Trust investigating offensive comments by senior manager

A trust is investigating after videos emerged showing one of its senior managers making apparently racist and sexist remarks with colleagues on a work call

The recordings of the meeting of a team of Medway Foundation Trust staff have been seen by HSJ and discussed among campaigners on social media.

They show the senior manager, who is a director but not on the trust’s board, chatting with colleagues while waiting to begin a meeting, which they appear to be leading.

In one video, the participants are waiting to hear from a new colleague, and one of them says she has just eaten a KitKat chocolate bar.

As the senior manager introduces the new colleague – who appears to have a south Asian heritage – they say: “While we are all talking chocolate, can we just introduce…” then names the new colleague and their role. The colleague responds briefly to introduce themselves, and adds: “I’m also chocolate, apparently.”

While the remarks have been interpreted by campaigners as racist, HSJ has been unable to contact the individual concerned and it is unclear whether the remark was intended as a reference to the colleague’s ethnicity.

Professor Partha Kar, a leading campaigner against racism in the NHS, who was sent the videos, said on X, formerly Twitter, that they were “astonishing examples of sexism and racism”. He had been told staff felt concerns could not be raised internally “due to fear of reprisals”, he said.

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Source: HSJ, 29 August 2024