Racial agenda gains space in companies, but numbers are still bad

At PepsiCo, executive committee members are mentored by black employees on racial issues. A similar initiative is adopted by L’Oréal, which also has a program to accelerate the career of black professionals in the company. Mondelez, owner of brands such as Lacta, Trident and Oreo, promised to reach 37% of blacks and browns in leadership positions by 2024.

These are just a few examples of commitments made by companies in Brazil in recent months.

Amidst the ESG wave (good environmental, social and governance practices), the diversity and inclusion agenda gained momentum in the corporate world. However, despite the alignment in the discourse, the road to racial equity is long.

Blacks and browns, who make up the majority of the Brazilian population (56%), still occupy fewer positions in top leadership, are disadvantaged in terms of opportunities and receive worse salaries than white professionals.

According to a 2019 study by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), the average monthly income of white Brazilians, whether formal or informal workers, is R$2,796. Among black professionals, this value drops to R$1,608.

The disadvantages of the black population in the labor market only tend to increase as the hierarchical level in companies also grows.

A survey by the Ethos Institute with the 500 companies with the highest revenue in Brazil shows that blacks occupy only 6.3% of management positions. In the executive board, the proportion is even smaller: just 4.7%.

For Raphael Vicente, coordinator of the Business Initiative for Racial Equality, the corporate world has recently started to give more importance to the topic. However, a good part of the companies is still just talking.

“Fortunately, the topic came to the fore, but along with it came superficiality. We appropriated some important themes, such as racism, place of speech, structural racism, but when you ask ‘where is the project?’ it says.

In his view, there have been great advances in the discourse and understanding of companies, but, in numerical terms, Brazil remains practically as it was 30 years ago.

The Business Initiative for Racial Equality was created in 2015 with the objective of promoting equity in the labor market, especially in large companies. About 160 institutions are part of the movement, and together they represent more than R$ 1.3 trillion in revenue.

Vicente cites inclusive selection processes as one of the advances that the agenda has had from 2015 until now. According to him, six years ago, companies did not even consider the idea of ​​making an exclusive program for black candidates, something that is now being normalized.

However, the coordinator says that one of the main challenges is to ensure the rise of black professionals who enter companies.

“We encourage recruitment and selection programs to be carried out, but we want to see where the inclusion policy is, what are the promotion and advancement tools for this professional, what the company understands by diversity, where is the allocated resource, planning” , it says.

If he were to point out where the corporate world is on the racial agenda, he would say that we are at the stage of understanding, with some companies advanced and others not.

“The market started to realize this with more property from 2015, 2016, with an up now in the pandemic — with the cases of George Floyd and Carrefour. But we are still a long way from where we could be.”

Episodes such as Carrefour, where João Alberto Silveira Freitas died after being beaten by security guards in November 2020, often call into question the commitment of large companies to the racial agenda.

In 2021, companies with sustainable speeches were also the stage for cases considered racist. One of them took place at Assaí Atacadista, where a black man was forced to undress to prove that he was not stealing items from the supermarket.

Another, more recent, took place at a Zara unit in Fortaleza, which created an internal code to “alert” blacks entering the store, according to police. The store denies it.

However, the Carrefour murder also gave rise to a movement for racial equity, the Mover. Founded in November 2020, the initiative brings together 47 large companies, such as Ambev, Coca-Cola, Magalu, Nestlé and Vale, and has the goal of generating 10,000 new positions for black people in leadership positions by 2030.

Another commitment involves giving opportunity to 3 million black people, with employment and entrepreneurship initiatives.

For Liel Miranda, executive director of Mondelez in Brazil and chairman of the Mover deliberative council, there is now a conscience in the corporate world and a willingness to contribute to the agenda.

“I would say that most companies have this understanding that they need to address racial equity, but between knowledge and doing there is a big difference,” he says.

According to him, the role of Mover is to create conditions for black people to assume leadership positions, but also to disseminate the importance of the topic and provide training for more blacks and browns to enter the job market.

“We are carrying out a census of all companies [participantes] to find out exactly how many black leaders there are in each. After this census, we will define the target allocation [alvo] for each of them,” he says.

​At Mondelez, Miranda says that internship programs focused on diversity and more inclusive recruitment were created, without the requirement of English or experience in a multinational, for example.

The company has 37% of black and brown employees, with 24% in administrative positions. The goal is to reach 37% also in the leadership by 2024.

“We are doing everything we know works, but our objective is in fact to see that leadership is more representative. For that, we are very far away”, he says.

The journey has also gained momentum in another partner company of Mover, PepsiCo. In August 2021, the company launched a reverse mentoring program for executives. Mentors are black and black employees who help with senior management’s racial literacy.

“We already see an impact on our daily lives, with the awareness of our biases. It is a very important knowledge process for the leadership team”, says Fabio Barbagli, vice president of human resources at PepsiCo Brazil.

According to him, 48% of the 12 thousand employees that the company has in Brazil are black. One of the main challenges, however, is to guarantee professional advancement. PepsiCo currently has 19% black leaders.

“Our goal is to reach 30% of black men and women by 2025 in the leadership board. We understand that the 48% of the overall board is ok, but we want to increase the number of leaders.”

Challenge is greater for black women

If the disadvantages that blacks and browns face in the labor market are already few, for women they are even greater.

A survey carried out by the consultancy Indique Uma Preta and by the company Box1824 pointed out that the majority of black Brazilian women (54%) do not have paid work and only 8% of those who work in the formal market occupy positions of manager, director or partner who owns a company.

One such exception is Marcia Silveira, communications and public relations manager for L’Oréal’s luxury division.

According to her, the corporate world’s commitment to the racial agenda is still far from the ideal point.

“There is still a long way to go. We have many opportunities, a range of women who are already prepared, but are not being mapped”, she says.

Today L’Oréal also has a mentoring program where black employees train leaders in racial issues. Leaders also need to undergo mandatory diversity and inclusion training.

In addition, the company developed an acceleration program to train afro-descendant professionals in various skills. According to Silveira, this is one of the key points for inclusion.

“The consistency of a diversity work is not only in the attraction, it is also in the retention and preparation of these professionals, otherwise it becomes a leaky bucket. You put people in, but so what?”