Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I'm your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. Join me in the future, then. Please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk, that's S-E-E Change Happen dot Co dot UK. You catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places.

So plug in the advance, grab a decaf and let's get going. Today is episode 98 with the title striving for fairness, and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Pamela Permalloo Bass. Pamela is the EDI coach and consultant and when I asked Pamela to describe her superbass, she said, the skill of intently listening with empathy. Hello, Pamela. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Jo. Hi. Thank you so much for inviting me and it's an absolute privilege to be here this morning, particularly at the start of the year. This is one of my first meetings of the year, so it feels very exciting. So thank you very much.

Yeah, as we were saying in the green room before we've gone live that we haven't spoken for two or three years, it's been absolutely fantastic to catch up and have a good natter before we record the podcast.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we needed more than the designated 30 minutes to have a proper catch up. We've had a good. Too many years have gone by.

Yeah, they have. Anyway, we've caught up now. So, Pavana, tell me about striving for fairness. Why is that important to.

Mean? You've known me for a good couple of years now and I've spent most of my life and my working career working in the field of diversity and inclusion. We're using the word diversity, equity, inclusion more and more now in organisational spaces. But 2030 years ago, it wasn't language that was used. And I like the word fairness because I think it really brings out what I've always strived to do on a daily basis, both in my work and in my personal life. And I think over the years, it's been great that more and more people and professionals are on board in the DNI space.

Yeah, fairness is. I find sometimes it's a tough word because people want fairness and they also want meritocracy, but they don't always balance the two out fairly oxymoron. I appreciate. People have their own perception of what fair means, don't they?

Yeah. And I think it's quite a generic piece of language, fairness, because depending on your own experiences, whether it's cultural, societal, social, you'll have a different perspective of what fairness really means. But I think for me, when we're using fairness in the world we're in right now, in the UK, when we're looking at it from a UK perspective, I think we can link it to issues around socioeconomic status. We touched on privilege as a concept in the green room. And there's also aspects of fairness that really permeate in organisations, particularly organisations that are hierarchical. So I've spent about 15 years working in the NHS and more recently in substantive roles as a DNI director in the NHS with several community based organisations. So the hierarchy within the NHS and how that plays out absolutely will have different experiences for different people in those different roles.

Yeah. I use the freedom principles. For those of you who aren't aware, the freedom principles. Freedom stands for fairness, respect, equity or equality, dignity and autonomy. So I'm a great believer that fairness is utmost, because when we're dealing with people, you have to believe in the process, you have to have an element of trust. So I need to know that I can trust you to treat me fairly, because if I haven't got that trust in you, no matter what you say next, I will never believe you or I won't have that psychological safety. I won't feel I can bring my whole self to work, whatever you mean by that. So fairness is very fundamental.

I agree with you. Sometimes we end up battling each other's concept of fairness, don't we?

And I think you touched on trust. That too is so hugely important in relationships and within organisations. Most of you will know around issues around discrimination that organisations affect. And the NHS is no different to other organisations. When we're thinking about actually who does speak up, who is listened to, how are things resolved and managed, having that trust in, whether it's your line manager or whether it's the executive director or your CEO, that's really important to know that you are going to be listened to and you're going to be treated fairly, you're not going to be treated differently, you're not going to be treated differently because of your role or what you're raising or anything to do with a particular characteristic or your experience. So I think it's all hand in hand, isn't it? All of these different. These key values that we.

I mean, working in organisations such as the NHS, they're huge monoliths sometimes and made up of lots of disparate departments and different priorities, different care needs, different overheads. It must be really difficult to try and create change in a way that is meaningful because so many people have so many different views of what inclusion means. I was doing some work with, I think it was Morgan Bay, that area there, and they were doing a huge project on sticky floor where they recognised that a section of the demographic, of their employee base were never promoted, they were never getting past entry level positions, and the sticky floor was holding people back. And you could see quite clearly that people who are white escaped that lower tier, whereas people who are people of colour, low economic, socioeconomic status, even though they're perfectly qualified, able to devolve, for whatever reason, they didn't progress from the organisation in the same way. So it's about how do we create equity in the system to ensure we're amplifying people who are stuck or not seen or not viewed as capable for whatever reason.

