Forming alliances

For the past few years, there has been an understanding of the urgent need for greater diversity, inclusion and equity in several industries, and market research is no exception.

Increasingly, there is also an awareness that, to invoke this change, the majority must advocate for the minority, practising social justice and recognising their privileged position in the process. Hence, the term ‘allyship’ has entered the mainstream consciousness.

There are various definitions of what it takes to be an ally. In 2018, diversity, equity and inclusion leader Sheree Atcheson, writing in Forbes, defined allyship as “a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency and accountability with marginalised individuals and/or groups of people”. Crucially, Atcheson noted, allyship is ‘not self-defined’; allyship efforts must be recognised by those you are seeking to ally with.

Roshni Goyate, co-founder of The Other Box, which provides organisations with training courses on allyship, cautions that, with so many different definitions, it can become confusing and inaccessible. “It’s not a straightforward concept or definition, even when boiled down,” says Goyate. “But here’s a definition we use in our Allyship in the Workplace course, adapted from the Rochester Racial Justice Toolkit online: ‘Allyship is a proactive, ongoing and challenging practice of examining, unlearning, relearning and action, where a person of privilege works in solidarity and partnership with a marginalised group of people to help take down the systems that deny that group’s basic rights, equal access and ability to thrive in society.’”

So, how can businesses in the insight sector become better allies? For Momo Amjad, senior strategic researcher at The Future Laboratory, ‘allyship’ itself is an outdated term. “It only serves to make people who want to be allies feel better about themselves,” says Amjad. “What we need are co-conspirators. A co-conspirator is somebody who is with you from the outset, who is contributing to the plan. Because they understand that allyship doesn’t go far enough and they understand the system affects everybody, not just the marginalised groups they’re trying to help.”

There is a difference between signalling allyship – being what Amjad calls a “vocal beacon” – and consistently practising allyship. Amjad adds: “It’s something you need to be doing constantly. Once you’re an ally, you have to maintain your allyship role. If you stop practising it, you’re no longer an ally because you’re only practising it when it’s convenient.”

The Future Laboratory has created a long-term strategy, covering the next two to five years, for what its diversity and inclusion initiatives look like, explains Amjad. “You can only make structural change happen if everybody participates, so it’s definitely important to collaborate with other agencies and businesses, because this is a problem that we’re all facing, and we can’t fix it alone. The more we fix it alone, the less effective it is.”

Active steps to take include diversifying agency recruitment pipelines and participating in conversations to signal to people that your business is a safer place for them to work, suggests Amjad. “As soon as we started adding things about diversity and inclusion to our social media, our website and our conversations, we had significant numbers of people of colour and people from marginalised groups applying.”

In trying to foster allyship, there is a risk that businesses place the focus on the majority, or the ‘in group’ – precisely the opposite of what they’re trying to achieve. Tom Holliss, head of people and culture at Zappi, says: “The biggest risk is that we redirect the focus of the conversation onto those with privilege and we inadvertently drift into saviourism (white, straight, able-bodied, or whatever else). Allyship should be a product of a culture that prioritises empathy for each others’ experiences and starting positions, and an honest, open and continuous reflective process looking at how systematic inequality plays out in your organisation.”

Making allyship a core priority must “start at the top” of organisations, adds Holliss. “If you aren’t prepared to use your privilege and power to prioritise the needs of people from marginalised communities, even when it’s very uncomfortable for you, how can you expect other people to?”

Businesses should be publishing gender and ethnicity pay-gap data, collecting diversity, equity and inclusion data on their teams and internal processes, and being transparent about inclusion and accessibility challenges they face, and what they are going to do about them, says Holliss, adding: “Practice allyship, don’t just talk about it.”

MRS established a Diversity & Inclusion Council in 2020, and has a workstream focused on allyship because “there’s a lot of people like me in the industry, and there’s a lot that we must do to challenge the status quo and make sure we have a more inclusive, more diverse sector”, says Jake Steadman, global vice-president of research and insight at Access Intelligence, and council member leading the focus.

Is there a risk that this ends up becoming another discussion topic without really being taken on board by those at the top of the industry – that is, white, straight, middle-class men? “I think there is genuine confusion about what allyship can mean, so the first thing is educating people and helping them understand that the onus is on them, in particular, to learn,” says Steadman. “This is not something we can just look to other people and tell them what to do; the onus is on each of us to learn what allyship means – and, importantly, what it means within our context, within our company – and the actions we can personally take. There’s no end point to this; it’s a continuous journey.”