The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) hopes to diversify its workforce on-screen and off-screen by making job applications anonymous to support underrepresented groups and minorities. It was recently criticized for being "too white" and struggled with disproportionate targets.
According to The Guardian, BBC moved to eliminate the need for names and universities on a possible employee's job application after it had been criticized for a lack of diversity in its current workforce. The broadcasting corporation is eager to dispose of its reputation of being a middle-class dominated institution by attempting to widen its pool of applicants to engage underrepresented minorities as well as people of various ethnicities.
BBC's new policies reflect the broadcaster's determination of gathering a strong workforce of applicants formerly disadvantaged due to their ethnic and socio-economic background. According to the Telegraph, on-screen and off-screen employees will also be asked to disclose of their income and family upbringing after the corporation tackled pressure from ministers regarding bias of recruitment.
Trevor Phillips, former chairman for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, recently accused BBC2 for being "Britain's whitest TV station" and for failing to attract audiences of diverse backgrounds. An analysis revealed that only 3.3% of its audiences were of black, Asian and minority ethnic groups (BAME).
According to the Independent.ie, BBC promised to meet a diversity strategy that would employ an equal proportion of women, ethnic minorities, handicapped people and LGBT people both on- and off-air by the year 2020. Women currently hold a 48.4% position in the staff, with 41.3% of women in leadership roles.
A BBC spokesperson said, "We are making good progress in our work to make the BBC a truly diverse organization, but there's more to do and we're always keen to improve. Almost half of our workforce is made up of women and the proportion of our workforce who are black, Asian and other ethnic minority is at an all-time high. We'll continue doing what works but also develop new and innovative ideas to do even better, and we'll set this out in full when we announce our new diversity strategy on Thursday."
The corporation intends to meet the standards of other broadcasting networks in representing a wide-range of employees as well as audiences. It was only revealed last month that BBC was struggling with meeting its existing targets for BAME representation.
