This Isn’t Working

Can you feel it? Change is happening — culturally, politically, and inside the workplace. Orthodoxies that shaped the last decade of daily life are being questioned and dumped. Which employers have noticed the 'vibe shift' and which have missed it?  In this episode of This Isn’t Working, host Tanya de Grunwald is joined by journalist Brendan O’Neill - chief political writer at Spiked, and author o...

HR is under fire – and we need to talk about why. This blistering episode explores what's gone wrong, who's to blame – and how mistakes can be fixed.  Recorded in London on 10 February 2026, this video shows what happened at our second 'This Is Working' event - an evening of frank discussion and clear-eyed analysis with senior business professionals from across the private sector.  Host Tanya de G...

What happens when the workplace becomes a moral battleground, a group therapy session, or a political rally? And how should disruptive employees be dealt with? In this darkly funny, unsettling, and sharply insightful episode of This Isn’t Working, clinical psychologist and culture critic Jaco van Zyl takes us deep into the psychological underworld of modern workplace activism. Before empoyers can...

Has the 'vibe shift' reached UK companies - and who's to blame for the 'inclusion' practices that turned out to be such bad business?  We have brand new insights to share - straight from the mouths of UK employers. At the launch of our new business network 'This Is Working', 50 senior leaders, lawyers, HR professionals, risk experts and business owners gathered for a rare, open conversation. We al...

Who is still pushing 'woke' at work - and why is it so hard to challenge? This entertaining episode (recorded at the Battle of Ideas on 19 October 2025) explores the exasperating power of virtue signaling, lived experience and cancel culture at work. And we ask: what will it take to restore balance and neutrality to the UK's workplaces? With thanks to Eric Kaufmann - professor of politics at the U...

Can Left-leaning HR teams face the truth – that many of their colleagues support Reform UK? Or will employees with a St George's Cross sticker on their laptop be forced to apologise for the 'harm' it causes to colleagues? In this episode, Tanya de Grunwald describes her trip to the Reform UK Party Conference in Birmingham – and what Nigel Farage's soaring popularity (and the UK’s rising political...

Have standards collapsed across HR? Why are so many HR professionals confused about what their job is – and who is to blame for the mess? Some shocking practice has been exposed recently, raising urgent questions about standards, ethics and legal compliance across the UK’s HR industry. Are we seeing pockets of incompetence – or do the worst cases (such as Sandie Peggie and the Darlington nurses) p...

Trans women are not women, said the UK Supreme Court on 16 April – so why have some employers failed to bring their policies and practices in line with the law? Are they ‘captured’, conflicted - or just clueless? How did we reach a point where the Prime Minister Keir Starmer felt he needed to remind public sector HR professionals of their duty to follow the law (underlining the judges’ confirmatio...

Would scrapping DEI really mean a 'return to meritocracy' - or is there no such thing? What will happen if employers, educators and politicians stop all attempts to level the playing field, and instead do nothing to adjust for disadvantage? In this illuminating episode, Professor Dr Ger Graus shares his insights about advantage, ambition and opportunity learned over the course of his long career i...

Was this a business event - or a spiritual gathering? What did Stonewall say about the Supreme Court ruling? And what valuable content did employers gain from their £400 tickets? Our host Tanya de Grunwald shares exclusive insights from her day at Stonewall's 2025 Workplace Conference - and invites Levi Pay, director of Plinth House (and former Stonewall intern!) to provide further analysis about...

It’s official: self-ID was never lawful, and too many UK employers have dangerous policies in place. Why did we need the Supreme Court to tell us this – and what should employers do now? Since the landmark ruling on 16 April, emotions have been running high, and HR teams face the daunting task of assessing and correcting their policies, while managing employee reactions from across their workforce...

As employers grapple with the Supreme Court ruling, we ask: how did ‘trans inclusion’ go so wrong at work? Have HR teams been silencing women with reasonable objections to policies which prioritise gender identity over biological sex? How much of this mess is the fault of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) - and can men be lesbians at work? In this explosive, powerful and movi...

Why are so many big brands insulting and confusing their customers and employees with divisive political statements – and will anyone grab the wheel before the decision-makers drive the company off a cliff? If senior leaders have a clear political agenda (eg. Israel/Gaza, or environmentalism) or personal interest (eg. racial justice, or a trans-identifying child) should they be removed from discus...

Have you noticed that many of the loudest voices in DEI are men’s – and some get really angry when they’re challenged by women? Same here! So let’s get into it. Which men are drawn to DEI, how much damage are they doing – and is it just a weird coincidence that many of them are gay?  The writer Gareth Roberts – himself a (lovely!) gay man; and the author of Gay Shame – agrees that something dark i...

Are neurodiversity, mental health and 'LGBT' winning the war for employers' attention - while disability has been sidelined? Has the 'lived experience' industry become superficial and exploitative? And have staff networks turned into unsupervised - and even dangerous - group therapy sessions in the workplace? Disability rights campaigner George Fielding doesn't want to 'be kind' if it means endles...

In trying to make our workplaces ‘inclusive’ to people who identify as trans and non-binary, have employers excluded and alienated too many others? In some cases, it looks like we are actually causing distress to our colleagues, without even realising.  If it’s bad for our teams, and it’s bad for business, is it time to look at 'trans inclusion' again? Future episodes will cover the legal aspect o...

DID HR CRASH JAGUAR? Has advertising lost touch with consumers – and what role have its 'people professionals' played? If a strongly left-leaning, middle class monoculture has evolved, is the industry in any position to preach about diversity? Doesn't anyone care about selling stuff anymore – and is it too late to turn this around? In this episode Tanya takes a deep dive into what isn’t working in...

What happens when you ask whether Human Resources has lost the plot in places – including around DEI? Pamela Dow – Chief Operating Officer at think tank Civic Future – found out the hard way, as author of that New Statesman article on HR, and chair of that government report on DEI. In this episode, Pamela explains why she’s more convinced than ever that ‘something is definitely going on’ with HR –...

We knew Donald Trump hated ‘DEI nonsense’ – but did we expect him to torch it on Day 1 of his new term in the White House? And what does this mean for those of us working in or around this troubled industry? In this episode, Tanya and (sensible!) DEI (or 'EDI' in the UK) consultant Heeral Gudka (founder of Convergent) discuss the immediate impact of a momentous week for DEI – and what the US ‘vibe...

Ho ho ho – it’s time for a festive ding-dong! As HR teams were heading towards a well-earned Christmas break, two stinging critiques of our industry landed in the press, accusing us of being a drag on the UK economy, and – frankly – getting on everyone’s nerves.  The CIPD released a statement that drew mixed responses, including suggestions the industry body has itself lost its way,  and is over-c...

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...