Discrimination in the Workplace and in Recruitment Ep-9

Hello and welcome to our podcast. This is now the 9th episode of the Skills Provision podcast and on today's episode, we are discussing discrimination in work and in recruitment in general. Now, I'm Francesca and joining me on this podcast today, we have Chris. Hello everybody. And we have Pete. Hi. So for just kind of definition purposes, I'm going to use the Oxford Dictionary definition of what discrimination is and that is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of ethnicity, age, sex or disability. Okay, so we'll kind of be using that as our definition. So our first kind of area I wanted to discuss is how do we go about preparing candidates so our candidates that are hired by employers for their new working environments. Now, one of the first things and this kind of rolls on from one of our previous podcasts is making sure that candidates have clear guidance about what the job role is going to involve, the responsibilities, the expectations, because obviously there's nothing worse than thinking you're joining about, for one thing and then finding out there's a completely different remit to the job. Obviously there's naturally going to be some things that are kind of your unwritten things, such as, oh, you might have to go do some printing as part of your work, but it's not explicitly written that you have to go and do some printing. Now, obviously there's many factors when it comes to preparing a candidate for their work environment. Now, one of the other things that we do do, and especially in the international side and the fact that we cover so many industries and sectors, is we do carry out some pre employment assessments and can also help with in some cases, some companies might want to do psychometric tests or they may decide they want to do some additional questioning. So, case in point, we're currently working on some high skilled roles and there's a particular level of questioning that needs to be done and making sure that people are prepared and understanding. So Chris, what do you think in terms of with regards to carrying out those pre assessment or those pre work supporting kind of functions? Well, they are essential, but it really starts with the candidate themselves. They need to do independent research in any market that they're looking at. We do get the obvious ridiculous situation, not with us, fortunately, but with others of nurses going to Canada and then deciding it's too cold. Now obviously, if they did elementary research before they actually started looking at a market, they would have avoid those sorts of situations. But with the power of the internet these days, you can gather so much information very quickly and easily by just asking a few questions online. And of course, we all know about Chat GPT which will actually give you the answers to virtually everything. So the information is there for the candidates to educate themselves a lot better than they have done historically. Where we try to encourage them is to ask questions because we will have spoken to our clients about the need to make any international worker feel welcome when they join. And no doubt we'll cover those sorts of preparation issues a little later on in the podcast. So Pete, I do have a question for you. Obviously your son works on oil and gas rigs with his type of work, obviously it's a high risk environment and I know that from conversations he's gone through quite a lot of or been signed up with quite a few recruitment companies or intermediaries, if you will. Are there any types of pre employment assessments that you see done or carried out there that you think are particularly good in terms of preparing people? Yes and no, I think is the answer. Yes in terms of every employer has some kind of induction process, generally computer based, which needs to be worked through. And regardless if a person is going back onto a rig, it will hone them into the safety features, the risks involved and all this kind of stuff. Obviously, very dangerous environment on the north side. This is mainly the problem that the agencies have is the poor way this is all managed in terms of louis may be given two days notice, three days notice to complete a four hour induction package before he arrives at Aberdeen, which give him plenty of time, he can get done, no problem at all. And then you have the agencies that contact him 3 hours before he's getting on the chopper to say they haven't had a copy of his induction certificate or proof that he's carried out the course mail reply because you didn't send me anything. So then he's rushing in. The often the case he can be in the hotel room hours before flying out to a very dangerous environment, rushing through subjects that are very important. So it's often the miscommunication or poor communication or even good communication between the various parties, the worker, the agency and the employer. And at times, because there's a high turnover, especially in the summer when they're doing these, covering holiday periods for workers on the rigs or shutdown periods for maintenance, it's a little bit too much orientated around the money, the people, moving people on the chessboard from A to B, rather than making sure that people are prepared. And then is there anything in place for new workers, young workers, inexperienced workers on top of the mandatory sort of induction period? And the answer is no. It's a generic thing rather than generic things. Lewis's first job at 18 was at the BP refinery in Hull Eternal, there for maintenance, shutdown period, 60 workers, hard nose operators, very experienced. And he sat in the monster, in a monster, and someone said, who the hell are you? And he introduced himself. How old are you? I'm 18. Which obviously amused everyone there and Adam in fits of laughter and all this kind of stuff and he just brushed it off and got about his work. But how you prepare young people so that could turn it around, because I don't work in this area, do we ask the employers if they have induction packages? If they do or they don't, do we then prepare candidates accordingly for what they will be facing when they arrive at the company? And also for the inexperienced and those that haven't worked in specific areas, do we speak to the employers and court and sort of communicate with them of what you have in place? For the inexperienced and generally there is nothing. And often because those at the top, those making the rules, those working in HR, don't consider the inexperienced, the people that can only speak three words of English in an English speaking environment, or those that have just left school and are like shitting themselves. Now what? You know what I mean? It could be a lot better than what it is, I believe. Yeah. In terms of for us, because we unlike some of the agencies, our work is not so focused on contracting out workers and it's more permanent placements. I wouldn't say we are directly involved in generating onboarding or kind of resource materials. You kind of have taken my kind of next point I was going to make about how we help to prepare, but we have given advice and learned through processes of what we've seen, of good practices. So I've seen some really good ones where they've talked not only about what the role is going to involve your working hours, just standard things, but about what's in the local area. So the hospital is here, the supermarkets here, the average house prices, this rentals, this, all of these sort of things that actually especially when we are talking about international recruitment and that is such a big thing for us, is that moving from one place to another, it's not like going down the road. There are so many other factors to consider and all of those additional things are of paramount importance to increase the chances of success because someone might be able to do the job, but if they're unhappy in their surrounding environment, it can often make it harder for people to do the job. Absolutely. And it's absolutely central that you discuss details on things like accommodation to make sure that the employer has got all the bases covered. A positive type one that always amused me, but I thought it was great, is that someone was taking on board some Indians and obviously understood their passion was cricket. So it actually linked up with some of the local cricket clubs to say, we're getting a few Indians in here, would you be interested in meeting up with them to see if any of them are any good at cricket? And I thought that was great and that's the depth of thought that needs to go in from the employer's side. And to be honest, that should be going in whether they're hiring locally. I was going to say, and I think that's the thing, is it's that level of making and it's difficult depending on the size of a business, because we could be talking about a business that's a one man band looking to hire someone or a multimillion pound company. There are so many variations permutations of the people that are out here in the world. Different skin colors, different languages, different backgrounds, that trying to cover all bases is so difficult. We will never get it 100% right, but if we get it 95% right, we're doing a downsight better than most people out there. And we are not the world's policeman as far as all this is concerned. But employers, you know, we've had some pretty good new clients come on board, and most