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The journey on building inclusive teams and increasing ethnic diversity and representation at all levels is never ending, said Sanjay Bhandari, chair at Kick It Out. "I think you can set the direction but it's quite difficult to set the destination with these things," Bhandari, who is part of the government-sponsored Parker review into the ethnic diversity of UK boards said during a panel discussion on Inclusive Leadership held as part of the Pharmacy Business Diversity Conference on Thursday (December 9). He said the aim of the review was to fix a destination like a milestone, it's not the ultimate destination. Bhandari highlighted that "most organisations have not even started and so a good way of getting started was by the end of 2021 to have at least one British born director of colour on your board for the FTSE 100 (companies)." The idea of the review is to "focus on that pathway and filling the hole inthedoughnut," Bhandari said.

The issues related to race and ethnicity are common across the sectors, but the problem is not unsolvable, said panelists in a discussion on Race, Identity and Belonging In The Workplace, held during the Pharmacy Business Diversity Conference on Thursday (December 9). Creating safe and comfortable spaces and allowing authentic conversations is a precursor to resolving this big challenge, said Zaheer Ahmad MBE, global head of Inclusion and Diversity at GSK Consumer Healthcare. The session, moderated by the conference chair BBC presenter Clive Myrie, also had Asif Sadiq MBE, senior vice president at WarnerMedia for Equity and Inclusion, International, and Sathya Bala, founder & CEO of True Change and My Skin My Story, a growing global community for women of colour. Ahmad said encouraging open conversations is important as there is great discomfort and stigma attached to talking about it, and many times senior leaders fall short in their efforts not because they have racist views or they don't believe in advancing race and ethnicity, but because they are not aware.

With the UK government mandating a gender pay gap reporting by corporates and there is a lot of push for ethnicity pay gap report, there is a need for a similar push for having disability pay gap records, said Jay Muthu, director of Organization and People Capability at Entain Group. "I think we need to kind of lobby the government to make that happen, but unfortunately a lot of disability organisations are still fighting for the basic rights," Muthu said during a panel discussion on Disability Inclusion In The Workplace held during the Pharmacy Business Diversity Conference on Thursday (December 9). The session, moderated by the conference chair and BBC presenter Clive Myrie, also had Kate Nash OBE, founder and chief executive officer of Purple Space, which is the world's only professional development membership hub for disability employee resource groups. Muthu said: "The challenges are from both sides. There is obviously the societal stigma (attached with disability). There are corporations not being aware and not wanting to educate themselves, and then there is the government not really implementing the right kind of mechanisms to make it happen.