Offside: Tackling Discrimination in Football

In this episode of the Inclusive Growth Show, I was joined by Tony Burnett, Chief Executive of Kick It Out, to learn more about his mission to address racism within football. Tony talked to me about his aim to tackle discrimination within the sport to make it a safer and more inclusive environment.

Tony shared his experience of a dual heritage background; leading major diversity initiatives at companies like Ford and Lloyds Bank; as well as his experience at West London's police force, shedding light on the critical role leadership plays in driving meaningful change. His story offers a powerful testament to how senior leadership commitment, capability, and compliance can make a difference in tackling discrimination and promoting inclusivity.

If you're enjoying this episode and looking to boost equity, inclusion, and diversity in your organisation, my team and I are here to help. Our team specialises in crafting data-driven strategies, developing inclusive leaders, designing fair recruitment processes, and enhancing disability confidence. With a blend of professional expertise and lived experience, we're ready to support you on your journey. Reach out to us through our website.

If you want to build a more inclusive workplace that you can be proud of please visit our website to learn more.

Transcript

Speaker 1: Welcome to The Inclusive Growth Show with Toby Mildon, future proofing your business by creating a diverse workplace.

Toby Mildon: Hey there. Thank you ever so much for tuning into this episode of the Inclusive Growth Podcast. I am Toby Mildon, and today I'm joined by Tony Burnett. And Tony is the chief executive of Kick It Out, which is addressing discrimination within football and sport. And so we're just gonna be learning more about Tony, what he does, what he's hoping to achieve, his background and things like that. So Tony, it's lovely to see you. Thanks for joining us.

Tony Burnett: Hi, Toby. Thanks for having me on. Lovely to meet you.

Toby Mildon: Before we dive into the questions, do you mind introducing yourself a bit further about who you are, what you do, your personal and professional background? That'd be great.

Tony Burnett: I guess, first thing to say is that I'm dual heritage. My dad was from Barbados and I'm also a kind of Barbadian citizen. And my mum was English, grew up in Bolton. So I'm a northern lad although I've not lived there, for many years. [laughter] And I started my career actually in commercial business. So I was with, Diageo in a commercial business role in the '90s. And, essentially kind of transitioned into ED&I, so my first ED&I role was in 2001 working for Ford Motor Company. I was European diversity manager there, at the time of, so really challenging stuff actually around what was then the kind of truck plant within Ford. They were under investigation from the old CRE. They had some really serious issues of racism. So that was a kind of a baptism of fire, really, joining Ford at that point.

Tony Burnett: And after a couple of years in Ford, I branched out and worked for myself for eight years. Had a consultancy business working in the UK and South Africa predominantly, and I did a lot of work with big organisations, public and private sector, home office and HR, department of health, various police forces, Kellogg's, Diageo, Ford, etcetera, from a private sector perspective, and a lot of work into Africa following the Black economic empowerment agenda. Trying to, which also covered lots of other perceptive characteristics. It wasn't just about, supporting people of Black heritage, for many years. And, I actually carried on working as a consultant in and around South Africa up until the COVID outbreak in 2020. So I spent probably 15 years, longer actually in and out of various roles within South Africa. After my consulting business, I became head of ED&I at Lloyds Banking Group.

Tony Burnett: I did four years there. We did some really good stuff, empowering, particularly on the empowerment of senior women within the banking and financial services sector. And then laterally, before I joined, Kick It Out, I was, assistant director ED&I at West Midlands Police which again, was an interesting role. Completely different 'cause the whole objective really around working in a policing organisation is how you make sure that the services that you provide for the community are done in a really inclusive way. So it was different to obviously private sector motivations, but it was, again, another fascinating learning curve, and I've been with Kick It Out now for the last three and a half years. So, yeah. Feels like I've been around forever, to be honest, Toby.

Toby Mildon: You got some really great experience. And we realised before we recorded this show that our paths may cross, 'cause I used to work for Lloyds Bank, that was one of my first jobs. And whenever I do some public speaking engagements, I say that actually Lloyds Bank was really instrumental in my career. It was one of the first, it was my first job after receiving lots of rejections from other employers. And actually I worked with a really inclusive bank manager, and if it wasn't for his sponsorship, I wouldn't have been able to go and work with big companies like British Airways, Accenture, and the BBC. So I've got fond memories of working for Lloyds Bank.