of those have taken on board, right up front, the guidance that we have given them about the need to prepare packages to make them appear as welcoming as they possibly can. The bit that can be a struggle is that you might win over the HR team, you might win over the directors to this, but you can't control the implementation of such policies within the company. And sometimes that's the area where there's discrimination that you can't perceive as a supplier and you only get to learn about this after the event. But again, when you do get the odd ripple that comes through, I have to say most employers are very responsible in that they take it on board, don't make a huge issue of it and just get on and deal with it. And I think the other thing that we'll come on to, employers actually in a bit more, I feel like there are a couple of other points that I kind of wanted to raise with regards to for candidates, and it kind of comes under the onboarding process and things like that. So it's being aware of the company's policies and procedures and, if possible, being able to get translated versions of things. That is something that more and more companies do. But, again, there is only so far we can go, and I'm sure Pete will also attest to some people will try and get things translated online. And those translations are not always the most accurate, as I'm sure you found yourself, Pete. Yeah, it's a problematic area, definitely. Yeah. Google translates 30% accuracy exactly and it's very difficult I speak that language to know how accurate is what I've just posted on the website. In this language, when, say, Indian gets shot to look at it. He Laughs what's the problem? It's terrible, almost unreadable. And you're like, all right, so Google Translate is not that good, then? No, it's not that's problematic. And it can often be the things that we try to avoid, especially during the interview process. And then also when they're kind of going through training and onboarding is colloquialisms or like phrases that you and I may understand. But equally, if we went somewhere else and they were talking about things and they're using local terminology, that doesn't apply. People are going to be lost. People are not going to understand and it can make it even harder. We get lost ourselves. If you take the It sector, I've never known a sector that loves acronyms like that. And you have to translate what they're actually saying into some form that you can understand before you can get on with your work. And if you will, that's almost intellectual snobbery. And that is something that you need to get candidates to understand that if they want to give themselves the best chance, they need to give the information in a form that can be understood by everybody in the decision making chain. So in terms of then the discrimination and abuse in the workplace, obviously I kind of defined the variable Oxford Dictionary definition of what discrimination is. But if we kind of go through some of them and look at it from the view of yes, chris, did you say I just like to put an overview point here is we've not discussed different cultures and different rules and regulations that apply in different countries. And what to us in the west is discrimination. It's just normal business practice in many parts of the world. Yeah. And that's something we will come on to. So in terms of then discrimination, abuse in the workplace, obviously dealing in international market, you've always kind of taken the words of our mouth is that you are up against various different ways of working, different interpretations. And our responsibility within that is to try and act as that middle ground to explain to both sides how things work. Now, if you are someone who has worked internationally before and you're used to that environment, you have much more of an awareness. But if it's your first time and you're looking for a new opportunity, it can be very overwhelming. So in terms of based on if we say race or ethnicity, so treating employees differently or unfairly due to race, color, nationality or ethnic background. Now this is something that we unfortunately do see a lot of different with workers from countries where the color of their skin is not white, unfortunately do get treated very differently and often are subject to lower salary packages in some parts of the world. Now, our stance on it is obviously if someone can do the job regardless of where they come from, why should they be paid any differently? I mean, I don't know what your guys please feel free to jump in at any point. I don't want to feel like it's just me talking. My comments on those couple of points is I'm repeating myself. We are not the world's policeman. We do not set the terms and conditions of any offers that go out into the marketplace. Our choice is whether we choose to engage with the clients who perhaps want to make low ball offers in the marketplace. But as you know, we turn down a lot of work where we think the situation is not balanced. Now, we are not going to turn aside all work which has low pay because the realities of the marketplace globally is that people are so desperate to find work from Asian and African countries they will accept much lower terms and conditions than somebody would from, say, the European Union. But by contrast, if you just go back two or three years ago and look what Europe was doing itself and here in the UK we were doing we were chasing cheap labor from anywhere we could get it within the European Union. Hence the big transfer of labor from east to west. What we're talking about is an evolution of these markets. And now you're saying basically in Europe, full employment and they're having to look somewhere else. And where are they looking? They're looking where they can find people, first of all, and then at the price that they feel they are being competitive. So we're seeing a lot more interest now in African and Asian clients than we were sorry, candidates than we were two or three years ago. Pete, do you feel like you have anything to add on this point? Many factors take into place, take into account. And there are different organizations in different countries with different manpower setups. You can have remote workers. Should all remote workers be paid the same? If one's in England and one's in India, cost of living difference is five. Some would say yes, some would say hell no. Large organizations that have a mixture of European, African, Eastern European, British American workers where they're saving, sending money home, or it's local. For example, when I worked in Iraq, there was a lot of local people doing low level work, helping out, cleaning up, that kind of thing. Sort of the toilets are helping around the kitchen areas. Tenants, accommodation, a fair amount of them. This place probably held about 5000 people. We would pay the same with an allowance for extra little bit extra money. What were they paid? They were paid, I would imagine, well, but according to the local market. So you couldn't compare what they were getting with what we were getting because it's almost like what's the average wage in Afghanistan or Iraq compared to what's the average wage in the UK. So all these factors almost like you can't generalize as to it can be. Like I said, there's so many factors. If you're talking about the UK. Food processing, they tend to look for the cheap labor, as Chris said, starting off in Eastern Europe with a sign up for the Poles and the Bulgarians, Romanians. Now they've all washed their hands of that kind of work. And now you're looking at Africa. My thought process of all this is what happens when you've been to all the countries and then all the countries decide, I'm not doing that for that kind of money. Like the poll say, the polls were the first, the migrant Polish labor coming into the UK. Eventually, when we're not willing to do it for that kind of money, what happens when you've done the cycle, finished the cycle. But the people like in the food industry, they can't just say, like, you need to start double paying people double what they're or you're not going to have any manpower. It's like the agricultural sector, isn't it? It's the whole thing we had on the previous podcast about the fact that they were paying 20 odd pounds or trying to pay 20 odd pounds an hour, and it still didn't attract people. On all these subjects appear, it's the people that at the top. And it can be politicians, they're so far removed from reality on the ground. So, like, say, the UK market, it could be said that if you mobilized all those that are able to work, that are on benefits, long term unemployed, empty the prisons of all the less serious and put them to mobilize them into employment, would we have an issue? Not much of one. It all comes down to this. I'm not doing that for that amount of money. Everybody has the right to make that decision. That's up to them if they want to do that and if it causes market imbalances. And the decision makers at the top of those industries say, well, we can find another solution to this, we will either automate it and therefore we need less manpower, or we'll look at the African Asian market because we believe we can get those skills in at an affordable price. Which would have to be done, obviously, legally, then that's the right also who own the companies. But the problematic with the companies, Chris, is obviously that they can be restricted by governing