Discrimination Isn't Just Morally Wrong And Bad For the Soul, It's Bad For Business Too

What's the connection between Kantar's HR strategy and the Polin Museum Of The History Of Polish Jews?  Read on...

I was lucky to be shown round the museum this week by its wonderful Director, Professor Dariusz Stola.  The museum (http://www.polin.pl/en) which opened 18 months ago on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto and which won the 2016 European Museum of the Year Award, tells the history of Polish Jews.  It is not a Holocaust Museum even though the Holocaust was obviously the seminal event to affect Polish Jewry but rather it puts the Holocaust in the context of a thousand years of history. 

In room after room in this beautifully designed, thoughtfully curated exhibit,  you are struck by the enormous contribution that Jews had made to Poland over periods of tolerance, discrimination and pogroms.  Deprived of the ability to own land, Jews made their contribution in a multitude of other ways - in commerce, politics, philosophy, newspapers, art, even in running many of Poland's taverns given their willingness to work on the all important Sunday.   There is even a replica table from The Scottish Café (Polish: Kawiarnia Szkocka) - the café in Lwów (now Lviv) where, in the 1930s and 1940s, mathematicians from the Lwów School collaboratively discussed research problems, particularly in functional analysis and topology, and wrote their notes on the table.  The centre of world mathematics was for a period of time centered on a Jewish group of mathematicians scribbling their notes on this table!

And then the exhibition takes a sudden turn (physically as well as emotionally).  In 1939 Jews accounted for 30% of Warsaw's population and 10% of Polands overall population. Within 6 years, only 300,000 out of 3, 500,000 Polish Jews had survived and few of them were in a state to contribute to society.

People more articulate than me have attempted to describe this Holocaust.  But for me, one of the strongest feelings I had on leaving the museum was of the loss to society as a whole, in Poland and beyond.  This vibrant, talented group of people would no longer contribute to and shape society

In a week in which North Carolina tried to make life even harder for LGBT people, in which another 800 refugees died trying to cross the Med, and in which I overhead people on the London Underground not wanting to sit next to "Moslem terrorist lookalikes" we still see discrimination all around us.

And while I was inspired by meeting many people in my travels across Kantar this week who have overcome adversity in their personal lives to shape and contribute to our business, I finished the week wondering how many talented people we have across our business who we discriminate against - consciously or unconsciously - or for whom we do not do enough to help them fulfil their potential to the full.  And I came away from Polin even more determined to ensure that no one in Kantar is denied their opportunity to develop and contribute to the full.  Our business is based on curiosity and passion.  We will be a better business if we celebrate our diversity and enable people of all sexes, race, colour, nationality, religion to thrive.