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Mercedes has revealed details of a five-year programme called Accelerate 25 that will formalise a range of initiatives introduced to increase the Formula 1 team’s diversity and inclusivity.
Earlier this season, in response to anti-discrimination campaigns being reignited around the world and spurred on by its world champion Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes made a commitment to support greater diversity in F1.
It changed its traditional silver colour scheme to black in a stance against racism and committed to reviewing its internal process after revealing just 3% of its workforce identify as belonging to minority ethnic groups and only 12% are women.
Since then, Mercedes says a “wealth of study, research and work” has been undertaken to identify areas of its team’s culture and practices that can be improved, as well as establishing new partnerships with external organisations, with the end goal of at least 25% of new starters at the team coming from underrepresented groups over the next five years.
An education programme has been introduced with a suite of diversity and inclusion, with 200 recruiters at the team completing ‘unconscious bias’ training and 150 managers undergoing a programme entitled ‘inclusive excellence’.
Mercedes say all its managers will have completed this training by the end of the year and every employee will have participated in diversity and inclusion training by next June. A forum has also been created for employees from under-represented .
A specialist in workplace diversity and inclusion has also been tasked with an “in-depth analysis of our recruitment and development processes”.
Mercedes will use mentoring, work experience, sponsorship and targeted advertising among its methods of reaching out to more underrepresented groups, as well as three main partnerships.
One is with the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers to encourage and support aspiring engineers from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.
“We are educating ourselves and taking targeted action that we believe will make a difference,” :: Paul Mills – Mercedes Chief People Officer
Another is between the team and the Mulberry Schools Trust as a five-year programme to give young people “access to inspirational role models, imaginative teaching and extra-curricular experiences” to encourage the pursuit of studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The third a forthcoming partnership with the Stemettes to inspire “girls, young women and nonbinary young people into STEM fields”.
Hamilton said he is “incredibly proud” of Mercedes to join him in “pushing for change off the track, by working to make our team and our sport more diverse”.
He said there was “still a long way to go” but called the Accelerate 25 initiative a platform to deliver “more meaningful change”.
This was echoed by Mercedes’ chief people officer Paul Mills, who said “becoming a more diverse team is not something that is achieved overnight”.
“We are educating ourselves and taking targeted action that we believe will make a difference,” Mills said.
Mercedes will also draw inspiration, knowledge and support from the commission set up by Hamilton in conjunction with the Royal Academy of Engineering, designed to identify barriers to the participation of black people in UK motorsport and suggests ways to address that.
“Before the start of this Formula 1 season, we made a commitment to use our global platform in Formula 1 to make a difference to the world around us through a carefully considered Diversity and Inclusion programme,” said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff.
“Our legacy off the track is just as important to this team as the success that we have achieved with our historic seventh consecutive world championship this year.
“We have a real opportunity to drive the change that we all want to see in our sport through strengthening an inclusive and diverse culture at our team and using our platform to take that thinking beyond just our factory.
“I am very proud of the work that has been done over the last few months to take an in-depth look at our practices, to assess our weaknesses and to develop a long-term plan and commitment to take the necessary actions and realise every advantage of becoming a more diverse team; this is the vision expressed by our new programme, Accelerate 25.”