policies, can't they? Yes. In terms of not everything is eligible for a visa, not everything's eligible for a work permit. Minimum requirements? No. Absolutely. And that question you pose about what are you going to do when you reach the end of a cycle? I don't have an answer. I suppose the thing is, when you get to those stages, in some ways, inevitably you'd like to think that's when change has to come, and whether in this particular instance it might be that pay has to go up. Well, we've seen that across the world. Yes. We've now got inflation somewhere between six and 11%, depending in which developed markets you're in. In some of the markets, you've got inflation running at 40, 50%. So things have to go up in price. Now, where we actually operate is the heart of the Clark's shoe empire, which used to have 27 factories in the UK. It now has none and it's been around the world importing shoes. First of all, they went to Portugal, then they went to Asia. Now they're in South America. But at the end of the day, they're going to run out of places to go to. They presumably will all need shoes, so the price of shoes will go up. But if you look at the retail clothes market and the prices that are being offered in the shops for products, they are ridiculously low. And whilst the component parts of manufacture may be lower in those markets, pete mentioned a ratio elsewhere of five to one, and therefore you expect it to be cheaper. You know that most of it is driven by low cost labor. It's high inflation in space, like we're going through in the UK this morning, tower Worldwide. Is this healthy? If it doesn't run for too long, because it rebalances things like, let's say the food industry has notoriously put back everything to the born so that they're paying the workers next and often to work in horrible conditions, and they're being squeezed by the supermarkets, who are in turn being squeezed by shareholders and all this kind of stuff. It doesn't appear that two or three years of runaway inflation are not great can have a sort of rebalancing effect within the whole economy, can't it? It can rebase the numbers that people are used to. If you take a pint of milk or a loaf of bread, I don't even know if you would know the price, Pete. I would struggle to give you the price, but I bet you it's about 30% more than it was a year ago. And do we really notice, unless we are on the breadline or pardon the pun, I think you do notice. I'll take one for the ladies in here, that being the one who normally does the shopping. I see you guys might be out of your element here. Although I do hear Pete frequents it a bit more than he used to. I thought about more than I went from Nil to I go shopping all the time. So, yeah, that's a bit of a change. But you do notice the difference. But I suppose a point also that I wanted to make was about people not wanting to take on these types of roles and them not being paid fairly is that people will recognize, and I do think COVID emphasize this, the people who work in these roles are critical. You need the people working in the the food processing, the manufacturer, all of these sort of types of roles, because without them, nothing comes through. We don't get products, we don't get everything. And therefore those sort of roles probably should be paid more than they currently are. Not necessarily because they are the most skilled roles, but because of their place within society and the impact that they do have. At the end of the day, it's supply and demand. Yes. And it will come back to it. And okay, I've heard Pete mentioned that 20 pounds an hour won't work in the food industry. People just don't want to do that sort of work. Exactly the same is in the agricultural sector as well. And that you just can't get people to do things like fruit picking anymore in the domestic markets. Now, the thing that's changed is we used to import under the EU regulations, tens of thousands of people every year to do seasonal fruit picking, which we can't do anymore. So what do we have to do? We have to look at other markets. Now the government has stood in the way and precluded the opening up of the markets that are needed to find these fruit pickers, which is a deliberate tactic by the government because it wants to see if it can get its low skilled people back into work. But again, as being said several times already in this podcast, people do not want to do those sorts of jobs anymore. So from a farmer's point of view, they have to look for new solutions, robotics, automation, or even changing the mix of the farming that they're doing to take themselves into new markets. But people will adapt. I think we're kind of going slightly off topic from the whole discrimination side of things. So I'm just going to pull us back a little bit. And as I said, there's lots of different areas of discrimination, but I'm just going to pick up on two or three more other areas. Discrimination based on gender. We see a lot in society and a lot of news articles, lots of different companies where you find out that pay or what men are being paid versus what the women are being paid can be drastically different. And I can never wrap my head around the justification for this and why it's something that has been able to go and be this way for so long and the lack of transparency. And obviously, pay is not something that everyone necessarily discusses and in some companies it's discouraged to be discussing pay between colleagues. But what are your thoughts, feelings as men, I suppose, in this scenario about women potentially being paid less than men? I think it's morally and ethically wrong. Ends of story. I think it's fine and normal in certain circumstances, but in most instances it's like Chris said, immoral and wrong. Where it does differ slightly is in the physicality elements. Like, I don't think you could actually get many females if you said across a 10,000, bunch of 10,001 or two maybe that could do the same job as my son. His physical strength, body shape, just power since he left school. And he could bang out 100 nod press ups when he was at school to what he is now is like, unbelievable. Like strengthening. He gives me a hug before it goes away and you're like, Bloody hell. He's just so strong and this is down to gym, but it's the work. Now, could a female probably damage him internally? He's hanging upside down sometimes for about four or 5 hours. Yeah, I get your point, Pete, but the base question is, if the jobs are comparable, should there be any differentiation? No, I do understand in terms of obviously, like you say, the amount of work that someone does. If I am working against you two and it's paid, obviously, like on, say, I don't know, peace rate or something like that, where it's like the amount you do because just because I am potentially physically weaker than you two and therefore inferior, I might not be able to do as much if I don't do as much. I shouldn't be paid as much if I don't produce the same amount of work. I do understand that and I understand the discrepancy there. And it's really hard to say because it's like that's not always true, is it? You can have some women who actually and I've got a very good case in point in one of the clients we work with, where their highest performing worker is a woman and she excels far and far above everything else, and she earns nearly 2000 pounds worth additional money per month because of her performance. And she is outperforming all the men in that category. And there could be several reasons for that. Her talent, her industriousness, that she's learned how to use the system to her best advantage, as opposed to those that want to do as little as they can and motor along at a cruise level rather than doing the most they can. But there's also the situation in Francesca. The women are much, much better at doing lots of jobs which require nimbleness. I'm not sure I fall into that category. There are exceptions to every rule. For instance, in the pharmaceutical industry, the women actually putting together the packages that were so often used in COVID were mainly females because they could do it at a rate far quicker than Blokes could do. I just accept that. I do think there is a level with everything and this is not meant to come. And this may be an unpopular way, and this is why I want to phrase it hopefully in a way that doesn't come across. As being harsh is that there are times and places where it is fair and there are times and places where I think some people kick up a fuss about things. To kick up a fuss. And there isn't necessarily what's the right way of saying this? There isn't necessarily something material behind true justification. Yes, thank you. The discrimination is just rife out there. No matter. And it's lip service. We do this. It's a horrible world out there. And to get a fair balance will even come and probably not go back 20 years, pick 50 prominent Plc companies in the UK, go to their website, look at the. Board members, all of us particular age old in there and occasional female within the realms. Now you go in there, you've got probably 70% to 80% male, the rest female. And now you're starting to see the diversity in there because we've got to have at least one colored, something like that. So we'll got to be looked as being an ethical organization. And this is we never have been with Mistreat. We don't have young people on the board, we don't represent the youth. Which board has a young