Yeah. I've been working in organisations for so long now and I remember when we first started looking at issues like that, your example of sticky floor issues, there was a lot of emphasis on individuals upskilling themselves, improving their cvs, getting better at interviews, et cetera, et cetera. And over time it became more and more clear that it was to do with systemic structures within organisations. And that is still the place where I still sit, sort of professionally, in my views of fairness and where it should sit, absolutely. Individuals play a part, but they are not key in dismantling unfairness within organisations. It has to be an organisational, structural decision to actively do things differently. So the work that I was involved in, in the NHS, when we looked at specific data sets, so, for example, we use a data tool called the Workforce Race Equality standard, and there's another data set called the Workforce Disability standard. And those two standards, historically, with regards to data recruitment and retention and promotion, they have always been the data set across pretty much all NHS organisations where there is huge disproportionality when we're comparing it to white british employees, and even if you break it down to white british male employees or white british female employees, there's a huge disproportionality.

So it's a good piece of data set to really evidence how unfairness plays out in organisations.

Yeah. When I was listening to the stats that I was a party to the presentation, I left the room with more questions and answers. I wanted to speak to people who were in those demographics where they weren't progressing and say, what do you think the problem is? Because I was asking the people who do resident support? I said, well, what are the people who are getting stuck field? Well, we don't know, we just got the data. I said, well, surely we want to get into those examples and say, look, so you're in this role. Is there a reason why you perceive you haven't progressed? Is it a limiting belief impostor syndrome? Is it a lack of drive? Or is it just purely that they come to work, do a job, they're happy with what they've got, they don't have ambition. So we're trying to create systems and fixing systems where we haven't necessarily engaged with the people who are affected to ask them why they haven't progressed. As you said in the past, we were pushing the problem back to them and saying, you need to progress yourself, you need to work harder, you seek qualifications. And they obviously weren't.

So is it a community thing, is it a limiting belief thing? Is it just a societal expectation thing? Or is there other genuine reasons why people are being pushed down and held back?

I think it's a complicated answer and I think there are absolutely key themes that will just think about NHS organisations specifically. There are key themes within NHS organisations as a whole, but then there'll be different reasons and specific cultural differences within different NHS organisations, whether it's to do with geography, the services that they have, the size of organisations. There's a lot of complex structural organisations out there as well. Even people who work in the NHS don't necessarily understand the architecture. But for everyday people, it's not something that we really consider. You just think of the NHS as a place we go to be treated, to be healed, cared for. It's a huge beast and it's incredibly complicated. So I think all of those different aspects of it gives different reasons why unfairness plays out.

And I think you're absolutely right, Jo, that the more you become curious and learn about it, the more you think actually, hold on, I don't get this. This is just so much. There's so much that I want to know here, there's so much to unpick, there's far more questions. And I have spent 15 years asking those questions. And the work that I'm doing now as a consultant, I'm working with NHS organisations, going into very sort of specific pieces of work with them, which is quite different to the type of work I was doing in my substantive role.

People always say that data tells a story, and I think I'm always frustrated, but we never actually hear the story. We hear the headlines, we hear the opening chapter, but we never actually dive down. I think that was the frustration I felt and I think you're echoing the same thing, is that we've got lots of data, we know lots of startings of the story, but we don't actually have the real answers. And that's the challenge, I think, in most EDI work is trying to uncover the story and what are the inequities, what are the challenges? And yes, a lot of it is systemic and based on historical privilege and power structures. But how do we break out that cycle is the challenge we all face in this sort of EDI sector, if you like.

One of the things, and you'll probably be in agreement that the more we look at our society, again, we're looking at talking about UK specific societies, our society, right now, and look at inequity and how that plays out in our society, it absolutely will resemble organisations. So you can't detract from what is happening out there right now. And I think that's hugely important to constantly remember that.

Yeah, we just look at what's going on in the political sphere at the moment where the language being used around refugees entering our shores, fleeing from terror, fleeing for their lives in many cases, how the dehumanising language used to describe them, and then the government is looking to turn the boat around and ship them to Rwanda. And I don't want to be guilty of having a bias against Rwanda. I don't know the country, I don't know the people. I think there's a kind of a political demonization of Rwanda as a country, saying it's third world, it can't be any good, we're dumping our rubbish somewhere. I think that could be disrespectful of a country. So I don't want to get into the debate whether Miranda. It's just the language the government's using to sort of devalue these people and seeing them as not worthy of our support wing mentality, isn't it?

Yeah, no, it absolutely is. And it feels like it's an opportunity to sidetrack the conversation, because when we think about actually how much money has been spent on the Rwanda deal and the cost of that so far and actually how many people have gone to Rwanda, I think the latest figure is there's been more home secretaries that have gone to Miranda than actual refugees. So if society and the people that were interested in the political debate around this were interested in the cost of this particular exercise, and if that money was to go into, I don't know, housing, into services like the NHS, or into know key services policing. Actually, to me, it feels like, firstly, it's a complete waste of money, but it also is sidetracking from all the other underfunded resourcing that's going into the public sector, which is so much needed, really, in particular, some very key areas in our country.

