This Isn’t Working

On both sides of the Atlantic, we’ve faced a reckoning on race in the last five years. But have employers’ efforts to address racial discrimination and reduce tensions made things better or worse?  ‘Am I racist?’ – the new film by the American provocateur Matt Walsh – asks whether we have over-corrected, to the point where too many employers now centre race in a way that can feel divisive, crass,...

What is fuelling the backlash against DEI – and are some of your staff secretly loving it? Have employers overestimated their staff’s enthusiasm for their efforts to ‘level the playing field’ and be ‘inclusive’ of groups perceived to be ‘marginalised’? This is the first half of a two-part conversation with the writer and commentator James Esses. Best known for his investigations into where good in...

Is diversity, equity and inclusion really good for business – or did we conflate it with being ‘the right thing to do’? Has the HR industry been gaslit by fancy consultancies and self-proclaimed experts selling us DEI-related products and services with big claims, but small measurable outcomes? And why are so many DEI professionals allergic to questions about evidence? In this interview with Alex...

Employers - we need to talk about pronouns. And ‘LGBT’. And Pride. And Stonewall. And staff networks. And diversity training that only gives one side of a complex and nuanced story. Oh, and drag queens… This is an interview with Kate Barker, CEO of the UK charity LGB Alliance. So, what are employers getting wrong about ‘LGBT’? The short answer, according to Kate, is that they are failing to consid...

How can employers fix the damage caused by bad DEI? And are DEI professionals part of the solution - or the problem? In the third and final part of our conversation with Neil Morrison, Group HR Director at British water company Severn Trent (which has 10,000 employees), we discuss these questions – and much more: - How did we get to a place where the people in charge of ‘inclusion’ at work are sil...

Who is to blame for the DEI lawsuits? Finally, we have some answers! Here is the second slice of our three-part interview with Neil Morrison, group HR director at the British water company Severn Trent. With reference to high profile cases including Lloyds Banking Group, Thames Valley Police, the Open University and Cambridgeshire County Council, we ask: - Why don’t DEI and HR professionals unders...

In this ground-breaking episode, a sensible, experienced, centrist HR director busts multiple taboos - answering questions about how and why DEI has gone wrong in so many organisations. Neil Morrison, group HR director at Severn Trent, gets into race, disability, trans inclusion, Israel/Gaza… the lot. We cover: - Was it a mistake for brands to rush in with statements about Black Lives Matter?  - W...

IS STONEWALL CRUMBLING – AND HOW SHOULD EMPLOYERS REACT? As any smart HR professional who's been paying attention will know, suddenly everyone is talking about Stonewall – and not in a good way. Once considered a solution – a trusted, credible advisor on best practice for workplace policy concerning sexual orientation (or ‘gay rights’) – now the organisation is viewed as a problem by many employer...

UNFLATTERING BUT POSITIVE – AND ESSENTIAL READING FOR EVERY HR PROFESSIONAL IN THE UK That’s Julie and Tanya's verdict on the new Inclusion at Work Panel report, released last week by the Department of Business and Trade. Have you read it yet? If not, why not? In Episode 4 of *This Isn’t Working* Julie Scanlon and Tanya de Grunwald take a deep dive into what many people quickly started calling ‘Ke...

There are still too many unpaid internships around, but there are fewer than there were - and that's partly thanks to Tanya de Grunwald. In this episode, Julie Scanlon interviews her co-host about her 'dark past' calling out Simon Cowell, Tony Blair and Philip Green over unpaid internships. The pair discuss why Tanya's activism was so successful in the 'golden era' of the 2010s, where and why prog...

Love it or loathe it, International Women's Day has become an essential date when every employer must... do what, exactly? And why? Does 8 March need a re-think, as well as a re-brand? In this episode, Julie Scanlon (grumpy) and Tanya de Grunwald (grumpier) discuss whether anything about International Women's Day is still working for employers and employees, including: - What is International Wome...

Why did Elon Musk say that 'DEI must DIE' - and how many people share his view? If there are signs that a backlash is brewing against diversity, equity and inclusion, why are HR and DEI professionals dismissing opposition as a 'right-wing culture war' that should be ignored? Is this failure to engage with criticism a further sign that something is seriously wrong with an industry that was meant to...