person on? It's just sickening. The fact that it's almost like it's just the world over. You've got the haves and the have nots and fairness, representational, fairness. When we get onto this podcast in more in detail and start pulling some research data out and all this, it's just not there. But people like lip service that well, it is a little bit there and it is a little bit this. Then we see a little bit of change here. It's just crap is what it is. It's not right. And if it's fair, everything should be performance based in work, nothing else. What else matters apart from performance based? And it's like what sex you are, what color you are, what anything you are, how young, old, anything performance based. What do you go back to the subject of induction treatment of people in the workplace. Now, the strange part is that corporate people, bodies, institutions are generally financially biased geared. Money is a big thing to the company, obviously, especially PLCs and all this kind of stuff. But then you look at it and think, are they just doing the same? It's almost like there's no innovation, no change, no filing stuff. So by having a means of like Chris said earlier, which is a fantastic point, trying so there were a lot of Indians, so they started integrating local cricket teams and all this kind of stuff. But it's a matter of measurement. So you do that in a company, but do you go further and measure the like, since we've done this, we're losing 40% less manpower on an annual basis. Turnover has gone up by X. Wow is measuring it. Now, one thing I would say is that most of the antidiscrimination has been driven by legislation rather than voluntary action. Now that's a point that everybody needs to consider. Why are we not doing more ourselves within our organizations to be even better balanced than we are today into the future? And that's an ethical question that we're forever asking ourselves as to how can we carry our customer base with us to be less discriminatory in their decision making. And there is a limit as to what you can do as a supplier within an overall supply chain. There is less issue with the candidates because the candidates are usually coming from challenged circumstances and they want to minimize the antidiscrimination that could affect them moving forward. So the dialogue needs to be with the clients, in our case, going through the recruitment process. But it could also equally apply to anything else in the supply chain because the questions and processes are similar. It doesn't matter whether you're buying people or buying cotton or buying the components that make up bread or anything. So the same questions need to be asked and people need to take more of a moral standpoint. And there is a limit to how strong you can afford to be as a business. You can't turn down every bit of business that comes in your direction for some moral point that you can't enforce because the actual decision making lies within the end user's business. Is it not a case a lot of the time where companies or individuals departments will act in an ethical, fair manner and then try to monetize it, devaluing the work that they did initially? Or look at us, we're very ethical. We do this with the young, we're multicultural across the board with it. A lot of the time it's just it's just marketing, marketing slogans, not because they actually believe in it. I would agree with you. That is the thing, isn't it? And that's where you going back to the point you made about whole measuring thing. Is there's a whole idea of putting something out there and we've ticked the box done is a different thing to say you're going to do something and it's a different thing to put things into practice and believe in. It and truly implement it, because it's all well and good. Having these policies, these statements, these declarations, whatever it may be. But if you don't put them into practice, they're not worth anything. Let me pose a question here. If you are a decision maker and you are looking at the African market where there are millions of people unemployed, close to starvation, but they could find jobs in places like the Middle East but you know, the Middle East will not abide by western standards in terms of discrimination and pay rates. But you could actually help these people to survive and possibly make modest savings which could be repatriated back to their home country to help families and relatives, would you morally say that that is a correct approach, is to help them get such work or would you say it is an immoral approach? Probably depends on the reasons why. I mean if it's like I'm on about the true reasons, cost saving for the company and will improve profitability is the underlying aim, but is never spoken about or giving people hope, work, a future, then there can be very moral subjects. That's at the heart of discrimination, isn't it? Because we ourselves, we deal with certain countries where their interpretation of discrimination is so far away from what is understood to be discrimination in the west. And the way that they treat people is as units of labor rather than human beings. And that's just their cultural approach to it. What do you do then? It's a difficult one. The thing is, depending on who you're speaking with, everyone can view something differently. And what one person's viewpoint is on, something could be different to someone else's. And if it is for the betterment of someone in their life, you'd have thought you're doing the right thing. It is an absolute business. Does business actually work that way? Yeah, it does. Pink the realities are that I won't name any names, but we just recently were invited to quote on a very large transaction in the Middle East, but the pay rates that they were putting forward were as close to slavery rates as you can imagine. And we tried to encourage them to increase their pay rates and so on to make it more balanced, and they declined and we've gone our separate ways. Now, that was a potential amount of business that could have been worth maybe a million dollars to skills provision, but we took the moral high ground on it because we didn't want to be associated with such situations. No. And that's where sometimes to make the sacrifices in the grander scheme of things, the short term pain is worth the long term gain. Well, that you never know, to be honest. No, you don't know. And that's, again, when you measure, isn't it? Because what your theory is might not necessarily marry up with what the practice is and vice versa. And it's constantly evolving, it's constantly learning. And I think the subject or the underpinning thing that comes in on every single podcast we have is education. Education of everyone that's involved. And the constant learning cycle about the fact that a farmer that has been farming for 40, 50 years, the way that he would have spoken to his workers back in the day, is very different to how the policies, the things that are about now, the way the world has become now. And they equally have to learn as much as someone who's the CEO of a multinational It company. And we see the change every day. There's been such a sea change since the UK left the European Union. It was only too simple for someone to whistle up to recruiters such as ourselves. And then, can you find me 20 Bulgarians to come and pick my strawberries? Or 30 Romanians to come and do the potato run? And things like that. And all they were interested in was how much, and they weren't interested in anything else now, because it's a much more complicated business, and that has been driven by the government. Introducing legislation that creates minimum standards is that they know they won't get the people unless they play according to the rules. Now, to me, that's a good thing. Yeah. And eventually people will hit an imaginary brick wall and there'll be a point where they can't get past certain things. There will be certain minimum standards across the board. But it's how you enforce those minimum standards and who instigates them and who is the person responsible. And I think, as Pete said earlier on, it's kind of the governing bodies, the people that are responsible for certain things. There has to be certain standards set by them and the implementation and then the following up regards to that. But I'd like to move this podcast kind of forward in terms of ethical recruitment. So the Fair Labor Alliance defined it as ethical recruitment is the process of engaging a worker fairly transparently and on merit. So this is something that we are really trying to push and really trying to again educate our clients. So the way that we just a little bit about our practice is that we have a requirement come in from a client and we'll discuss obviously what they're looking for in an ideal candidate about the role, what are the minimum kind of requirements. But what we are particularly keen on, and it's something we state from the very outset when we do our demonstrations to potential clients, is we will be putting forward those that can and have the ability to do the job regardless their race, gender, nationality, et cetera. Now obviously there are certain limitations where we're not going to be putting someone forward for a vehicle mechanic role if they're actually a hairdresser. We're not that naive. We wouldn't want to waste candidates time or clients time. But if they're someone who perhaps their requirement has been that they need to