It must have a psychological impact on people where they're hearing you said, quite rightly, what's going on in society is the macro, and that impacts the micro, if you like, of the organisation or what's going on inside organisations and people's psychology and mental health. You're hearing all of this dehumanising language, this demonising language, these stereotypes, these biases, the xenophobic type remarks that stem from Brexit. We've got a population who seem to be leaning, and certainly a mainstream media, who lean towards stealing jobs from the british, whoever they may be, some sort of ethnic sort of superiority around white people being denied opportunity. We talk here, we're talking about fairness and equity. Is the everyday white person feeling marginalised and that's why they're fighting back, is that kind of thing. What's going on?

So, again, there's been a lot of work around white working class boys, specifically in urban areas, and I think that's been going on definitely in all of my time in the NHS. Whether that's really sort of played out in policy change, I'm not sure, because my experience is not in education. So I would like to believe that there is work in identified areas in my sphere of career. So in the NHS, it's definitely been an area, hasn't been a focus, which I think absolutely should. I think when the Equality act came on board, socioeconomic was going to be a protected characteristic, but it got thrown out at the last. I think it was literally a couple of months before the act came into play. And I think if that was part of the work around diversity and inclusion and baked in, into the sort of process, we would have absolutely looked at white working class boys. And I say boys.

It's actually a specific group that's been identified up to 18 and then post 25. So there's quite a lot of research around that and looking at that and how that plays out into organisations, whether it's around people finding it difficult, finding jobs or are in work, and they're having the same issues as you've described in Mez's side around sticky know, we look at ethnicity when we tend to look at ethnicity and disability, when we look at promotions and again, absolutely missed opportunity to not look at white working class groups and their journey around career progressions in organisations. I think it's an area that it feels like it's on the sideline, really. I think people like us in this field of work, we're aware of it, but we don't get necessarily asked to do that work.

Yeah, it's tough sometimes in the EDI space because by amplifying and giving equity to certain demographics, it almost feels like sometimes you're pulling other people back because that's the perception they have, even though equity is all about amplifying and not pulling other people back. So you're trying to bring people up to the same level rather than bring people down to your level. You always feel like you're losing something by somebody else getting more.

And again, organisations will resource different pieces of work or there would be different pieces of work that are perceived as more important at that one time. So the balance has always been when we're looking at DNI is looking at all of the groups. So again, just sort of giving my example of the NHS, one of the things I always looked at when I worked in organisations was the workforce demographics. So looking at workforce demographics, looking at, and then I looked at the census demographics and seeing how that married up. And most good organisations tended to marry up and be similar to their communities because, you know, if it's similar to the community, it will be similar to the patient community. Generally speaking, there's huge disparities in that. Again, it opens that space into understanding where the priorities are for those organisations if their workforce is not reflective of their local community.

Yeah, I was into some housing associations probably last year, the year before, where they were really struggling to find good people in their hourly paid roles of care workers. And the analysis they did identified the fact that most of their care homes and service provision locations tends to be in affluent type neighbourhoods and areas. And most of the people they wanted to attract to work in those places were some many miles away where they lived, and the transport links between where people were living in their target demographic for people to recruit. The transport links were poor or expensive, so people who they wanted to attract couldn't actually afford time and money to come to work at that location when they're being paid minimum wage or living wage. So they identified the fact they needed to put on a kind of a staff bus, collect people in the mornings, bus people in, because that way, that equity, if you like, would relieve it. But as you're saying there, it's important to look at your demographic of your territory, your locale, and then lay on top of that, the demographic of your staff and the people you serve, and make sure there's an alignment there, otherwise you find this disconnect. The people you want to work in your organisation can't afford to work there because there's no way getting to work every day.

Well, I think that example is a great one because public transport is expensive now, so if people are on minimum wage and then they're going to have to fork out for the transport cost to get to and from work, where if they can get a job much closer to where they live. Yeah. These are the sort of things that organisations need to consider when they're thinking about who they want to work in their organisation. There's so many nuances and not really understanding those types of things with regards to the areas that you're serving. I just don't think organisations necessarily have the chance to really think through all of this first. It tends to be something that they'll think about afterwards when they think, oh, well, actually, hold on a minute, we can't get anybody, or in that particular example, it could be only middle class, affluent people are applying for work here, or they're volunteering because they don't money.

