Industry

Sky has today announced a series of commitments to help tackle racial injustice. To ensure the commitments are delivered, Sky will invest £10million per year across its markets for each of the next three years, and its work will be overseen, implemented and measured by new diversity action and advisory groups.

Sky’s commitments to support anti-racism and improve diversity and inclusion:

Improve Black and minority ethnic representation at all levels
Make a difference in communities impacted by racism
Use the power of Sky’s voice and platform to highlight racial injustice
1. Improve Black and minority ethnic representation at all levels

Sky will deliver real and lasting change by improving its Black and minority ethnic representation at all levels, especially senior leadership. Sky will put targets in place to measure progression of under-represented groups throughout the organisation.

Sky will invest in education for its managers and leaders to ensure they have a thorough understanding of diversity and inclusion issues and are engaging in meaningful conversation with their colleagues and teams.

2. Make a difference in communities impacted by racism

Working together with the diversity action and advisory groups, Sky will support anti-racism charities to make a difference in communities impacted by racism. This will include a significant financial contribution towards the fight for racial equality, and supporting causes affecting Black and minority ethnic communities and those working to improve lives. Sky will fulfil this commitment over a number of years.

3. Use the power of Sky’s voice and platform to highlight racial injustice

Sky will use the power of its voice and reach to highlight issues of racial injustice by developing significant new content plans. Initially this will include the new documentary Eight minutes and 46 seconds; the killing of George Floyd that will run on 15 June across Sky Documentaries, Sky One, Sky Witness and Sky Atlantic simultaneously. The documentary will be made available free to air on YouTube to ensure it has the broadest possible reach. Sky will also collate a series of content related to Black injustice titled ‘Black Lives Matter’ on its Sky Q platform.

Sky will also continue its work to help improving wider Black and minority ethnic representation in front of and behind the camera. Sky Sports will do more to drive change and is committed to this across all Sky Sports platforms and channels.

To help deliver these commitments, new diversity action and advisory groups will be created at Sky. The Diversity Action Group will be made up of diverse colleagues from across Sky and chaired by Sky’s CEO, UK & Europe, Stephen van Rooyen. The Diversity Advisory Group will be made up of independent external contributors and will advise Sky on how it can best deliver real and lasting change, both internally at Sky and externally in communities impacted by racism.

Announcing the commitments and funding, Sky Group Chief Executive, Jeremy Darroch, said:

“I have listened to the views of our colleagues at Sky. What I have heard loud and clear is that we can and should do more to support the fight against racial injustice. We stand with our Black colleagues and today we are committing to do more to tackle racism, provide more support to communities impacted by racism and create a more diverse and inclusive culture at Sky.

“To make changes that really matter we will spend much more time listening and taking advice from those who understand the issues. We will work together with our Black and minority ethnic colleagues and with external advisors to support real change, and we will use the power of Sky’s voice and reach to highlight racial injustice in the UK and around the world.”

Sky is working with its parent company Comcast and with NBCU in the USA to make this a global effort to tackle racism and racial injustice.