have a minimum of five years of experience, but a candidate has three. And this kind of goes back to your thumb, Pete, is that if someone's got three, but those three years have been in a high achieving environment, a premier brand that perhaps they've worked with, well, those three years, in some cases, could be viewed as more valuable. So it's something that we really try to do is to give our clients a diverse range of people to view and then to allow them to make the decisions on the hiring we're trying to get and provide an equal opportunity for our candidates. We also have situations, though I don't know how to summarize it, but we told you so type recruitment situations where people come to us and say, these are the rules and regulations for engagement. Are these acceptable to you? And we might go through them and say, well, there's two things here that we don't like. We don't think the pay rate is right and give them justification by giving them comparisons around the globe that suggest they should be paying more. And if they only give very short term accommodation support, then they generally won't be successful. So we'll tell people that and we'll say, all right, if you want to, go ahead. We are not expecting to be successful with this recruitment under these terms and conditions, but we'll run it for two or three weeks and see what actually comes through the system. Now, generally we are right in our assessment and we go back and we say to them, right, you need to do a bit more on accommodation, you need to do a bit more in terms of the overall value of the package, what do you want to do? And then we'll relaunch it. So there is, if you will, a bedding in period with a lot of international recruitment of getting people to understand what the terms and conditions need to be to be successful 100%. And now Pete obviously working on the online side and especially being heavily involved with profiles. I know that when we've had conversations, you're a real advocate for ethical recruitment and giving people that chance. So would you like to kind of share your thoughts on it and your feelings? Before I do that, I'd like trying to find an appropriate place and time to go through some of our research notes which is going to move us back into the workplace problems that are out there. And I'll just basically skim through some of this, which is a little bit interesting. So in the Guardian in February 23 this year, the UK is amongst the most accepting countries for foreign workers. Survey find the UK has become one of the world's most accepting places for foreign workers. According to a survey of 24 nations revealed a sharp increase in British acceptance of economic migration. People in the UK merge is less likely to think that when jobs are scarce, employees should give priority to people of their own country than those in Norway, Canada, France, Spain, the US, australia and Japan. Only Germany and Sweden were more open on that question. Interesting. Then it goes into a lot of data which I won't cover now if I then jump to the Middle East. Obviously a little bit polarized from European thoughts on discrimination, treatments and workplace, but there are changes coming. The Changing Tide of the Gulf Migrant Workers was written in June, which is in the report by Wilson Center June 22. And this all revolves around the Cafala system I've not heard about before, so I was quite interested in doing the research into all this. The Kafala system is a framework that defines the legal status of migrant workers in the Gulf region. Local sponsors are responsible for foreigners employment, living expenses and general well being. However, this arrangement contributes to ineffective labor force dynamics. Migrants are recruited on time, limited contracts to work for specific employer and cannot easily switch jobs. So it goes into a mass of problems that they have in terms of workforce, integrating people into the workforce from other countries. Authorities in the Gulf argue that measures have effectively abolished the Cafala system, although barriers remain in place that continue to deny foreigners equal rights in the workplace. For example, measures passed in Saudi Arabia to loosen restrictions on migrant workers will not touch an estimated 3.6 million migrant workers. And of course, we have all the issues that were highly documented about the World Cup. The buildings, the construction, where they went on for years and the deaths that were happening on. The compensation wasn't paid from all the injuries, deaths that were occurred during that period. And finally on to very interesting study which was carried out in December of last year by the International Labor Organization which states violence and harassment at work has affected more than one in five people. The first global survey on experience of violence and harassment at work aims to bring a better understanding and awareness of an issue rooted in complex economic, social and cultural factors. Of 23% more than one in five this goes down into breaking it down. So this is factual and some of some horrific things documented and cited violence, people taking their own life because of bullying within the workplace, deep rooted harassment. It doesn't make good reading all my own notes that I wrote on this but that doing this research I started to get annoyed. That becomes apparent when you look at the international market, that it's just lip service that's out there and we're not actually seeing officer we've seen a bit of change here. Middle east a little bit better there because we've got a lot of money and we want them to invest into the west and football teams and into all this kind of stuff. So we just gloss over a hell of a lot of stuff which at the lower level it's still problem. People are still probably struggling to be integrated properly and a lot of it is down to weak management. Management of people in the workplace needs spine back, will respect and willingness to be unpopular which brings the chicken and egg analogy of is a good boss, a popular boss. Cleeks, bully and abuse are generally accepted in the workplace and in some cases approved of by the management because it could be 80% British, 80% white and all this kind of stuff. And the people know that you've got to keep on the good side of certain elements and most people are weak, they're not willing to stand up in many ways manage which obviously causes problems on the flip side of all this. So on the other side of the coin, you have the lazy tendencies mannerisms, which is something that is massively on the rise, people thinking too much, people looking around too much, people looking at other people, what they're doing. And you see probably the integration of the internet into our lives where lazy, lazy by nature, the lazy don't even think they're lazy, but they are lazy. People want to do everything's got to be done fast, quicker, simpler. And everything revolves around the word avoidance. I don't have to do it and someone else does. That's good. And where this comes into the workplace is that data and statistics, everything. Associates can be skewed where managers are attempting to get people to do a fair day's work for a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, and everything is problematic because you've got poor integration abuse, laziness. And then it's trying to mold all these into effective organizations. And the only way you can do it is some of it you probably can't because it's cultural and let's say young people that don't want to do certain jobs, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that lazy. And it becomes that the workplaces that maybe at one time of the day were quite good and now viewed ineffectively and performed poorly, generally because of the mass, either long term sick, which is a result of problems in the workplace, or which we see mass turnaround of manpower. So it's like which can be positive to us because we recruit, but not in terms of producing. Sorry, what was that, Chris? Sorry. So that was my finishing off points on the workplace. In terms of ethical recruitment, I think it's quite straightforward for us. It isn't straight, but it's almost like the challenge for us is to inform the employer or our clients how we are going to take on a task. So having the strength, moral courage to say these are the people you want, understand that we will provide these people, but we will also provide within our holding area, the client zone where all the selection process and everything is carried out. We will also put into these places young, old, possibly disabled, those that don't fit the criteria, but we feel are fantastic matches. And obviously that's the theory, and I work heavily on the theory side of things, which does then become you start to work on ethics because you're giving a widespread opportunity to a greater amount of people and a fairer system. Now, it could be that when it comes to selected people, this is all taken, dismissed, and they just hire who fitted the job that they wanted in the first place, or they have their eyes on and think, well, yeah, we can train these people up. They could be fantastic assets. These people are going into work and they're staying in places for like ten years at a time. These people who fit the criteria, they're chopping and changing every three months, which obviously is a massive cost saving. So my thing on ethical recruitment is the theory is fantastic. The