The people who you want to apply aren't applying because it's too expensive to work there and the people who would be able to get there easily wouldn't want a job because it's low paid work and they don't see that as something fitful for them. Again, getting the data and asking the questions, why aren't these people applying and what's the barriers? Because we can also look into the nature of people who are in that demographic where they are taking hourly paid, low paid work, unskilled or partially skilled work. They probably have childcare, they have care responsibilities, they have multiple challenges around maybe the single parent, maybe they're in a dysfunctional family. There's a whole load of issues that going on that whilst they'd love a great job, they just physically actually can't engage with it because it doesn't work for them. I think we need to look at those sort of ways of. We talk about equity a lot. How do we bring equity? And not just the recruitment process, but also in the employment process and how do we look at those challenges? I think also, I'm sure the NHS have this view as well, is that we have a social responsibility to get people into work and to get people into good work, reliable work, and to make people, or allow people to be productive in society. So I think all organisations, no matter whether if you're in commercial or public sector, you have a responsibility to make sure you are providing work for the community as well as drive profit for shareholders.

I think we touched on travel in the green room and your train journey and your example of people having to physically get to work is something that I don't think we spend a huge amount of time really considering. And I know in the pandemic when everyone was working at home, there were lots of groups of people that I remember talking to that for some of them it was huge benefit working at home. And again, people who identified with particular characteristics, so women with young children at home, so that flexibility of either looking after children or dropping children off at nursery or school, particularly when the schools were opened. So things like this, where it becomes really important for working women actually commuting and physically getting to work and back, it's an extra layer on someone's day. So if they're able to work from home and they've got that capacity to.

Do.

Know, if they have to commute into London, which is like, I don't know, we're all based in know, it's like an hour and a half, 2 hours. So why would they do that if they could work from home and pretty much do exactly the same as what they're doing if they're in? So I think that whole thing around commuting and what your workforce looks like and how you retain your workforce, it's one step back. How you enable diversity within your workforce, but also how you retain your workforce, I think they're all significant questions to ask around how we work. I know there's a real push for people to get back in the office, which I've written a couple of different LinkedIn posts about that and my view is that absolutely understand why an organisation would say that and depending on what your role is, there will absolutely be reasons. So if you're frontline, clinical facing role, most of those are better placed physically seeing patients as opposed to virtual sessions with patients, although some can be virtual. But the majority of time it's better to see people in person, face to face. But if you're a PA or if you're an administrator or trying to think other roles, computer based jobs, you can do that at home, you don't need to physically be in an office. Bit controversial, I know, but yeah, I think it really impacts certain groups.

Yeah. My theory is that it's largely political. The government or the people in power need to put money back into the system. So if you've got nobody travelling into the office, nobody's commuting, the trains become unviable. London underground becomes. Lacks viability, which is what we're seeing here. The government's having to prop up tfl by billions to keep it afloat because people aren't travelling into London. So there's a huge societal pressure to get people back to what they were doing, because the entire country's infrastructure was based on people travelling around and going to work.

If everyone sits at home every day, all of the infrastructure, all of the cafes, the coffee shops, the little places in the city, they're just not needed anymore. Therefore we have unemployment rising because everyone's working from home. So the society wasn't ready to reengineer its whole viability of economic, sort of cash movement, if you like, as a result of the pandemic. And I think that's why they tried to put this help out, to eat out, whatever the scheme it was, to try and get people eating out again, because people backed off of pubs, they backed off the cafes, they backed off of restaurants and living at home. So I think that's part of it. The government went, oh, we've been too keen to push people away, and now we've got a huge problem. Now we've got economic vacuums in places where people aren't going back. So I think a lot of that drives it.

We've got business owners who have huge great buildings that are empty. If the buildings are empty, you don't need cleaning staff, you don't need door stuff, you don't need security. So again, you got a whole sector of people not being employed. I think that's the driver in some respects.

Yeah, no, I do agree with you, but I do think a lot of these sort of economic arguments are so short sighted. There are so many other ways of creating. We're talking about a capitalist society, and there's so many other ways that we all can contribute into society financially. So it's not just getting on a train. We could go to an independent cafe to where we live, or most people who work at home, they've got into habits to manage their well beings. They are out and about and they are doing different. You know, the argument, if we really looked into it, which I'm sure no one has done, that, I'm sure there are other areas where the economy is thriving and might not be thriving in the small cafe in London, but there might be thriving in a small cafe, independent cafe in. It's I think all of this is, and what we do find with, and we're talking current government, it's very short sighted, it's very immediate.

