FOR diversity and inclusivity specialist Binna Kandola, his interest in the subject derived from his own personal experiences.
It began when the academic was sat in a pub at Christmas time with a close friend, shortly after graduating from the University of Sheffield. The pair was enjoying each other’s company, catching up and swapping stories, when his friend revealed he had faced discrimination because of his race. It was the moment which would change the course of Kandola’s life, spurring him on to study the racial bias and prejudice that exists in society.
Today, he is recognised as a prominent business psychologist, whose research on prejudice, unconscious bias, privilege and power has brought change at individual, organisational and societal levels.
Known for his consultancy firm Pearn Kandola, which offers advice to companies on issues such as race inequality, he has worked with a number of prominent clients. These include the BBC, British Airways, Lloyds Banking Group, M&S and Royal Mail.
Pearn Kandola, which he jointly founded in 1984, could arguably be referred to as a business idea ahead of its time. Although issues relating to diversity and inclusion are broached commonly in workplaces today, such topics were a rarity in boardrooms back then.
In fact, business psychology was barely recognised as a separate discipline in its own right when Pearn Kandola was first launched.
“At that time, if the work you did as a psychologist was with commercial companies, you were simply referred to as a business consultant,” Kandola, who is also a visiting professor at Leeds University Business School and Aston University Business School, explains.
“That was one of the things we wanted to change – we wanted to be recognised as a distinct profession. We never used the term consultants to describe ourselves, and there is much more awareness of the distinct profession of business psychology now.”
In 2020, the global protests relating to the Black Lives Matter movement brought many discussions relating to racial equality to the surface. In turn, there has been a surge in efforts to diversify workforces and promote inclusivity in the UK.
However, Kandola believes a main issue for organisations is the notion that racism is “a thing of the past”.
Racism is associated with thuggery, violence and abuse, he says, so it is deemed as “obvious and blatant” behaviour. “Psychologists refer to this as old-fashioned racism,” he tells GG2 Power List. “By way of contrast, modern racism is indirect, subtle and critically is ambiguous – it leaves people thinking ‘did that just happen?’ This has a bigger impact on people’s self-esteem and self-confidence.”
This year Kandola’s work continued to shine a light on the level of racism and inequality in the UK. In May, he studied the increase of antiChinese prejudice in the UK since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
His research revealed people of Chinese heritage had experienced a 50 per cent increase in discriminatory behaviour against them since the pandemic broke. The results garnered more than 250 pieces of media coverage, including national titles, such as The Guardian and Huffington Post.
He helped to run a successful series of webinars on the topic of ‘Racism at Work’, featuring Pearn Kandola psychologists in June. More than 850 viewers were estimated to have joined each individual webinar and the videos have since amassed over 10,000 views online.
To improve people’s wellbeing during lockdown, Kandola and his team also created a wellbeing site, with advice and support freely available for anyone.
Besides being a senior partner and co-founder of Pearn Kandola, Kandola is the author of a number of critically acclaimed books, including The Invention of Difference: The story of gender bias at work; The Value of Difference: Eliminating bias in organisations; and Racism at Work: The Danger of Indifference.
His latest book, a collection of discussions by business psychologists on how wellbeing and workplace performance are fundamentally linked, was released in August.
Edited by Kandola, Free to Soar: Race & Wellbeing in Organisations explores the connection between minorities’ exclusion in the workplace and the impact on their emotional state and performance.
“The book tells us about the importance of having an organisation which enables us to express as much of our identity as possible, because hiding our identities has consequences,and those are in terms of our well-being” the academic, who is based in Warwickshire, says.
Kandola, whose parents immigrated to the UK from Punjab in the 1950s, has had his fair share of discriminatory and racist experiences.
He highlights one instance when he took part in a diversity conference at a major UK firm to discuss his 2018 book Racism at Work.
A member of the audience asked him a question which Kandola described as “blatantly racist”. He challenged the individual but was reprimanded for doing so.
Later, he insisted on speaking to the organisation’s chairman on the incident. The chairman told Kandola he needed to see it from the audience member’s point of view.
“He was basically asking me to see it from a racist perspective and I was furious,” he says. “I was essentially blamed by the organisation for making this an unpleasant event. I’m still angry about that now.”
The inclusivity expert has led on critical charitable work too. He supported Mosaic, a Prince’s Trust charity, to create the International Leadership Programme. The scheme is designed to help young people from across the world to develop their leadership potential.
Currently, he leads work on the Drive Forward charity programme, having established a programme for young adults with experience of the care system to build their resilience, well-being and work-place skills.
The work takes him into communities, giving him an insight into the positive results that some of the charity work can help to achieve.
He said: “Some of the youngsters we have been involved with have gone back to their countries to set up schools or finance schemes or entrepreneurship schemes, and it’s great when you feel you are having a positive impact at that sort of level.”
Kandola holds a number of accolades to his name, including an Honorary DSc from the University of Aston (where he studied for his PhD), which he received in 2012. He was also awarded an OBE in 2008 for his services to disadvantaged people and diversity.