Tony Burnett: Yes, me too. Yeah, like every organisation, they've got their issues, but they did more I think in this area, in trying to create an inclusive organisation than the vast majority of organisations I've come across. That's for sure.

Toby Mildon: Definitely. So you are the chief executive of Kick It Out. So it's an organisation campaigning to end racism and discrimination in football, which we'll come on and talk about in a bit more detail. But throughout your career, what are some of the most influential ways that you've seen businesses make an impact within the world of EDI? 

Tony Burnett: I like a kind of model, I guess because I'm quite simplistic, so I like a framework and I think, one of the challenges that I find in our area, Toby, is I think, and this is no disrespect to other practitioners, but there's a lot of stuff made up on the hoof, I think. It's almost, and, I'm sick of seeing kind of platitudes from people in our space that have no real effect on changing organisations. So I always think of this world, in terms of three Cs, commitment, capability, and compliance. So the first bit in commitment, this is about, it's not what, whether a... It's about senior leadership, which is always kind of trotted out, but it's not about senior leadership signing up to supporting this agenda. And then, doing loads of really good PR.

Tony Burnett: This is about senior leaders really understanding the challenges for their organisation, really understanding the drivers for our space, for being inclusive and then committing to actions to drive change. And that's not about attending a pride event or signing up to an awareness week. That's about, are you committed to really driving the fundamental change mechanisms and systemic changes that are needed to drive inclusion? So then this and that. That's what I've always seen. Lloyds is another great example where the, the Chief Executive at the time, António Horta-Osório got this. He understood it. He was completely committed to it. And you could see that in, every action, not just his EDI action plan, but every single time he spoke on anything business related, he knew that inclusion was a core part of it. The second bit then for me is about capability.

Tony Burnett: And this is where I do refer to practitioners and, you'll be aware of this as much as me, Toby, that for a long time the ED&I space has, been unregulated, really. And so when you define what does a competent ED&I person look like, often it's down to the opinion of the organisation on what that job spec looks like, what the capabilities, that support that, I know there are university courses now around our space, but there was... There's never really been a defined set of competencies around ED&I. And what that leads to and what it's led to for me is quite often some people who've put into positions, around our space due to obsessive characteristic or because they're the loudest person from a particular group in the organisation. And that is completely different to me to having fundamental capability. And when I talk about capability in our space, I think the biggest most fundamental factor is not necessarily understanding difference, because...

Tony Burnett: We can teach that, we do educate that it's about change. You know, do you as a practitioner in our space, understand what systemic change looks like and do you understand how to drive change in an organisation? And if you don't, the default mechanism then becomes, we'll support every awareness week that's going. We'll go out and do events. We'll put evenings, we'll do awards. All those things have their place, but it doesn't drive systemic change. And when I talk about that capability aspect around systemic change, it's fundamentally about understanding organisational systems. How do people, how do organisations recruit? Being able to unpack that process, what's the talent management system? Being able to unpack that process, being able to understand how you influence senior leaders to really inclusion within their day-to-day activity just as a core part of business. And help them do that in a way that it doesn't become a separate agenda.

Tony Burnett: So all those things I define as capability.

Toby Mildon: Yeah.

Tony Burnett: And the third bit, which, and I think this is the area organisations often fall down on as well, but the ones I've worked in get it right, do understand this, you have to have a compliance mechanism. So again, Lloyds is a great example of this, where it's important senior leaders and therefore it's part of your objectives as a senior leader. It's part of your objectives and therefore it's part of your reward structure. And again, you know, I know private sector organisation do this differently, but there has to be a consequence for not being effective at delivering on the inclusion agenda, otherwise it just doesn't get done. Whether that's through your performance management and reward process, whether that's through external measures, etcetera. But there has to be a compliance mechanism to hold leaders to account. So, those are the three things I'd say, you know, organisations that get this, get this right, understand what commitment looks like, have the capability to drive change, and they have really strong compliance mechanisms in place to make sure leaders are held to account for delivering this.