There's not much consideration into different aspects of decision making and obviously we're seeing some of that in the COVID inquiry. And for those of us who worked in the public sector during COVID and I had the privilege of working in the pandemic, were able to see that firsthand some of those poor decision making processes. So I think this is part of it, really. I think the whole push to get people back into work. Yes, I think you're right, it is driven politically, but I think the economic argument is a poor argument. I think for them it's a very poor. There's a lot of lack of thought in that argument.

I completely agree. And whilst I understand the reasons, or what I perceive are the reasons, one thing I was saying when there was this push back to go to the office and the early arguments were, well, what about the watercolour conversations, the mentoring? If you're in early career, you lack that sort of experience by mixing with people and the osmosis that occurs. I said, I completely get it, but what you can't say is the equation, and the answer to every equation is you must go back to the office. The equation must be what is the most efficient, where's the best way of doing it? Going back to the office is one outcome that can deliver that requirement. If you start with that being the only outcome, that's what you focus on. We step back, we've got the metaverse, we've got AI, we've got Zoom, we've got teams, there are far better way of collaborating. I'm a great believer in that. And the example you had about surgeons, we've got surgeons doing laparoscopic procedures with robots from the other side of the world controlling the operation.

Because when they're actually in the operator's theatre, and this is my lay appreciation of what I see on telly, they are looking at computer screen and they're controlling things with robot arms and doing the work. That way they don't actually need to be in the same room in the same country, in the same time zone.

Yeah.

So if a doctor can do that, dentists can do that, everybody can do that. It's just about evolving our communication skills. And the other thing I used to say is people say, well, it's about our culture. We need our culture, people to come in and feel experiences. And I say, well, actually I want my culture. Like my pension I can take it with me when I go to another organisation. So what I can have is I can build my own home life culture around my family, around my community, around my own gym and my own coffee shop, and I can consume my culture and the way I want it. And I can just pick and choose whichever company I want to work for, wherever they may be, and I don't have to leave my culture behind.

But what you want me to do is rip my life out of my family, travel for two and a half hours each way, 5 hours a day to experience your culture. When I've got a perfectly good one, I could be investing in the home. So that's my argument around this culture thing. Let me have it. Like my pension, I could take it with me.

No, I like that. I like that analogy.

Yeah, but that seems to be the argument. It's like, no, but you're a solopreneur. You work from home largely. I'm a solopreneur. I largely work from home. It's probably 80, 2090. Ten, sometimes 10% in the office, 10% in clients. I know I could work perfect productively.

And I think it's almost insulting to people to say you're not as productive remotely. It's an insult, people.

I find that very insulting. Although I would say for you and I, we're at different stages of our careers. So I think for those at the early stages of their careers, I think it's really a mid career as well. I say early stages of the mid career. I think it's really important to not necessarily be in an office. I think to be engaging on as many different ways as possible to learn from others. Thinking about that whole mentoring experience and how you can see leadership, particularly if you're career driven, I think that's really important to explore as many different ways. So if you're just working at home mainly, I don't think that's good.

I think do a combo of lots of different things, whether it's an in person conference a couple of times a year, going to some workshops or catch ups with coffees, doesn't necessarily mean you have to be in the office every day. But I think having a mixture. But yeah, people like us, Joe, we're sort of well versed at what we should be doing with our work. So all of these tools we've acquired, haven't we? So we know to go and meet somebody in person, or when to attend an event or go to something. So again, acquiring that skill with our experience, I think we're at a different stage and we can make different choices.

I completely agree. And there are times in my career when I needed people around me, I needed to learn, I need to be mentored, I needed to pick up stuff and the osmosis was necessary. You're completely right, and I'm not negating that need. We also have to remember that I think 60% of the workforce, if not more, do roles where you have to physically touch something. So assembly work, manufacturing, hospitality, production lines, all these kind of people, you can't at the moment do those remotely, even with computer. There's no. Largely not computer controlled remotely. So we have to recognise there is an inequity here of the ones who can and the ones who cannot.

So I think there's also the in it together type mentality, whereas if you've got half the office who have to be there for various reasons, then it's only fair that everybody should kind of be there as well. So altogether. So I didn't get the kind of socioeconomic and the need for us as humans to get together and collaborate and be together. So I do get it. I don't know about you, but I hate stereotypes, I hate big blanket assumptions and decisions. They'll all shout because they'll shout sort of thing, without the granularity. And being person centric. And you work at the NHS and being person centric is so important because if you start to generalise, you make poor decisions, because every person is different.

