The world was spun on its axis on 25th of May 2020 and the days, hours, minutes and moments that preceded it have been one of anger, hopelessness and self-reflection, which for us as an agency, has since shifted to one of hope, empowerment and action.

And ‘action’ is what we would like to focus on for this week's post.

A Letter From Our CEO

For an agency, who works in communications, we understood that after the death of George Flloyd a knee-jerk response was not the approach to take. Rather we noted a period of self-reflection which allowed us to ask ourselves the question...what kind of agency are we and what kind of agency do we want to be? 

At Mc&T, we have always stood for inclusion and against racism in all its guises. However, we know that systematic racism is something that has been benefited from. And that the PR industry, in particular, has not been as representative as it could and should be. We acknowledge that institutional racism exists and needs to be eradicated. We want to outline the initial steps we’ve taken to facilitate change within our agency, and how we wish to create an agency of the future which better represents the world we want to live in. 

As a creative business, we’ve always been conscious of making sure we’re hiring people who are diverse, fit in with our team, and hold the core values this agency was built on. Where we want to focus our attention is on making sure existing black and BAME employees are afforded the same career opportunities as their white counterparts, and that our hiring policy is set up to be even more inclusive and diverse. As a first step, we have signed up to the Race at Work Charter which is our assertion that we will prioritise action on race and our commitment to improving equality of opportunity in the workplace. 

Our commitments are as follows: 

1. Appoint an Executive Sponsor for race
2. Capture ethnicity data and publicise our progress
3. Commit at senior level to zero tolerance of harassment and bullying
4. Make clear that supporting equality in the workplace is the responsibility of all leaders and managers
5. Take action that supports ethnic minority career progression

In the next few months, we’ll be working on exactly what each of these 5 commitments looks like so expect to hear and see more from us as an agency. We know these are small steps. But we believe they are the right steps to reform the creative industry we work in, to create equal opportunities no matter the colour of a person's skin, and slowly (as it won’t happen overnight) work towards manifesting the vital change this world wants and needs to see.