theory that we hang our hats on and the bye bye is strong. How it's working out with you guys in reality? I don't know. It's a difficult one. There are some that do embrace and I suppose that ultimately it comes down to at times how badly they need the manpower. And whilst someone might have an ideal candidate in their head, that ideal candidate is also wanted by 100 other organizations within a 50 miles radius. As you said, you might have to go for someone that is not 100% match but has that ability to do. And I think I said this last on the last episode of the podcast, if someone can do 80% of the role. You can teach the other 20% perfect in the marketplace and perfectly available. If they are available can often then sometimes be a black mark. Why they're available. But it's a difficult one. It really is. This whole topic in general is we can try to be better ourselves, we can try to better candidates, we can try to better the employers, but at the end of the day, the employer makes the hiring decision. Exactly. We don't. So if he picks somebody from the planet Zog as his preferred candidate, that's his decision. And as it should be, we are here. But you can still have an ethical system, Chris. We haven't we can't say, oh, we want you to pick the disabled person that's in the pot. If they don't want to pick that person, we can't make them do it. No, but giving that person the opportunity to be considered is what's important. And being able to be in conversation for something and not being told, no, there's no chance, no, we're not even going to put you forward. It's something, it's like what the job is, and you can't turn an ex chef into a welder overnight, that kind of thing. But it's sort of like whatever the job is and how close it's the transferable skill, transferable skills. If it's lowish skills, then can anybody do it? Probably if you got the physicality, got the desire. I think the problem in the workplace that can come from if there's a massive amount of recruitment going on. And look in Germany at this moment in time, it's like insane. It's like there's got to be an element in there of there's just too many people moving around, leaving. And if you think, why would someone leave? For better money, better condition. Yeah. But a lot of the time it's just not happy. If you're happy in a job like 30 pounds a week, 40 pound a week, are you going to move? Probably not. Are you happy with your lot? And a lot of the time can come down to how and I think you've gone on about this a lot, Chris, over the years, is the treatments of the manpower when they're in place, will reduce the churn, which will save them. So if we say, yes, we've got these five, so we can explain, which we do get the opportunity within our systems. These five people that you've highlighted, which on paper, on paper are a very good match, they've moved round jobs. As you can see, they're moving around jobs all the time. The longest that person has been in the job is four months in the last five years. These guys are not a great mix. Look at the loyalty that they're showing to their employers now that may person hire them five. That's what all right, yeah. Because reducing the churn is what it's got to be massive in terms of finance, isn't it, really? Yeah. Retraining constant. If I was a director of the business, I would want to know why people are leaving my business. That would be my very first question. Why are people moving on now, going to Germany, as the example you brought up, they're going through a huge generational change. At the moment, there's a high percentage of workers that are due for retirement. Their post war bulge is running about ten years behind other public places. Because of the impact of the Second World War, because they had to recover from the Second World War then they've done brilliantly for 40, 50 years and now the bulge is moving through. So that's one of the reasons. The other thing for Germany, there were two things until very recently, they insisted that someone had to be a German speaker before they could get a permit and they would show no flexibility in terms of provision of visas. Now this is changing because it's had to change, but you brought the German legislators have been very slow to react and it's only just beginning to move now. But you're beginning to see all the changes that you may recall, Pete, that we predicted would happen, first in the UK and then in other parts of Europe, are happening now. We're seeing Norwegians coming back into the market in quite large numbers, looking for people because their old models aren't working. I had an exchange with one of our business partners this morning about the Finnish market because obviously they're not getting on too well with the Russians anymore, which used to be a source of labor, so they're having to change their model. And this is the constant evolution that goes on in international recruitment. But you can't get away, I don't believe, from the fact that the world has discrimination near the surface everywhere you look. Totally agree, but if you're looking at, we've got an organization of 10,000 people, and the less people that are leaving and having to be replaced, retrained all that recruited, found. It's got to be a mass. It's either going to work for you, you've got a good organization, you induct people correctly, you treat people correctly, you stamp out any as much abuse as you can within the workplace, treat people fairly, pay them well, why are they going to leave? And it's almost like, well, it might be that the job is a bit hideous or something like that, but generally you start ticking boxes. And caring is the big problem within all this. Chris, that those at the top, they're in the nice either aircond offices or the heating is going there, the doors are short, they're looking at computer screens and seeing data and figures and money and all this, and are not that interested in what's going on on the shop floor. I think they tend to be reactive rather than proactive, Pete, they will react when a problem occurs. They won't stop that problem occurring by making sure they're getting the right intelligence coming through. I'd have said the same 50 years ago as today and that a lot of the leaders in the business do not ask the right questions of their business and to get the right information coming through. And that's nothing to do with discrimination or anything. That's to do with poor management, which is a problem the world suffers from. And is that poor management where if we say everything circular, and I strongly believe it is, that comes back to the fact that the lack of inclusivity, if that's actually a word in terms of board members, there's not enough females on, there not enough young people, old people, and they just don't have the mix within the top of these chains. So everything's just maintaining the status quo for what we've always done. Which isn't progress, is it? No, it's not progress. You know the old adage, Pete, if you want to find out what's happening in a company, ask for cleaner because they've probably got more hands on knowledge than the executives within the organization. Plus they tend to go through the waste bins reading materials. So I'd like to kind of move this forward as we're talking about the companies playing and the part that they play in this cycle, so how companies could potentially adapt and how they can promote the differences in the workplace. So again, I've kind of got some areas where I think either they should be doing or it's where others where I've seen that there is good practice. So having group or representatives for either a minority or to represent the workers in order to be able to articulate their feelings towards how they feel within the workplace, not necessarily just on discrimination. This could obviously be kind of across the board, but I know that in one of our clients companies that they have a representative for each shift and then they have a sub representative on each shift as an example and they are the voices for their cohorts. Now obviously not everyone wants to necessarily tell someone something. So another thing is suggestion boxes or having a chance for each worker to have a chance to feed back, whether that be in a one to one, whether that be in an anonymous capacity because some people might feel that they're not taken seriously or the people that they are speaking to potentially a part of the problem. And we have found that in that where there has been a lack of training for those that are going to be managing people. And again, this is kind of coming to the point you've just been discussing is that there needs to be training provided to the managers of any sort of workforce, but even more so, those that are potentially looking to hire international recruits to understand the diversity in the. Workplace because people consciously can be discriminative but equally subconsciously could be discriminative. And it's understanding and adjusting and adapting their practices to make a best concerted effort for the workers to feel accepted. Could I just say something just to summarize what you've said there in a few words is what are the benefits of an effective communications matrix to the business? If you ask yourself that simple question then if you've got the tools in place that give you the information then you can make decisions. If you haven't, you're operating blindly. Another suggestion and good