And looking at the needs of individuals should be a corporate responsibility.

Yeah. I think there are so many different sort of work cultures that don't take into account all the nuances of individuals. So as you were talking, I was recalling an example, and it wasn't even that long ago, it was probably, I know, six years ago, seven years ago, I was working for a company in central London, so, commuting in and out of London, and on a Friday night, there was a cocktail bar opposite the offices, and that's what they did Friday night cocktails, and most people stayed until early hours and it was obviously social time and it was a given that you go to these cocktails and if you didn't, it's, oh, you're not going to cocktails. So again, just. That sounds great if you like cocktails, but say you don't drink alcohol, are there mocktails there? What about. You don't want to be in those types of environments, sort of for religious reasons or cultural reasons, nothing there for any difference. What about if you've got a family, you need to get back for them again. Nothing about the family.

What about. I know, disability, the public transport that you need to get on, but at 02:00 in the morning is not running again. Nothing. Cocktails on a Friday sounds lovely, but actually, when you're thinking about, is it right for everybody? Probably not. And there are lots of different reasons why it's not right for everybody.

I gave up drinking, I think, 723 days ago, thereabouts. It was January a couple of years ago, I gave up. And you suddenly realise how much the world is orientated around a social that involves alcohol. And I found it incredible. We talk about privilege, but you don't realise the water you swim in until you're not in that water anymore, then you suddenly step out and go, wow, hang on a minute. I now see this. And as a non drinker, I've now woken up to how much of our society revolves around a drink somewhere, even in cultural conversations. Let's go for a beer one night.

Let's go for a glass of wine. Or I don't drink. And they say, well, we can come along and have a lemonade. Well, why do I want to go to a pub where everyone's drinking and have a lemonade? Why can't we go to Costa or have a nice coffee somewhere? Yeah, but we want to go for a drink. We don't have to. So it's trying to reorientate. And I've walked away from events purely because they have a boozy undercurrent to them. I think, well, do I want to turn up to this evening where after about half an hour, everyone is starting to slur? Everyone started.

It gets kind of icky in that kind of drunken environment. I think, no, you're not funny. It's no fun to be sober. So I walk away from things, and that's for personal reasons, not religious reasons or any other reasonable health reasons, necessarily. So we are excluding people or defining the norm, and that's our cultural fit, isn't it? We keep trying to say, you must fit into this or you're seen as no fun.

Yeah, I remember this. Cocktails evening. So, Friday, cocktail night, gently, very gently, sort of questioning. Is this sort of being inclusive? And are we thinking about everybody here? Oh, yeah, we've got know it's disability access. And so everything I said there was like a so still in a cocktail bar in central London Friday night, and all the things that you said around that sort of cultural experience, people getting drunk, being in that, but there might be some flirtations going on with people, you just think, actually, do people really want to be in those environments? Really? I don't know.

Apparently some extrovert. Yeah, if you're an extrovert, I'm quite happy being an introvert who's happy to go out. But some people do thrive on those environments. They want to bounce off like a pinball in a pinball machine and have all that social interaction because that's where they get their energy. But there's a good 50% of the population don't.

No, that's it. Because I would describe myself as an extrovert, but I thought, like, I just don't want to do that type of stuff anymore. I've got other things that I enjoy doing. So again, it's allowing for all of that, really. But, yeah, I agree, there is still very much, when you consciously think of alcohol, become more aware that we are still very much in an alcohol rich society and a lot of it is based around drinking. So even gifting. So again, one of the things that I gently. I sound like I'm a bit of a misery, really.

But Christmas time, when people give out gifts to their colleagues and they give out bottles of wine or bottles of gin. I said, have you thought about doing non alcoholic or something different? No. It's nice getting a bottle of wine, isn't it? Or a bottle of gin. I said, well, not for everybody, but, yeah, I think they probably thought I was a bit of a misery, really. A party poop.

Yeah. I know you can get alcohol free gin, alcohol free beer, alcohol free wine. And I don't need an alcohol substitute. It's like a mocktail. I wouldn't drink that normally. You're calling it a mocktail to make it sound like it's an alcohol substitute. Why don't you give me a coffee? I've also sort of had the same sort of thought around veganism or vegetarianism and thinking, do I want to consume my plant based food as in the soap of a sausage? Why do I have to have a plant based food in the soap of a sausage? Why can't I have something that's plant based, that's plant based from the ground up? Because you see so many times where you go to these functions where the vegan or vegetarian option is a poor facsimile of everybody else's experience is just mediocre. I'm not vegan or vegetarian, but I will often go for the vegan or vegetarian choice because when it's done right, it's far more creative and inspiring than a meat dish sometimes, because people have to.