Toby Mildon: I love what you're saying because A, you've really simplified it, the three Cs. And it's also stuff that I talk about as well. So in my first book, Inclusive Growth, there's a whole chapter on change. And the reason why I wrote a chapter on change management was because I noticed that rigorous change management was often missing in EDI strategies. So organisations then became really frustrated because they weren't making the desired impact, but it's because they didn't have a proper change management process or strategy around what they were trying to achieve. I really like what you're saying around compliance and actually holding senior leaders accountable. And we know that accountability is a key component to a high performing team. Don't know if you've ever come across Patrick Lencioni's work, the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He basically came up with a pyramid of a high performing team, but he presents it as the kind of the dysfunctions of a team. At the top of the pyramid, you've got a lack of focus of results or a lack of accountability. So yeah, what you're saying is like completely spot on. So what are some of the exclusionary processes and systems that you've seen within the various workplaces that you've worked in? 

Tony Burnett: Oh, this will be a, long one actually. So we... I think the, probably the first example I can recall was... Was the... Some of the challenges that we had at Ford, which were around allocation of jobs. So in the old kind of truck plant environment, that was the number of some of the challenges that we found there. So, and often there was no just no objective process to who got various jobs. And what that kinda led to essentially was almost a cartel that was operated in that part of the organisation. Now I refer to that 'cause that essentially still goes on that, and that's probably one of the most exclusionary practices that I see, whether it's in a kind of truck plant or whether it's in leadership positions. And we have the same kind of challenges within football and other areas.

Tony Burnett: I see leadership where essentially there is no open process for how you aspire to or achieve success and or get into a certain role. It just becomes somebody's subjective opinion about who's right for the job and what that leads to obviously is, massive levels of exclusion. And I think this is the biggest challenge we've got from a senior leadership perspective. You know, when we look at things like the Fortune-100 and Headhunters, having had many conversations with them, frustrating conversations over the years. We'll say, we'll make excuses such as we've gotta get top talent internationally and we've gotta, you know, we, want the best people, well seven of our Fortune-100 organisations at the last count were female that, were led by female. So seven CEOs out of our top 100 organisations.

Toby Mildon: Yeah.

Tony Burnett: And when you compare that to the education stat and everything else, there is not a prayer for me that we are getting the best people for the job. And this is one of the things probably... It's probably the most exclusion thing. I think we've got a myth of meritocracy in this country. If I just look at our prime ministers, you know, 40% of our prime minister are being in-educated, if it was a meritocracy, that is statistically impossible. And so I think one of the challenges we've got, as practitioner, is just to bust that myth of meritocracy, first of all, that, you know, we're not meritocratic. The reason why the, people like you and I are needed is because we're not a meritocratic society. We're far from it. That's the biggest barrier to driving change for me is, kind of busting that myth in meritocracy and trying to make more positions, particularly senior positions, accessible to people from different backgrounds so that we are getting the best talent and the best talent is able to come through and not just the talent that's defined by a few specific privileged individuals that tend to re-circulate and tend to kind of get jobs whenever they want them Pretty much.

Toby Mildon: Yeah, that's very interesting. Whenever I do training on inclusive recruitment or bias, one of my watch words is we run a meritocracy around here. It's always the best person for the job. And I always challenge them on that to say, okay, you know, where's the evidence? Give me the evidence that there is a real true meritocracy in this organisation. That it's not down to subjective decision making or who you know, or who you're related to in some instances.

Tony Burnett: And just to, I don't know if it's useful, Toby, but just a really great example. The most, all, the example I've seen of this actually was when, I was in policing we had the old promotion processing. In West Mids at the time, required line manager sign off for somebody to go through a process. So we scrapped line manager sign off because obviously when you look at the data and who's coming through, there was some serious challenges in the system and we basically said that anyone who felt they were able to be promoted could apply. And then all the candidates were put through a really detailed and rigorous assessment center process with all the right rigours in place, different group of assessors with... The right skills, capabilities from different backgrounds to alleviate bias.

Tony Burnett: And it just changed the landscape of who was getting through the promotion process because we took out the lack of objectivity. We have line managers. Who quite often got, obviously got their own biases, but they've also got their own history of who they like, they don't like the personal relationships, etcetera, that were clouding their view. And so that's key really is just how do you find a process and no process is 100% objective, but I think you can get to processes that are far more objective and fair when you do adopt principles where people can share their talents and skills and abilities in an open way.

Toby Mildon: Yeah, I love it. I'm a big fan of just systems thinking and actually how it's the systems and the processes that create biases. Like we as human beings, we have our biases, but the thing is, as human beings, we create systems and processes that just adopt our biases, so.

