Behind office doors, HR departments at some of Britain’s biggest businesses have recently been feeling defensive and on the backfoot, reports the Telegraph.
Increasingly laid at their doors is the blame for allowing toxic identity politics to enter the workplace, and wasting millions of pounds on pointless equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) schemes.
Pointing the finger are belt-tightening senior leaders scrutinising their returns amid soaring wage bills, with some even feeling betrayed for being shepherded by HR into the vicious culture wars.
Christoffer Ellehuus, the chief executive of workplace training company MindGym, says: “A lot of them are blaming HR for not having reined it in and having had a much clearer business focus about what they were doing.”
Fuelling this blame game are recent findings that Britain’s diversity drive is “counterproductive” despite businesses spending millions of pounds on ultimately ineffective workplace initiatives.
In December 2020, the government’s Behavioural Insights Team came to a similar conclusion in its review of unconscious bias training. The Written Ministerial Statement accompanying that study noted that, “Despite a growing diversity training industry and increased adoption of unconscious bias programmes, a strong body of evidence has emerged that shows that such training has no sustained impact on behaviour and may even be counterproductive”.
An independent report commissioned by Kemi Badenoch, the then Business Secretary, reached a similar conclusion, having discovered that popular so-called ESG (environmental, social and governance) practices had little to no tangible impact on boosting diversity or reducing prejudice.
Ms Badenoch in March warned British companies against outsourcing or delegating to workplace training consultants with “potentially conflicting incentives” which are ultimately selling “snake oil”.
She told the Times: “There are lots of people who just cook up stuff and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got a course. Why don’t you buy my course?’ … They’ve been making money out of selling stuff that is not evidence-based.”
These research findings are consistent with a recent FSU report, The EDI Tax. Contrary to the idea that expenditure on EDI roles and training schemes is ‘just good business’, the FSU’s latest research report reveals that it operates, in effect, as an ‘EDI Tax’.
According to a survey of a representative sample of UK workers undertaken on behalf of the FSU, many ambitious employees and senior managers are now leaving companies because of the excessive time they’re expected to spend on these courses. Ironically, they prove most irksome to those they purport to benefit, i.e., members of the LGBTQ+ community and ethnic minorities.
Given the extent of self-censorship revealed by our research report, The EDI Tax, many UK employees are also thinking twice before contributing to workplace conversations. Genuine diversity of thought is of course required for any organisation to succeed – but in the NHS, where patients’ health is at stake, encouraging a culture of silence to creep-in risks materially affecting the quality of care and treatment on offer.
These reports are damning for HR departments, who now face questions from their superiors about why they fell prey to so-called snake oil sellers in the first place.
This includes decisions to roll out divisive training programmes in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, designed to spread awareness around unconscious bias, white privilege and gender pronouns.
However, what were sold as quick fixes to create a fairer workplace – in online training sessions as short as 30 minutes – many have discovered to be little more than fashionable fads with damaging consequences.
Lloyds Bank found out the hard way.
Earlier this year, the FSU helped secure damages of around £800,000 for Carl Borg-Neal, a dyslexic Lloyds Bank manager who was sacked in a workplace free speech row.
Mr Borg-Neal worked for the high street lender for 27 years and became a senior manager. But when, during a diversity training session, he quoted an imaginary person using the n-word in a question about a hypothetical situation – should he reprimand a black employee for using the n-word in a conversation? – he was fired for gross misconduct, with nary a thought given to his 27 years of unblemished service. Luckily, Carl is a member of the FSU. With our help, he took Lloyds to court and won a landmark victory.
Tanya de Grunwald, who advises companies on HR issues, told the Telegraph: “The HR directors have not been quick enough to realise that their head of DEI is actually practising what looks more like their own political activism from within the organisation.”
“The sensible people who have reasonable questions have all been silenced, or they’ve just silenced themselves. They’re self-censoring.”
DIY giant Wickes, for example, was accused of quickly alienating its core “white van man” customer base who boycotted the company after its finance chief said that trans-critical shoppers are not welcome.
John Lewis was also accused of pushing a “dangerous ideology” onto religious and gender critical employees after launching a magazine for staff which advised parents on how to find breast binders for trans children.
“What they’re doing is sending messages that you can be your whole self as long as yourself looks ‘like this’ and thinks ‘like this’,” says De Grunwald.