practice that you've seen is having a buddy system alongside your formal orientation. So being delivered or having the training delivered. Now again, taking some of our clients that we've worked with, they are used to inducting local candidates so adapting their practices for inducting international candidates or foreign candidates because culturally for some countries people don't want to come across as not understanding something. So we'll nod their head, say yes, think that they've understood something when in the reality they haven't. So then buddying up with someone within the workplace that they are familiar and can be shown how to do something, can help put them at ease. And even better if it ends up being that that person has been on that same journey that that person has or this group is now going on. One of our clients has done a very good job of this and promoted one of the workers that we placed into a management role and they are such a good role model and person for the new workers to turn to as a way of seeing what the best practice looks like. I can help them put them at ease. But I think it's an invaluable tool. People are your most valuable tool. They are indeed. And if you don't talk to your people, you're a fool. And the other thing that all levels of management should be visible. They can't hide away in ivory towers and the days when I used to run manufacturing businesses I used to wander around the shop floor and ask questions how are things going? What are the issues? Have you had any breakdowns you've had to deal with? Have you had any stock supply problems? The orders coming through okay, is there anything we can do to make your job easier? It's all basic and it's all common sense but it doesn't happen as much as it should do. No. A couple of other things and then please, I'm opening this up to you guys as well is language training. Now this is being able to provide either this is English language classes or perhaps providing signage, guidance in their home language but also trying to get them to learn the terms in that country because we as three collectively I suppose come from quite a lucky place where English is our first language. We're very lucky that a lot of the world speaks English but for those where English is not their first language, that adjustment, that adjusting to the ways, the words, the terminology that is used, it can only increase you'd like to think performance, reduce the risk of any potential serious incidences. The key point there is you have to check their understanding. You can assume absolutely nothing. I just had a very short story from my days when I was in the City of London as a banker. I was entertaining some Japanese people to lunch, and I'm quite a tall person, and I was sat upright in my chair and there was all sorts of cabuffle going on, and suddenly the chair of my opposite number shot up about a foot further in the air. So he was looking at me eyeball to eyeball. I had to use the Soviet to stop laughing, but obviously culturally it was very important to that Japanese individual that he was eyeball to eyeball with me and I wasn't consciously or unconsciously looking down on him. So you'll never get it right. Totally. That you can try and kind of on the language side of things, something that and, Pete, I know that you have a friend that has worked in the factory that has this is that obviously where your workforce is. Made up of various different cultures, languages, et cetera, is trying to promote the use of a universal language to avoid any conversations and people feeling like there's potential that they could be being talked about and not knowing that they're being talked about. So trying to promote the use of universal language. I don't know how did your friend get on? Because I know that you said that they had quite a few candidates from different countries, Pete, in the food manufacturing, I think it was. Did they find that they had an issue with regards to language issues, in regards to everything, which diverse supervisors who were good, effective for their job, probably born from the shop floor. It's almost like they got you going up from the conveyor belt up one line to being a supervisor. You can generally speak the same language and communicate with rather than those from above trying to do it. Coming down a few levels just doesn't work that well. The first line of management is key to the effective, how things work, how people are communicated with. My friend was very keen on this in terms of his main emphasis. In fact, he had to go back, retired and went back because there was too much to avoid. So they paid him a hell of a lot of money and he went back for six months and then he decided, I am now done and has left and never to return. Is that he put the onus and the pressure and everything on his supervisors. They were the key to the effective runner. No one in the office at the top, not even him. It was the supervisors on the line that were running the shore and where his support was needed and where he needed to guide and instruct and in many ways sort of mentor these operators and their performances and their stock market listed is the last two or three years, they've done very well. They've gone away from agency workers and now just for everyone's on the books, which was a massive change, it's worked because now they've got continuity and yeah, there'll always be these diverse cultural issues that you find in these kind of places. So many map, there's just so many people that the UK is a multicultural country and azara lot in the world and so you get a diverse mix and it's almost like you get your own language on the shop floor and it builds from there. But it's almost like those supervisors need to know and if they're good shifts, run well, production goes up, that kind of thing. And like you said, the point there is that no one person can make the change. And empowering your supervisors or those slightly further down will help disseminate hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people on a day. Can't do it yourself. It's impossible. Whilst everyone likes to be proactive, a lot of these places work on reaction. Don't the things break? It's almost like it's a reactive method. We've got an order from such and such today. We need to up it by this. That machine is broke, it's too cold, it's too hot, we've not run enough workers today. Everything's reactionary in a lot of fast moving working environments and that's probably where those external that work in the ideal world, you should do this and in the ideal world you should do that are not actually having one day in these places thinking, oh, my God, it's an absolute minefield of problems occurring minute after minute. One phone call, something changes, anything can happen and anything could break and anything. By effective management and having the experience within organizations, you can sort of work your way through the so you become more reactionary and you become good at being reactionary as well. So it doesn't really have a hindrance to production. Everything's productive based, everyone's measured in general terms on production and the quality of that production. Whilst everyone can cite mistake like uses excuses, a lot of the time it's the experienced hands and those that want to that can get round these and keep going. Your quality operators. Yeah. And people have got to learn and people have got to evolve and people have got to adapt. And equally, those that think they are then right have got to learn and adapt that actually they might not be and everything just jump in there. Francesca, one of the things you said there people have to evolve, but then when you gave your list of things, points that employees should be looking at in terms of integration and all this kind of stuff is modernization and the modern way of thinking and acting wasn't in there in anything that you said. So, like, the young people are the next generation and everyone and everyone's sort of dismissing even I do it, I have to look at my son a lot of the time in terms of, like, how should these be treated? They're different. Lewis went on an interview with the board of directors in his tracksuit, and I'm like, I never realized till he got back. Thought he was just right wearing it for the drive there would get changed. And I went and he came back in the same tracksuit. And I went, did anybody say, oh, yeah, I think the CEO said, all right. And the Louis just said, this is what I wear, this is what I feel comfortable in. This is me as a person. This is what I have no point putting a suit on. And he went, right good. How do you use more like you can empower the workplace to start thinking of ways to improve the place. So there's a lot of this technology open source, getting people to spend time on their own ideas that could or may not have a dramatic improvement. And these are not paid projects like Mufty days, where people are coming in in the way what they want and all just Facebook. Everyone's walking around in jeans and everyone's doing they've got new ways, they don't have closed offices. Everything is open plan and all this kind of stuff. It's almost like we've always run the factory this way and we'll continue to run the factory this way because that's how we that's what was like when we first got here. And this is kind of going on to the the kind of next thing I was going to say is, like, what does the future hold? And you're