Tony Burnett: Absolutely.

Toby Mildon: I think it's important that organisations look at their systems and processes and what bias exists within those systems. And then you can redesign the systems to be a little bit more objective. I really like that example that you gave where people in the police force before almost had to have their line manager endorsement to get promoted, which is just riddled with bias. But then you made the process a little bit more objective by introducing the assessment centers and introducing other people to review those candidates. That's really cool.

Tony Burnett: I think that's a really great point as well, Toby, 'cause I couldn't agree more. You know, I think our work back to this capability aspect is about systemic thinking. It's about system change. And so that's why I get a little bit frustrated when I see what I call useless rubbish, really in our space. You know, you don't want to gotta go on LinkedIn and somebody's kind of shouting about something that's completely irrelevant to what we do. But I mean, essentially what we do and the change management aspect we're talking about is systems thinking. It's we look at systems, we analyze where the systems are not inclusive and that's how we implement change. But that requires a certain level of capability, doesn't it? 

Toby Mildon: Yeah, definitely. I've talked to loads of organisations who their diversity and inclusion strategy is just to run lots of awareness days that they'll sponsor a pride float or they'll organise an event on International Women's Day, or they'll do a webinar for the UN International Day of Persons with Disability. And it is important to raise awareness about difference, but it doesn't really, it's not really impactful enough. It's... If you want real lasting change in your business, you need to be thinking with systems in mind and thinking about the employee experience and what roadblocks and speed humps are holding people back or preventing them from either entering your business or getting promoted within your business. And then your job as a HR practitioner is basically to remove those obstacles as much as possible.

Tony Burnett: Completely agree.

Toby Mildon: Moving on to your work in Kick It Out, when it comes to sport and football in particular, how are you making an impact? 

Tony Burnett: Our mission is really, really straightforward, actually. We want to try and create a game where everyone feels they belong. And so we do that. We've got two main goals, really. The first one is creating an inclusive culture around football. And the second one is representation. We need more people from lots of different backgrounds. So if I look at the first one around culture, obviously, we do a lot of work in areas like education, which is important. So for example, we run training courses for, players in academies. We have a fan education program for, to try and rehabilitate fans who've behaved inappropriately where kind of any kind of custodial sentence or severe punishment isn't necessarily applicable. We'll put them through a one-to-one training program so we can educate them on what they said, where that came from, how we can change that.

Tony Burnett: We also try work with football on a broader level. So we've got an advocacy team that do a lot of work on things like the online safety bill. One of the big factors that's driving a lack of belonging really for people in football over the last couple of years is the because it's so high profile, is the amount of abuse that circulates on social media. And so we're trying to hold the social media organisations to take responsibility for firstly, stopping that happening, but also when it does happen, being more effective in dealing with it. And so there's a macro picture as well as what we do locally, and football's got its challenges when it comes to culture. You know, I can go to, when I say football, I'll just define this, Toby, by saying there are two different cultures operating in football for the men and the women's game.

Tony Burnett: The women's game. You can go along to a professional game, not if you've ever been, I don't know if you're a fan, but you'll have a really inclusive experience both off the pitch, in the stands, it's a family environment. You're made to feel welcomed. There's no abusive chanting amongst the players and the coaches. You know, the people are openly gay. It's not even a conversation. It's absolutely an inclusive environment. They can do more from a representation perspective when it comes to people from socially deprived backgrounds, which also has an impact on Black and minority ethnic people. But from a broad perspective, it's an inclusive environment. You look at the men's game, I go to a men's game, I probably wouldn't want to take my child if they're under 16 or 18 'cause I know there's gonna be verbal abuse, there's gonna be swearing, there's gonna be horrific chants related to the referee, the coach, their families, etcetera.

Tony Burnett: And then if I look at the environment in the kind of playing and coaching stuff, it is very White, heterosexual male. And when I say White, heterosexual male, 40% of the players are Black. But the culture, particularly amongst coaches, we've got fewer than five Black or Asian coaches in the 92 professional clubs. So 40% in terms of players doesn't translate into the coaching environment, which is, as I said, White and heterosexual male. We've had one player in the last 30 years that's come out and, openly identified as being gay. So culturally, I think men's football has got some real challenges when it comes to inclusion. And I think men's football to be fair can learn women's game on that.

