Recruitment agencies and employers are failing jobseekers from minority groups, according to a new study.

Few black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) candidates feel recruitment consultants put themselves out to aid their careers – and when they have a job a glass-ceiling holds back their ambition to progress.

Despite more than 10% of the UK workforce coming from an ethnic minority background and over 20% of the emerging workforce coming from an ethnic minority background, huge numbers allege unfair treatment at work.

The report Breaking Down Barriers report released by Race for Opportunity, alleges that around 75% of Bangladeshi, Caribbean and Pakistani employees feel they were unfairly treated by recruitment agencies.

Once they have a job, many BAME employees believe they need to move employers to advance their careers because they are held back from promotion.

The makes three recommendations to employers:

• Encourage BAME managers to show leadership and to mentor others

• Pay, train and value BAME staff the same as any other race or employee

• Urge recruiters to ignore race and to treat job candidates on merit

The report interviewed 1,500 workers from eight ethnic groups and found hopes for career advancement varied between them.

African and Indian staff were the most ambitious.

However, while around 70% of white British workers felt they would progress their careers with their current employers, more than half of their BAME colleagues believed they would have to move on for promotion.

“This has to be a serious concern for businesses that are failing to engage, retain and progress their employees on an equal basis” says the report.

The survey also asked BAME workers to disclose the perceived barriers to career ambitions.

The resounding response from six out of 10 Pakistani, African and Chinese workers was they lacked support from their line managers.

Many others cited lack of training – with a third of Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani workers said they had not been on a training course at all in the last year, compared with white British workers who said they had been on more than two.

Download the full report (Opens in new window) [LINK: http://www.bitc.org.uk/document.rm?id=13138]

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