Career Development Barriers Faced by Minority Ethnic Staff: Review

This literature review explores the career development barriers faced by minority ethnic staff. It highlights challenges such as language barriers, ethnic matching issues, and socio-cultural factors, as well as concerns about cultural and religious appropriateness. The review references key studies and reports, including data from PwC, to illustrate the disparities and underrepresentation of minority ethnic groups in career progression. It emphasizes the need for practical solutions, societal improvements, and increased representation of ethnicity equality in literature to address these barriers and promote equal opportunities. The review acknowledges the slow progress despite existing legislation and calls for more effective strategies to improve the situation for Black, Asian, and minority-ethnic staff in both corporate and educational fields.

Running head: CAREER DEVELOPMENT BARRIERS FOR MINORITY ETHNIC STAFF
CAREER DEVELOPMENT BARRIERS FOR MINORITY ETHNIC STAFF
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1CAREER DEVELOPMENT BARRIERS FOR MINORITY ETHNIC STAFF
Literature review:
According to Knight (2013), students and staffs are usually the people who need to travel
to different countries and regions for better opportunities. Education is a way through which
these people try possessing the things that are commonly drawn away from them on the basis of
different backgrounds. The staffs that come from different countries, cultural, linguistic and faith
backgrounds are faced with different challenges on their path to success. These challenges are
not the common challenges that involve hard work, talent or luck. The problems involve the
extra burden of stereotypes and social exclusion. The minority ethnic groups are one of those
people faced with various barriers in the career development and progression.
According to Phillips (2013), minority ethnic communities are commonly under-
presented despite the fact that there have been decades of equal opportunities legislation. To
define minority, it is a group of people who are looked at as different people by the majority
population. The minority groups can be identified on various grounds such as racial, ethnic,
disabilities, religion or sexuality. The ethnic minority group are the group who are differentiated
on the basis of culture. An ethnic minority can be either black or white. The minority groups are
faced with challenges for they are less in numbers and considered different than the majority of
the population. One of the sector, where they struggle for equality, is in career development and
progression.
According to consultancy.uk (2017), the Black, Asian and minority-ethnic staff (BAME)
earn approximately 13 % less than white employees at PwC in the United Kingdom. A much
more drastic was seen by the bonuses which shows that an average of 35.4% smaller bonuses is
given to the BAME employees. The reason for PwC to give out the data was to speed the

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progress on this specific issue. The ethnic challenges are needed to be identified and bring forth
in order to eliminate the subject from society.
According to Greenwood et al. (2015), the barriers faced by the minority groups are
many, however, narrowing the issue the significant barriers are language barriers, ethnic
matching, and concerns about cultural and religious appropriateness. The language issue is a
complex issue, however, I can be overcome through the help of interpreter speaking the same
language. The socio-cultural factors are a barrier for BAME as there are unfair access and health
inequalities, linguistic, and cultural barriers. The fear of the unknown is another factor that acts
as a barrier to the ethnic minorities. For the fact that they are socio-culturally different they
associate the majority population associate them with various stigmas and mistrusts.
Several acts and laws have been initiated, however, the progress is slow. The gap has
reduced along with time, and the quality is on the rise. However, there is a need to implement
practical ways to improve the scenario of the BAME in the corporate and educational field. An
improvement in societal thinking is the real need for them along with the laws and acts. There
need to be more writings on actual life incidents representing ethnicity equality.

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References:
Consultancy.uk (2017). Black, Asian and minority-ethnic staff earn 13% less at PwC. Retrieved
from https://www.consultancy.uk/news/14053/black-asian-and-minority-ethnic-staff-
earn-13-less-at-pwc
Greenwood, N., Habibi, R., Smith, R., & Manthorpe, J. (2015). Barriers to access and minority
ethnic carers' satisfaction with social care services in the community: a systematic review
of qualitative and quantitative literature. Health & social care in the community, 23(1),
64-78.
Knight, J. (2013). The changing landscape of higher education internationalisation–for better or
worse?. Perspectives: Policy and practice in higher education, 17(3), 84-90.
Phillips, D. (2013). Minority ethnic segregation, integration and citizenship: A European
perspective. In Linking Integration and Residential Segregation (pp. 49-66). Routledge.