50% women, 20% ethnic minorities, and 12% disability. However, if you are BBC Scotland, 20% ethnic minority representation is too high, their population figure is 8%, so they'll be working to 8%, for BBC London, it would be too low, and they're looking at 50%, so 50%
Nadia Nagamootoo 32:04
Is it really 50% ethnic diversity in the London region?
Nina Goswami 32:08
Yeah. So, what our teams are doing is they're reflecting their particular audience in their target. So, when we report the figures for disability and ethnicity, it's about the target that they are looking to reach. So, if we look at how disability teams did, so there are just over 250 teams across the BBC who are doing this now, for disability, 21% reached their target, which sounds low, but that's compared to 15% when they first started, and for those who've been monitoring for 18 months or more, the figures go up. So, 53% reached their target, compared to 18% when they first started. So, you can see the longer that you're monitoring, the more likely you're going to create that change.
Nadia Nagamootoo 32:53
And do you think it's just because you end up sourcing, you find these contacts, new people, and therefore, you know that they exist? Or is it because it ends up being front and center of mind, that it's always a question of, have we got representation here? But it just becomes a default in the thinking process.
Nina Goswami 33:10
Yeah, absolutely. It's a learned thing, isn't it? So, once you start thinking about it as part of your daily workflow, then it gets ingrained into your particular team, your organisation, and that's where you would start seeing that happening. But if you stop using that data, you will go backward, there's no doubt about that, you have to keep assessing, keep reviewing where you are, identifying the gaps, and making changes, it's not the easiest thing to do.
Nadia Nagamootoo 33:36
No, whilst you've made the collection part easy, actually, it sounds like it can be if you're going to do it properly, resource intensive, you need to put time, energy, and effort into having these conversations, and then figuring out what to do if it hasn't quite met the target.
Nina Goswami 33:51
Exactly. I mean, you can make 50:50 as resource-heavy as you like, or as light touch as you want. I mean, I always talk about, a 1% change is at least a positive change, obviously, upwards is what we're always looking for. So, as I say, there are organisations out there who are stacking a lot of money into full-time positions to push it forward, but then there are others who are still working on a voluntary basis where their leads are volunteering and doing it around the day job. But what we're seeing as their 50:50 projects are maturing, is that most organisations are starting to have someone who is either full-time or 50% dedicated to doing it.
Nadia Nagamootoo 34:26
It’s almost inevitable that once you embark on this journey actually it grows into a role in itself, that if you're going to dedicate that time and energy, it needs to have someone there behind it to help with the data collection and the sharing.
Nina Goswami 34:39
Yeah, because the thing is, I think that organisations start to realise, actually, we're seeing real results, we're seeing consumers coming back to our product. If you look at the latest 50:50 audience figures, 69% noticed more women on our content, which is up 7%, this is like online content, BBC Sounds, iPlayer that kind of thing. 80% of women 16 to 24, which is our target audience for us 80%, 80% are enjoying content more because of the increase in women's representation, and that's 27 percentage points up on last year, which is amazing. And then the big money spinner one, 68% of women aged 16 to 34 consuming more content that’s 10 percentage points on last year. So, if you're getting women, whichever underrepresented group that you're looking at, consuming more of your content, then you are going to be selling more of that, right?
Nadia Nagamootoo 35:35
Someone behind it who's putting in the energy. So, of course, different organisations will see and measure it in a slightly different way, right? So what I'm hearing is important, that if you're going to collect the data, share the data, do something with the data, that the other measurement aspects, the other data that you need to collect are then how your customers, your consumers, whoever you have on the other end, the reason for the organisation being, have recognised that it's almost like a positive reinforcement, we all need that, don't we? As humans, this energy and effort that we're putting in actually are making a difference, and the only way we can know that is if whoever we're selling to or whoever we're trying to attract sees it, enjoys it, likes it, wants to buy from us more.
Nina Goswami 36:20
More data. Hurray!
Nadia Nagamootoo 36:26
So, if organisations want to sign up for 50:50, is that something that they can do? Is it open to all?
Nina Goswami 36:32
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, obviously, we have a little bit of a process that we go through with our due diligence and stuff like that. But it's Miranda Holt, who's our External Partners Manager, who will help you with that, you can literally go to bbc.com/5050, and there's loads of information about becoming a partner on there. Or you can get in touch with us directly, I'm on LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
Nadia Nagamootoo 36:58
And we will put all the links to that in the show notes so that organisations can if they want to find out more information and hopefully get some more partner organisations, because it's such, such an amazing project. Nina, it's been wonderful to speak to you and hear all about the project that you helped set up, and the incredible impact and results that we're seeing. I mean, the BBC is such a force of influence in our UK society, I feel well, obviously around the world, but particularly here in the UK, and to hear how this is spinning out into much more, not just gender, now with minority representation and disability, and it will no doubt continue. So, congratulations already on the success, and it's just been an absolute pleasure speaking to you. Thank you.
Nina Goswami 37:46
Thanks for having me on. And just remember three words, count, share, and change.
Nadia Nagamootoo 37:51
Count, share, change. That concludes Episode 22 of the Why care podcast. I've taken so much from this conversation with Nina, and it's really made me think about the value of data and how vital it is that we can collect it and also use it to accelerate change. Do let Nina and I know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter with the handle @NadiaNagamootoo. As always, I really appreciate your support of this podcast by leaving a review on whatever platform you're listening to and spreading the word by sharing it with your friends and family. Huge thanks to Mauro Kenji, for editing this podcast, and Jon Rice for supporting with the show notes and getting it out there on social media.
