Institutional racism was “allowed to fester” at the global health charity Wellcome, a report has found.
An evaluation of its anti-racism programme, released by the UK’s richest charity, found that “limited progress” had been made since the work started in 2020, with some staff worried that the agenda had lost momentum.
One in five black Wellcome staff said they had experienced racism, discrimination or “regular micro-aggressions” at the charity, according to a survey conducted last year and published in the report.
One in four said they had been discriminated against or mistreated because of their identity.
Incidents included two employees being nicknamed “Diversity” and “Inclusion” at an event by a senior member of staff. In another case, a manager said a Korean member of their team was sometimes mistaken for being Chinese.
Four in 10 of all staff said they did not trust Wellcome to handle issues around discrimination properly.
Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome, apologised for both the structural racism inside the charity and the hurt it had caused.
The evaluation also made more positive findings, including the “strong appetite from staff and leadership” to participate in anti-racism training and the fact that difficult conversations about race were less likely to be “swept under the rug”.
Wellcome launched its anti-racism programme in June 2020 and said it “aimed to eradicate racism and implement anti-racist practice across both its internal and external work”.
But a member of Wellcome’s leadership team quoted in the evaluation described the progress of the anti-racism work as “painfully slow”.
The report, prepared by independent consultants, found that “since the programme was launched, limited progress has been made on anti-racism at Wellcome internally or externally”.
The report says: “Not only has Wellcome failed to meet its original commitments to implement anti-racism practice, [but] due to a series of harmful action and inaction, institutional racism has been allowed to fester within the organisation.
“Similarly, we also find that through harmful action and inaction, Wellcome is perpetuating and exacerbating systemic racism within the wider research sector [in] which it operates.”
The report, based on a series of interviews and focus groups with Wellcome staff and the charity’s partners, also says: “There were perceived discrepancies between the ‘language of inclusion and fairness’ emphasised in the [organisation’s plans and communications] and the actual experience of staff from minoritised groups during this process.”
The report said that “perceptions of inequity” between white and black staff “have in some part been borne out” by Wellcome’s own analysis in 2021, which acknowledged there may be a bias in how staff performance was rated.
It said: “Some staff identifying as black or people of colour have observed their white colleagues with the same or similar sets of skills or performance scores given more responsibilities. When challenged, managers have often been unable to provide sufficient reasons to justify their decisions.”
The consultants added: “The fact that two members of staff who were key architects of the anti-racist principles left Wellcome as a result of the organisational design was also not lost on staff.”
Farrar said: “Wellcome is still doing too little to use its power and influence to counter racism. We have fallen short of commitments made to colleagues and to the research community.
“As a consequence of us not doing more and not acting sooner, Wellcome remains an institutionally racist organisation.
“Wellcome has played and continues to play a role in sustaining racism both in its own operations and in the wider research sector. I am sorry for the actions and inactions behind this, and the hurt and disappointment these have caused.
“It is clear that unacceptable behaviour still exists at Wellcome. The leadership team, like so many of our colleagues at Wellcome, are determined to change this.
“We will do better.”
Wellcome announced further steps to address racism concerns, including a dedicated funding stream targeting black researchers, a new equity, diversity and inclusion role in the charity’s executive team, and the application of “positive action principles” to increase the diversity of the people Wellcome supports.