Toby Mildon: Yeah. I mean, why do you think that these two cultures have emerged because they're so far removed from one another. Yeah. It's the same sport, isn't it? 

Tony Burnett: It is, yeah. I mean, it's a really good question. And I don't know, other than the only thing I can think is that women's football was banned in the UK for 50 years, between 1921 and 1971.

Toby Mildon: Really? 

Tony Burnett: Women were banned from playing football. Yes. In, on an organised level. So women's football arguably is, well, not arguably is, is younger. And I think what they've done and what they've been able to do is develop a culture that is removed from the men's game. It's a completely different environment. And as in, as I say, it's far more inclusive, I think to address the challenges of the men's of culture in the men's game almost requires again, what we were talking about earlier. It requires a dismantling of the system from lots of levels to really get to more levels of inclusion and not least having the conversation, which football it seems reluctant to have around what is appropriate behavior amongst supporters.

Tony Burnett: You know, I speak to people all the time and I'm a passion of supporter of my club, but I speak to people all the time who behave in a way, when they walk into a football ground they would never dream of behaving if they'd gone to the theater watching a play or if they're in their own workplace. But they go through a tensed football match and think it's okay to shout expletives and abuse people. So that conversation about what's appropriate like you're having every workplace and every organisation for some reason football's reluctant to have, and you constantly get the retort well, football's different. It's just football. Well, it's not; an exclusive environment is an exclusive environment it's, and it needs tackling.

Toby Mildon: And I know it has such a big ripple effect through society, 'cause I was talking to a Black colleague, was it a couple of years ago with the Euros. This is why I have to declare that I'm not really a football fan, no offense. Although you might be persuading me to go along to a women's football match, my friend is a big fan of the Manchester City women's football team. So maybe I can go along to a match with her. I remember, was it a couple of years, years ago, the Euros where there was that racism where the footballer was doing the penalty kick, wasn't he? And then he received loads of racist abuse on the pitch and online afterwards. And I remember, 'cause I was talking to a Black colleague of mine who said that the following day she decided not to send her kid to school because she was worried that her kid would receive racial abuse on the school bus.

Tony Burnett: Wow.

Toby Mildon: And that really hit me, actually. I thought, oh my God, like as a White man, I've never been on the receiving end of racism. So I don't know what it's like to receive racism. But yeah, that really struck me. And I was just thinking, wow, football and sport is having such a, big effect on people's lives the following day.

Tony Burnett: Again, it's a great point, Toby, that I was there at that Euros final and do a lot of the things that we speak about frequently is we knew that was gonna happen when at free plays Saka, Rashford and Sancho missed those penalties. We knew what was gonna happen.

Toby Mildon: Well, my colleague knew it was gonna happen. She, said to me, she said, I know that if the game played out the way that it played out, and those footballers were doing the penalty kick outs at the end, she knew it. She was preempting it.

Tony Burnett: Well, completely. And there were all kinds of issues around that final we worked with, in football, there's an organisation called Level Playing Field who do a huge amount of great work on accessibility for people with disabilities in the [0:22:53.9] ____ United States there. And some of the stories that they shared around the Euro final were horrific. You know, people being literally having tickets stolen from them. We had numerous reports of wheelchair users being literally tossed out of the wheelchairs and taken off them when fans kind of stormed the stadium. So it was horrific kind of from the start, to be honest, that Euros final. But I'd like to say it's gone away. But we've had a situation this weekend, England played on Friday night. And I went to the game luckily and wasn't a great game, but nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Tony Burnett: And yet over the weekend, the newspapers, particularly the tabloid newspapers, decided to pick out the three Black players that were involved, three prominent Black players and make them the subject of the criticism. And it's just bizarre. So again, we're into, and it's not only bizarre, it's actually irresponsible, given what happened at the last Euros, we're going into the next Euros with our press already trying to scapegoat our Black players for criticism. And it's just appalling, to be honest.

Toby Mildon: Yeah. And you know, an unregulated social media platform is a problem, but when you've got the regulated press causing issues like that as well, it just adds fuel to the fire, doesn't it? 

Tony Burnett: It's beyond, I mean, it's, again, you'll be aware of this, 'cause it's our area, Toby, but I'm exasperated by not just our press, but also the tone of the dialogue that's often set by our political leaders. You know, talking about anyone with any protected characteristic and their behavior towards all of us. And actually when we, let's not forget we are the majority population. It's just appalling some of the dialogue that they've used to describe people from all different backgrounds over the last few years just drives this hatred. And then it creates a press where, and the media, where they think that's acceptable. So I think again, thinking about systems, there's a whole system, systems change process leave a vacuum from the top of our society, for me.

