People Like Us create ‘auto-correct’ billboard campaign to highlight pay gap disparities
By Lucy Mitchell on Tuesday, April 4, 2023
People Like Us support and advocate for professionals in the marketing, journalism, and communications fields who are from Black, Asian, Mixed Race and minoritised ethnic backgrounds.
Their latest campaign is a simple but effective set of ‘auto-correct’ billboards, which highlight how diverse names are often incorrectly replaced. The campaign shows the exclusion felt by marginalised groups, and aims to persuade the government to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting, as we do for gender.
This campaign is borne out of research completed by the organisation, which showed that workers from racially diverse backgrounds are being paid 16% less on average compared to their white counterparts. People Like Us research also found that ethnic minority professionals are more likely to borrow money, move in with family and skip meals due to the cost of living crisis.
Sheeraz Gulsher, the co-founder of People Like Us commented: “The problem with these types of clunky, and often, offensive autocorrections is that it perpetuates the myth that non-Anglophone names are foreign and difficult to pronounce. It reinforces a homogenous culture that excludes individuals with diverse backgrounds and undermines the efforts of organisations to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Anyone with a diverse name can give you examples of it. Ayan becomes Alan, Rishad becomes Richard and so on.
And if your name gets auto-corrected by default, your salary might also default to the national average of 16% less – a reality experienced by people of ethnically diverse backgrounds.”
These billboards, shown in different locations around London, were in collaboration with with JCDecaux UK’s Community Channel. This programme aids non-for-profit organisations in gaining exposure by using their public screens. The campaign has also been backed by Sadiq Khan, the Major of London.
Visit their website here, where you too can sign the petition to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.