Have to work harder on it. And I feel so sorry that we're not catering properly for celiacs. Other dietary requirements. It's always a poor relation and it's just so unattractive. I just feel so kind of privileged as an eater, if that's an omnivore who eats most things. And I just feel so disappointed for people who have to have that lib sandwich with a bit of cellophane over. That's their gluten free option.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I think they tend to be sort of like conference function type things, go to a nice restaurant. There are normally good options for non meat eaters. Yeah, options. But there are options. Good options.

I've made a conscious decision to minimise my dairy, like cow dairy intake. So I tend to use plant based oat milk or almond milk or other milk. And you ask sometimes and it's becoming better in coffee shops. It's becoming better than it ever has. They have the options there. You still got to pay extra for it, it's still penalised for it and they assume you've got an allergy. No, it's just a preference. It's okay, it's a preference.

You go to natural trust. They put this little sticker on the cup so it doesn't get contaminated of anything. No, it's just a preference. Some people are gearing themselves up for it. I think it's important that we start to. When we think about EDI, we talk about fairness, respect, we talk about inclusion, all these things. Actually. It's small details that psychological safety, that inclusion.

How do I feel? And the belongingness. I'm a great believer in belongingness. Walking into a place and you feel it's for you. Have they thought about your needs as an individual? Not just a broad brush, you'll be okay sort of thing, or you'll adapt round us. Actually, we're bending for you a little bit here as well. That's what I think a lot of organisations miss that nuance between inclusion and belonging.

I think there's an attempt, isn't there? There's an absolutely attempt to get that. But it's so variable in organisations and I think it's variable on lots of different levels. So there will be organisations in some areas they're excelling and they're doing really well and everyone feels great. There might be other functions or departments or even customer facing services where it isn't. So it's so variable. There still is that lack of consistency. I think that's probably an area where probably needs the most impotence. Impetus is the consistency in how people feel in environments and organisations.

There's a book or there's a well known story based on airlines and it's the coffee stain on the tray table. So if you get onto an aeroplane, you pull the tray table down, there's a coffee stain, a coffee ring on the tray table, what does that say to you? If they can't clean the tray, do they service the engines, do they do the flight cheque, do they do this? So sometimes when you're looking at these small little details think well it's only a coffee stain actually it shows the systemic process and thinking of the organisation, they don't care about the hygiene level right at that beginning. So what does it say about the rest of the process? And I think EDI is like that for me. If you're not showing equity, creating, focusing on belongingness around in a person centric way for everybody, then that shows it's tokenistic or you're not following through to every detail in your systems. So it's that coffee stain on the trade table is the indicator of how much you care about people. I think that's what I want to see in organisations is that deep, really real care about how your experience of working here or being a customer or being a service user or being whatever it may be. And that's the fairness and inclusion and belonging element for me.

Yeah. And I was just thinking about my experience in the NHS and the clients that I work with. I think to have that level of detail and nuance is absolutely aspirational for most organisations because there's so much other work to do. Need to make sure that. Just think about that airline analogy to make sure that the customers, the passengers on the previous flight are off the flight. It's that type of stuff that needs to happen before we get to the cleaning up bit. There's so much other work to do.

Oh yeah, no, completely. It's interesting when you start thinking about that coffee stain and when you look around the world and see it, you walk into a restaurant and every free table has got dirty trays on it, so they're too busy servicing new people and then there's no capacity for them to sit and you've got to try and balance your front, your back, your middle. So just observing how operations work around, trying to create this balance and I think that you get so locked in you become blinkered into your focus. You often don't step back and sort of look at the other systems as well.

That part of it is really hard for people when they're in organisations to take that step back and see what else is going on because you're immersed in what you're doing and by no reason at all regarding yourself. We could use the word unconscious bias or all the other aspects of the EDi language. If you're so immersed in what you're doing and it's impossible to step away, it's very hard for people to really sort of think about where else is going on.

We were chatting just before we went on. I noticed in the show notes that you put in, you're a rucker Bregman fan and you mentioned humankind. And I'm also a fan of his other book, Utopia for realists. There's some really great stuff that comes out that the thing that I would remember from Utopia for realists is thought about universal basic income, Ubi, and how this perception that poor people can't be trusted with money, that's why they're poor. Actually, when you look at people who have less money, they're more diligent and focused on budgeting and careful. A person who's wealthy will squander more money than someone who is not wealthy ever does in their entire life in an hour sort of thing. And it was all about this example where if you gave people an online basic income, they would then allow them to escape the sticky floor which we talked about earlier. And then once you elevate yourself up Maslow's triangle, you stop having to worry about your house and your food and what's happened today.