right, and it's about taking on from not only your internal people, but external people, external sources, new, fresh ideas for different things. Now, obviously, with everything, not every idea is a good idea and you've got to be selective. But being open minded is interesting. And it's something that I thought that's really interesting about Lewis in terms of going for an interview like that. And it's in terms of the more casual approach to things. I do also think people have evolved with the way of working since COVID and Things has obviously paid an impact. But in terms of with discrimination in general, as with most topics, I think there will be small elements and this is just my feeling, I think there will be small elements of progress, but everyone is naive to think that it will ever get fully removed. And the way and the rules, the regulations, the way different countries are, you could not have a uniform approach that is going to work for everyone. I don't know what your chris, what are your thoughts as far as that goes? Well, I tend to think from the bosses point of view. If I was running any business at the moment, I would be asking myself what is the effect going to be on my business of Chat GPT? I think that's going to be the biggest game changer since the internet. So if you're not thinking how you can implement all the benefits of Chat GPT, you will miss market opportunities. I would also be thinking about what mechanization, automation, robotic solutions can I introduce into my business to make it more flexible and adaptive for the future. That doesn't mean wholesale sacking of people, but it means releasing their talents to do other things within the business. If you're not looking at those two aspects and basically thinking back from the future of what's going to be available, you're not going to be in the best position to make the most of your business moving forward. And what do you think as far as discrimination, specifically within recruitment, the workplace? Do you see any scope for mass changes? Do you think that there will be any revelations that are going to happen? No, I don't. Pete used the term lip service and I chipped in with the fact it's driven by legislation rather than people automatically wanting to create change. They are reactive rather than proactive. Our influence on this is going to be limited. All we can do is talk to our existing and future clients about what are the likely benefits by reducing discrimination in the workplace and to cover many of the subjects that we've discussed so far today. But we are not the moral policeman for the world of the podcast. Chris, we're just discussing these things. One thing that I'd like to ask you a question on is what are your thoughts on? Because obviously you said you think about the managerial you've talked about Bots, Chat GPT, automation, these kind of things, which is fairly obvious, they're going to come. What are your thoughts on fair and just managerial representation? As in, should boardrooms have young people? So let's say a board of 20. There should be like early 20s, male, female on there. If you diverse, get them in there as well. Good representation of the young on these boards, which I've never seen once, really young. The only place I've hang on, Francesca, why? Because you're going to get a different not that you're going to change things, not that you're going to do anything. You're just going to start understanding how do I understand where the TV is going? Right. And predictive which is business related in a big way. I speak to my children and I spoke to Francesco, who's a lot younger than me, and you, Chris, and find out that the days of Sky TV are limited in the same the way that golf courses are limited because the next generation are not interested in what? They're not interested in paying for much and they're certainly not interested in paying like I'll probably pay 80, 90 pounds per month for Sky TV. And they almost laugh. They're like, It's all on YouTube, dad, and it's all on this. And I'll pay a little bit for this and that's all I'll be having. So by having this different mindset so it's almost like if you're running a company, you're part of the board or you're part of the decision. It's almost like, are we too stuck in the way? Yeah, all those type of things. It wasn't word I was looking for, but in terms of the way we think and act as a company, because we don't have fair representation, we're our own board. And if we don't have fair representation, we employ a zillion amount of young people. No one is young. So what we're doing get into when we were young, 30 years ago, for how we should be managing and looking after these people, or should they be here now? And it's a little bit like, I guess, in a way, you went to university. You both went to university, so you bet. The difference is there with the student magazines and the student broadcasting of this, and the students have got a voice and a strong voice. And you probably think, well, they didn't really have much of a voice when I was there. Like you, Chris Frances, were like, no, quite powerful. Your student union went out when I was there. But then you get into the corporate world and it's you're now right at the bottom because you're young. No. My son joined a company as the lead pipe fitter because the guy supposedly two of them, after two days left, so got massive responsibility for millions of pounds of undangerous stuff. He was working on fuel systems and because he was washing a vehicle down, the vehicle he was taking over, so not doing anything wrong. And the head ground worker who was dragging his knuckles along the ground as he walked up to my son and started shouting and screaming about what he was doing, what he was this, that and the other, lucius laughed and said whatever, just ignored him, which made him worse. And he actually got to the sort of like violence threats in which Lewis laughed even more, which made him worse. And it'd be like because why? Because it was unknown and he was young. Yeah, there was another young lad there and he was getting treated really bad and Louis had to step in and stop the mistreatment. So this thing about when you're young seems to be a whole new ballgate. Lewis starts growing a beard and our whiskers are not white because you don't look as young. That's because of the treatment that's out there. And that's the whole thing of the managerial people and all this kind of HR. Chris talking about the boards and I always think about the management, always this modernization, which Chris has spoken about. GPT bots automation money savers. Yeah, get that how we treat the next generation. The next generation the most important. I definitely think there is value in including them. And like you say, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be decision making when they're first brought onto things. But it's a bit like, okay, in a sports team, you have a committee, and it might be that you have a junior that's part of the committee just to kind of get an idea of how things work. So that in two, three years they can provide and give more to the role in that time, looking at the longer term development rather than just the short term plan. So, no, I think it's a valuable point. Are there any other statements that anyone would like to make with regards to discrimination to finish? Not from me. Strong management from top to bottom and not seeing things and ignoring it would put a stop to most cases of harassment in the workplace, which sometimes people, they sort of act in a certain way, but they don't know why they act. It's almost like I pull my son up for some of his language towards kistani people and said to him, because we're crossing to leads and there's a big all this kind of stuff. And I pulled him up and said, what's the actual problem? When it got past a bit of trap coming out of his mouth and it's like, Nothing, really. So why do you think this way and why do you say these words? And all of it comes down to, we just do. That's what we're like. It's almost like a social thing of we just slag the package off or we just do this and it's like, I don't like it. No society, unfortunately, has created some norms that are not pleasant and you've got to break those norms and not be taken in by them and try to promote the best practices you can professionally, but also personally because there is a lot of crossover and depending on what people are being exposed to in their personal life, can often carry into their professional. Okay, so thank you to everyone out there that is listening. If you are listening to this podcast on Spotify or any of the streaming apps, please do, like, subscribe equally on YouTube. You can, like, share the video that will be going up. We appreciate you taking the time to listen. If you are employer, please do check out our website, particularly have a look at our kind of stance on ethical recruitment to get a bit more of an understanding of where we're coming from. If you're a candidate and you're looking for any opportunity, please do visit our job board and apply for any of our open positions. So, from me, Francesca, it's goodbye. I just like to put a word in for employers. If you're looking for people, please talk to us. Yeah, and I would say if you're an employer looking for people you need to speak to Chris or Francesca. There we go. Have a nice day. Thank you, everyone. Take care and we'll speak to you soon.