Wokingham Borough Council is the latest taxpayer-funded body to tighten its workplace speech code, advising staff to avoid the term ‘hard-working families’ on the grounds that it could offend the unemployed.
The Berkshire-based council issued the guidance in its new inclusive language style guide, which also flags terms like ‘blacklist’ and ‘whitewash’ as potentially racist. Staff are further advised that ‘sustained eye contact’ could be considered aggressive in some cultures.
The guide states: “Talking about ‘hard-working families’ implies those who are not working are undeserving.” While such documents are often framed as ‘advice’ rather than mandatory policy, employees often feel pressured to self-censor in the workplace to avoid running afoul of internal expectations.
Speaking to the Mail, Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, commented: “Of course, it would be Wokingham Borough Council that came up with this. I expect the next step will be to delete the last two syllables of their name so it becomes Woke Borough Council. More inclusive that way because the hard of understanding will get what the council’s all about.”
Wokeingham’s language guidance is the latest in a growing number of workplace speech restrictions issued by public bodies and institutions across the UK. Last year, Sunderland City Council advised staff to avoid the phrase ‘working class’ on the grounds that it was “too British”.
Similarly, Cardiff University has warned students against using colloquial expressions such as ‘a piece of cake’ and ‘kill two birds with one stone,’ arguing that these are “very British-English” and may not be understood by foreigners. The university states that this is “not because people have poor English skills but because this is very British-English”. In addition, Cardiff’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) awareness module – mandatory for all first-year students, naturally – advises against words such as ‘crazy’, deemed derogatory towards mental health, and phrases like ‘man up’ or ‘like a girl’, which are labelled as sexist. Students enrolled on the course were further told it is a ‘microaggression’ to make comments such as ‘everyone can succeed if you just work hard enough’.
Elsewhere, taxpayer-funded tourism body Visit Britain insisted tour guides refrain from using the term ‘able-bodied’, advising ‘non-disabled’ instead, in order to avoid ‘perpetuating harmful stereotypes.’
The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has similarly instructed NHS staff to avoid terms like ‘obese’, ‘diabetic’, or ‘alcoholic’, advising instead that they use ‘person-first’ language such as ‘people with obesity’ or ‘people with diabetes’. Last year, civil servants in Northern Ireland were told to drop generational descriptors like ‘millennial’ and ‘baby boomer’ to avoid “reinforcing stereotypes” that are potentially offensive.
Meanwhile, some organisations have taken things even further, transforming language policies into enforcement mechanisms. Hogan Lovells, an elite City law firm, has introduced an anonymous ‘microaggressions hotline’, allowing employees to report colleagues for using ‘non-inclusive’ language or even facial expressions deemed offensive. Other “small acts of discrimination” include using “ableist language without awareness”, making “assumptions about someone’s financial status” and “assuming everyone has access to the same resources”.
The FSU has long warned that such policies risk encouraging a culture of self-censorship, as employees become increasingly cautious about the language they use in professional settings.
Proponents of inclusive language argue that these measures promote sensitivity and workplace harmony, but critics point out that they do not simply remove bias—they replace one ideological framework with another. The assumption that words like ‘hard-working’ or phrases such as ‘everyone can succeed if they just work hard enough’ are harmful reflects a particular worldview in which structural explanations are prioritised over individual agency. As these language restrictions multiply, they risk embedding a narrow ideological perspective into professional settings, discouraging the expression of mainstream conservative views on autonomy, merit, and personal responsibility.
Wokingham Borough Council has not yet commented on the guidance.
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