You can think about next week. When you can think about next week, you start to think about next month. Once you start planning, you then have agency and power over self. Otherwise you're just reactive. The whole concept behind his first book was really inspiring to me.

Yeah. And I think I'd recommend anyone who listens to us on this podcast to read any of his books or even connect to them on LinkedIn, because he writes some really interesting posts and links history to current perspectives of societies. And he looks at different types of societies across the world, which I think is hugely fascinating. But yeah, I think that your example about that, the sharing of wealth and one of the things he does is I can't remember what the charity is called, but it's called like poverty, global poverty, something rather I have to find the name of the charity, but the expectation is that regardless of what you earn, you give x amount of money. And I know there are religions, different religions that operate like that as well. So there is something about being altruistic, being considerate, and actually just giving what you can. And so he's 10% or 20% of his income is given away and that's it. And he'll just live off whatever he has.

I think ultimately, one of the things that resonated with his writing and my interests was around striving for a fair, equal society where hierarchy, I think the other. But he talks about utopia, so it absolutely is a utopic you where there is no hierarchy, there is no socioeconomic groups, there is no class, we all have the same, we all have the same money, we all live in similar types of accommodation, we're all paying similar utility charges. Ultimately, his quest for the future is that's their society.

But even if we look at utopian Star Trek, there's still hierarchy in Star Trek, even though the concept of money and poverty has been eradicated, if you like, in their utopian 25th century, whatever it may be, it's hard to escape hierarchy, but creating a common base, and it's not the communism view of the world, it's kind of a more utopian, statusless view of the world. That's true. Rather than we all see the failures of communism still being a two tier system or multi tier system.

I think with regards to his book and his perception, I think when we look at poverty and how we can share out resources, I think that's probably a better way of describing it as opposed to eradicating hierarchy, because we're not going to eradicate that. This is what we're in, and it's absolutely not going to change, but that is that distribution of wealth. So I can't remember what the number is, but I forgot what the number is. But it's something ridiculous, like, I don't know, 50 people own the amount of wealth in the whole world. I can't remember. It's probably not 50, but it's something.

Very minutial, small number. Yeah.

And so when we think about actually the billionaires and where the wealth is distributed, it's that distribution of wealth and how that impacts people who are on the breadline who are struggling. And there are far more people like that than the people who are the billionaires and the highly wealthy. So it's something around distributing wealth, not completely so that everyone has exactly the same, because like I said, that's not going to happen. We know that. But right now we can absolutely give as much as we can, really, for those who have got some level of.

Additional income and that heads back to the opening which was striving for fairness. And that's really the crux of what you're saying there is trying to create a fair and equitable society, and that's something we should all be mindful and strifeful.

I believe so. And I have been living like this for a long time and I'll still continue to be like this.

Fabulous. Thanks, Pamela. It's been amazing catching up with you again. We've had a great chat now and I hope you, the listener that got to the end with us and have enjoyed this, have got some inspiration. Take something away from this. So how can people get in touch.

With so yes, I'm on LinkedIn and there is only one of me, so I'm quite easy to find. So Pamela Permalyrath. So just find me and you can connect with me. I do like using LinkedIn. I'm no good at other social media, I must admit, so you won't find me anywhere else. So, LinkedIn. I've also got a website, and again, I've kept it straightforward. It's my name, so Google that you find me straight away.

And there is also a section on the website where you can email me direct. So they're the sort of two routes to get in touch with me.

Fabulous. And your name will be in the show notes. So if you could look it up and spell it. But your surname is P-E-R-M-A-L-L-O-O space B-A-S-S. Permalloo Bass. You say there could be only one bit like the Highlander in the old days, isn't it?

Always? Really love meeting you people. So if you connect with me, very happy to have a conversation.

Thank you. For those of you listening, please do subscribe to future episodes of the Inclusion Bites Podcast. That's B-I-T-E-S. Please share the love, tell your friends, tell your family, tell your colleagues. If you're not subscribed, then do click that button now and follow us for more updates. Of course, I've got a number of other exciting guests lined up and we'll be hitting episode number 100 in a couple of weeks time, so I'm sure you'd be equally inspired by those people as well. And if you'd like to be a guest yourself, I'd love to hear from you, so drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk

Finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood. It has been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today. Catch you next time. Bye.