Toby Mildon: That's probably a good segue to my next question, really, 'cause in your opinion, what do you think is one system change that's mostly needed to make an impact, whether that's within the world of football that you're currently working in or within businesses? 

Tony Burnett: I think we've gotta start at the top. And I think the, compliance bit I think is really important. And again you'll know far more about this than me, Toby. But if I look at something as simple as the Disability Discrimination Act, and I've got family members with disabilities, so it's something quite personal to me as well. But what date was that Act passed? We're talking decades now.

Toby Mildon: 1995.

Tony Burnett: And we still are nowhere near effective implementation and compliance with that. Now that for me, speaks volumes about how serious we are as a society about tackling inclusion. And so I think if there's one change I'd like to see it starts with that, just get the implementation and the compliance right around Disability Discrimination Act. And I think that's as a start point that would show me that society and governments are serious about tackling some of these issues. That's before I even get onto things like equal pay. Just getting that right.

Toby Mildon: I think with the DDA, it was established in 1995, but then it was superseded by the Equality Act in 2010. And so whilst obviously disability is a protected characteristic within the Equality Act, I think there was a lot of criticism at the time that it is almost like the disability bit got diluted as it was kind of merged into this broader Equality Act in 2010.

Tony Burnett: Yeah.

Toby Mildon: But again when you do look at the enforcement of the Equality Act around disability, for example, the onus is on the individual to take action, which is really difficult to do if you don't have the time or the resources to take a business to court. They have a slightly different system in America, I believe, where anybody can take an organisation to court if they fall foul of the Americans with Disabilities Act. So there's some quite high profile cases of businesses taking other businesses to court over, like the inaccessibility of their website or their app. Domino's, for example, is a big high profile court case where yeah, they were taken to court over the inaccessibility of their online ordering system.

Toby Mildon: Sure. Yeah. I'd also like, and then again I don't wanna talk about kind of how we change the world, but I do think from a... You asked if there's one thing, I think the other thing I'd say is we need leadership on these issues. And I think that the way that the dialogue has emerged almost post Trump in 2016 and post Brexit is really inflammatory, with the way we talk about anyone with a protective characteristic. And I was listening to [0:27:27.0] ____ fasting a bit over the week, I was driving back home from London talking about Rishi Sunak and the government's perspective on people with anxiety and depression and mental health issues, as a society, I think we've just completely gone to ridiculous levels when it comes to our lack of compassion.

Tony Burnett: Now for anybody who's different, whether that be migrants or people with mental health issues or you know, trans community. And I think that has to change because without that, the work we do is gonna be even more challenging. And that tool has to be set, I think, by our leaders. And, I think our leaders have responsibility to change the dialogue around people irrespective of our differences and start talking about inclusion in a way that helps drive the agenda rather than makes it far more difficult to achieve anything.

Toby Mildon: Yeah. And I don't know if you found this, but you know, our work within EDI, when you've got politicians saying discriminatory remarks or things that create division, rather than uniting us, there tends to be a couple of responses. Some organisations are stepping back and saying, well, this is the way that the government's behaving. It's clearly not important, therefore, we are not going to invest in an inclusive culture. Whereas I've got some clients who've said, actually, we don't care what the governments say or do we know it's important, we're actually gonna double down on our efforts because we know that as a responsible business, we've got a duty of care to our employees to make them feel that when they do come to work, they're working in an environment where they are respected, where they feel like they belong and they can progress in their careers regardless of what's happening on the kind of the geopolitical scale.

Tony Burnett: Yeah.

Toby Mildon: There was some interesting research actually that came up fairly recently that said that investment in EDI initiatives and bringing in consultants had decreased. But it was those organisations that were just focusing on the kind of the tick boxy type activities that were deciding to spend less. However, the organisations that were thinking about EDI much more strategically, a lot more culturally, a lot more systemically as we've been talking about, have actually increased their investment overall, which I thought was, that for me was a positive sign.

