BBC staff have been told not to hire candidates who are “dismissive” about, or “derisory of”, diversity, inclusion, and “surrounding topics”.
According to a recruitment policy document seen by the Telegraph, candidates should be asked to “explain what diversity and inclusion means to you and, should you be successful, what opportunities do you see for you to promote, celebrate or encourage diversity and inclusion in your role?”
The guidelines, used in a major non-editorial department of the BBC, tell recruiters: “Don’t hire [candidates who are] unsuited to the organisation” if they are “dismissive or derisory of diversity and inclusion and surrounding topics”.
Diversity and inclusion policies have long been a source of concern for the FSU, with approximately 4% (or around 100) of our 2,250 cases arising directly from these policies being imposed in some way in the workplace.
Although buzzwords like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ sound enlightened, progressive and difficult to argue against, the truth is that they are often used to import into British workplaces contentious political ideas that originated in what have been described as ‘grievance studies’ departments in American universities (gender studies, queer studies, whiteness studies), such as critical race theory (including the idea that all white people are privileged and it’s not enough for them to be non-racist, they must be ‘anti-racist’) and gender identity ideology (including the idea that what we feel our ‘gender’ to be at any given moment is more important in policy and in law than the concept of ‘biological sex’).
In our experience, activist employees at ‘woke’ organisations will often seek to enforce these ideas as if they were uncontroversial, uncontested and apolitical, with the result that dissent – i.e., the expression of opinions that run contrary to woke orthodoxy – is suppressed.
Commenting on the BBC’s recruitment guideline, for instance, an insider who asked not to be named told the Telegraph that terms like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ are not neutral, but ideologically motivated.
“The BBC is not a welcoming place for those with conservative opinions,” the source said. “Management talks about diversity without embracing diversity of thought [but] … [t]he place that I have given years of my working life, and that I sincerely cherish, currently feels captured by Left-wing activists and is unable to deliver on our core principle of impartiality.”
Robin Aitken, a former BBC journalist and author, agreed. “These guidelines illustrate just how embedded DEI [Diversity, Equality and Inclusion] ideology is in the BBC,” he said. “The rules act as a mechanism to maintain groupthink and screen out anyone who is sceptical of this novel doctrine of diversity and inclusion.”
The 100 DEI-related cases the FSU has been involved with in the past four years range from employees simply raising concerns about a new policy through to disciplinaries, or even, as in the case of our member Carl Borg-Neal, dismissal, for asking the ‘wrong’ questions during an EDI training course, sometimes after a course leaders has assured participants they’re in a “safe space” and can speak freely without fear of repercussions (you can read about Carl’s case, and how we helped him fight back and win damages of around £800,000 at the Employment Tribunal here).
In total, 20% (or 400) of our cases have involved workplace investigations, employee suspensions or employee dismissals.
Many of these outcomes can also be traced back to a company’s EDI policy, or to a social media policy that refers to the EDI policy.
In one of our recent research briefings, Woke, Ltd., written by FSU Director of Data and Impact, we point to the ways in which EDI policies are having a chilling effect on free speech within the workplace. You can read that report in full here.
