While companies are starting to become more diverse, racial equality in management still remains an issue. Too often, minorities are overlooked for management promotions, even when they’re equally or even more qualified than others.

Improving racial equality starts with ensuring you have a more ethical workplace. By implementing an ethics hotline, you’re able to improve your business’s ethics and diversity at all levels.

Report Any Racism Problems

If racism is allowed to go unchecked in a company, racial inequality in management also becomes an issue. In fact, simply having a diverse entry-level workforce is difficult. If management or even HR personnel are the ones causing the race issues, it’s impossible for employees to report the problems to them.

Instead, an ethics hotline provides a safe, effective way to report racial discrimination to an unbiased team who investigates the problem. It’s then up to the business to make the appropriate changes to end racism and create a more equal, diverse workplace.

Learn To Notice Discrimination

For the average employee who sees everyone equally, they might not immediately recognize racial inequality. This is especially true if they work alongside minorities daily. The fact that none of their minority co-workers get promoted might not be obvious at first.

Invest in discrimination training for all employees. This helps them notice small issues that have a major effect. For example, if there’s a promotion to apply for and black employees are qualified, employees should notice if those employees never get interviewed or promoted. Or, if opportunities to lead a team only go to white co-workers even though minority counterparts are better qualified, employees need to take notice.

Training on discrimination and how to report it using your company’s ethic hotline helps drastically reduce overall discrimination. As racism in general is addressed, so are issues with racial equality in management.

Make Everyone Feel Equal

With an ethics hotline in place along with detailed guidelines on how to use it and what will happen for violating our ethics code, every employee feels more equal. They know if they experience discrimination, there’s a system in place to help them. Of course, this requires businesses to act upon reports immediately to rectify issues.

When people know their actions are being watched and judged by their fellow employees, they’re less likely to show bias and treat minorities unfairly. This ensures all races get an equal opportunity at promotions and management positions.

Prove The System Works

An ethics hotline only helps to improve racial equality in management if employees know it works. If employees file reports but never hear or see any type of follow-up (even if it’s not in their favor), they’ll feel the system is broken and won’t use it. This can cause businesses to lose valuable employees of all races.

Establish a team and process to investigate every report fairly. If racism is discovered, take steps as quickly as possible to deal with the issue immediately to make everyone feel safer and more valued.