Tony Burnett: I completely agree. And I probably see, I see that as well, but I also think that the way that, I mean, Kemi Badenoch a few weeks ago made some quite disparaging remarks about people who work in our area and the various politicians have war politician a few weeks back questioning how much the NHS spent on ED&I professionals and in an interview one of our kind of government representatives and just ask them, what do you think an ED&I professional does? Because I suspect they haven't got a clue what we do on a day-today basis, and how it impacts organisations. It's just an easy throwaway remark, isn't it? 

Toby Mildon: Yeah.

Tony Burnett: It's part of a bigger agenda, which demonises the whole area of inclusion and it leads to things like the stupid tiger beam walk when we should be talking about exactly as you're talking about, how do we create organisations where everyone brings their best. I mean, that's a productive, you wanna increase GDP, then you want people, lots of people from lots of different backgrounds working at their full level of productivity capability. And you only do that by having inclusive organisations with inclusive coaches.

Toby Mildon: Agreed. And I suspect a bit like the work that you did in the police force with it being public sector for the NHS, it's about delivering better patient outcomes.

Tony Burnett: Completely.

Toby Mildon: So if you've got a diverse workforce that feels included, they are going to deliver a better healthcare service to the public, which benefits the country as a whole anyway.

Tony Burnett: Completely. It's a no brainer, isn't it? But it's, so that's why I just, it frustrates me 'cause the argument, it's just stupid. If they're gonna pick on a profession, then look at how many PR people that are across the public sector, that's an area we probably wanna cut back. Instead of pumping out stupid messages that are not important, [laughter] Invest in areas that are gonna drive an output and deliver change.

Toby Mildon: Yeah. So the final question that I ask everybody when they come on this show, sorry, not the final, this is the penultimate question, is what does inclusive growth mean to you? 

Tony Burnett: Inclusive growth means having organisations that are openly accessible to people who want to join them based on having the right level of capability that have systems and processes in place that allow people to flourish and to achieve their full potential, whatever that might be. I'm not talking about everybody being a CEO, but everybody having the opportunity to fulfill their potential. Inclusive growth means that organisations that recognise their customers or service users, in a private sector organisation, that's a little bit easier because you have marketing departments that really target people, but also from a public sector perspective, understanding that you're operating in a diverse world with diverse communities, and how do you create services that are inclusive rather than services that you know you want to necessarily deliver? So for me, that's what inclusive growth is all about, creating environments where we can all achieve and thrive and, have a sense of belonging. That's, it's as simple as that for me, really.

Toby Mildon: Brilliant. And my final question to you is related to the work that you do at Kick It Out, because obviously you're addressing racism and discrimination within football. What is your advice to the person listening to us right now on the receiving end of racism and discrimination? Or they may be supporting somebody within the workplace who is on the receiving end of racism and discrimination. What's your advice to them? 

Tony Burnett: My advice would be report it. And not particularly in certain situations that I know how challenging that can be, Toby, but my advice will be report it. You know, especially if you don't feel able to challenge the individual, and quite often in a football environment when you've got some very loud spectator, for example, who might have had a few drinks before the game, who's being abusive, but we have an app online, so you can go on our app to report it. Or just literally kind of every football ground has a text line you can use now. And similarly, if you're in the workplace and you're being bullied or abused and you don't feel there's any way you can turn, report it to us and we want to hear from you and we will take action. You know, we know that only one in four people who experience discrimination in and around football report it, but without those reports, we can't make the case and we can't help people. So my plea would be tell us about it. Tell us if you're feeling discriminated against or you've witnessed discrimination, please tell us about it.

Toby Mildon: Brilliant. Well, Tony, thanks ever so much for joining me today. It's been lovely to catch up with you. I've learned loads from you. I'm really pleased about what you've said about the need for systemic change, really looking at how inclusive procedures and things are. You're doing fantastic work at Kick It Out and I wish you all the best for continuing the work and making football an inclusive experience for everybody.

Tony Burnett: Thank you.

Toby Mildon: You're very welcome. See you soon. And thank you for tuning into this episode of the Inclusive Growth Podcast. Hopefully, you've learned loads from my conversation with Tony today, that you can apply back at your own organisation. If there's anything that me and my team can do to help you, then feel free to reach out to us through our website, which is mildon.co.uk. Until next time, take good care of yourself and I'll see you soon. Thank you.

Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to The Inclusive Growth Show. For further information and resources from Toby and his team, head on over to our website at mildon.co.uk.