Diversity and inclusion charity People Like Us has unveiled an integrated awareness campaign aiming to make the UK comms industry more inclusive.
‘Signatures for Signatures’ encourages British professionals to donate space within their email signatures to a petition link calling on the government to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.
Collaborating with creative agency Worth Your While on the project, People Like Us will will be hoping to raise greater public awareness of the ongoing disparity in pay figures between BAME workers and their white counterparts.
Research carried out by the charity has indicated that working professionals in the UK from Black, Asian, Mixed Race and minority ethnic backgrounds on average are paid 16% less that their white colleagues. A growing number of industry bodies such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission, The Trade Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry have called on the government to introduce reporting.
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“Billions of corporate emails are sent in the UK each day and Signatures for Signatures is a rallying cry for working professionals of all backgrounds to include this critical policy issue in their email signature. It will help raise awareness amongst an engaged peer group and ultimately it will create a level playing field for all,” People Like Us co-founder, Sheeraz Gulsher said.
Through this campaign, People Like Us will look to reach 100,000 signatures to its petition – which will then enable the issue to be once again debated in the House of Commons.
Worth Your While creative director, Tim Pashen added: : “In the corporate world, every email has a signature at the bottom, this felt like both a metaphor for modern working life and an overlooked opportunity space.
“With such an important issue and no budget to get our message out there, we decided to make the humble email signature our medium. Hopefully, the people of the UK get busy copying, pasting, and signing.”
