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British HR Chiefs Hold Out Against DEI Rollback

by Will Jones
17 February 2025 4:05 PM

As US companies roll back diversity programmes they were once eager to promote, many British HR chiefs are determined not to follow corporate America’s lead, triggering a battle with senior bosses. The Telegraph has more.

At a recent dinner for the HR chiefs of Britain’s biggest listed companies, anger was stirring. Donald Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in America was riling up many guests.

According to one of those in attendance, the prevailing mood in the room was: “We need to take a stand against this. We’re not going to bow down to Trump and move in that direction.”

As US companies roll back diversity programmes they were once eager to promote, many British HR chiefs are determined not to follow corporate America’s lead.

Divides are already emerging between the British and American arms of global businesses.

At Deloitte, staff in the US have been told to stop listing their pronouns at the end of email signatures as part of a broader retrenchment on DEI. Yet managers in the UK have reiterated their commitment to diversity targets, telling staff they will not copy the policy of Deloitte US.

Behind the scenes, many more similar battles are taking place. Splits are said to be emerging at major global banks, insurance companies and tech businesses.

“I have it on good authority that there are tensions between US and UK arms of insurance firms,” says one diversity adviser. “In response to the US arms shutting down DEI, one HR in the City here has said she will simply rebrand the work from DEI to culture and inclusion if that’s what it takes to keep going.”

For some British bosses, the pushback against DEI was overdue. Calls to offer gender-neutral bathrooms, include pronouns at the bottom of emails and spend more time and money on diversifying a company’s ranks were taking up more and more executive energy.

“You hear about a lot of people in my role feeling trapped between the person they brought in to lead the [DEI] agenda and their executive colleagues,” says the HR chief of a FTSE 100 company.

“On the one hand, you have someone [in charge of DEI] saying we need to go harder, further. And on the other hand, you have a board saying this isn’t a priority for us right now, this isn’t something we want to spend as much boardroom time on.”

A crackdown in America gives British boards the “cover of darkness” to make changes they had already been planning, the executive says. The need to cut costs post-Budget had already put so-called ‘nice to have’ initiatives such as DEI departments in the firing line for cuts.

“HR needs to be wise to the fact that boards are going to have a second look [at this] and where they can, reduce spend,” says Heeral Gudka, a consultant who advises companies on their diversity strategies. “Now they have a gold-plated reason to do it.”

Worth reading in full.

Tags: DEIDiversityHRPresident TrumpWoke capitalismWoke CorporationWoke Gobbledegook

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15 Comments
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For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
3 months ago

The HR chiefs in major companies are all likely empire builders and this threatens a chunk of their domain. Of course they don’t like it, and it has nothing to do with their views on the principles of DEI.

Last edited 3 months ago by For a fist full of roubles
6
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
3 months ago
Reply to  For a fist full of roubles

I’m sure that is partly true, but I reckon some might be true believers or awful virtue signalling do gooder types.

I am not convinced this “rollback” will come to much. Picked a global insurance firm at random:

Promoting Inclusion, Embracing DifferencesWe advance diversity–including diversity of background, experience, thought and opportunity. GC Embrace, Guy Carpenter’s employee resource group, provides colleagues with opportunities to learn from one another, exchange ideas and form lasting connections across businesses and geographies.
GC Embrace includes councils focused on:

  • Ethnic and Cultural Diversity
  • Gender Diversity
  • Generational Diversity
  • LGBTQ+ Diversity
  • Mental Health, Well-Being and Disability

Our Culture

I suppose it’s early days.

5
0
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
3 months ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

In the end it depends on how it affects the bottom line. The response is quickly measured with consumer goods manufacture, but corporate finance and services take a bit longer

2
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
3 months ago
Reply to  For a fist full of roubles

I think it would be hard to measure how it affects the bottom line. Certainly there seems to be a mutual expectation that all firms will have similar policies and NOT having them might lose you business. As for “diversity hiring” impairing your business, I doubt very much anyone is measuring that, or will ever measure it. Most of these firms make tons of money and even when they don’t, the top people don’t end up among the long term unemployed/poor as far as I can see. Even if they get fired, they seem to get new jobs. Revolving doors. I work for an SME and we don’t need to “measure” these things because we’re small enough that even one weak link gives us noticeable problems.

6
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
3 months ago
Reply to  For a fist full of roubles

Well I haven’t bought PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea for around four years after they made their woke proclamations. We need mass boycotts on anything that promotes DEI etc.

4
0
NeilofWatford
NeilofWatford
3 months ago

I’m fascinated to see this play out in those American businesses with UK footprints. Ford, Microsoft, Google, McDonald’s, Boeing etc.
It will also impact US Defence contracts with British businesses, with Ts&Cs no longer demanding DEI.
I spent 42 years inside a UK defence contractor and watched this cancer grow, useless women promoted many grades beyond their ability to tick a box.
I trained 25,000 people there and the weirdest person by a country mile to attend a course was the Corporate DEI Head. There were some exceptional women I worked with who gained promotion through ability, but she wasn’t one of them.

12
0
Sceptical Steve
Sceptical Steve
3 months ago

It’s another case of “follow the money”.

A benchmark report by the Investment Association (IA) and the Thinking Ahead Institute highlights that 52 UK investment and fund management firms, representing 75% of the UK’s assets under management, are actively engaging in EDI efforts. (theia.org)

If they are still demanding adherence to EDI as a condition of their investments, it’s no suprise that companies are reluctant to change tack.

5
0
factsnotfiction
factsnotfiction
3 months ago

The unfortunate and and inconvenient theoretical origins of DEI, to any honest academic or intellectual, suggested it was never going to achieve its objective – unless that objective was to systematically dismantle modernity, freedom and liberty.

An honest discussion of Critical Theory, Intersectionality and it’s Postmodern applications via the tool that is ‘DEI’ would halt this destructive practice immediately. I guess it will take more financial losses and societal division in the UK for common sense to take over.

Constantly reminding people they’re either victims or oppressors was never going to end well.

Last edited 3 months ago by factsnotfiction
7
0
stewart
stewart
3 months ago

Europeans, in which I include Britons, are failing to read the room and understand the moment we are going through in history.

The more they cling onto this insanity the more isolated and backward Europe and the UK will become.

10
0
Art Simtotic
Art Simtotic
3 months ago

When I started my working life, Human Remains was still called Personnel. Main duties essentially clerical – central filing away of appraisals and holiday records, retirements and recruitment, which in my case they made a meal of by sending my job offer to other side of the world via surface mail.

Over the next 30 years, I watched the parasite morph, mutate and proliferate.

Enough. DIE must die. Back to meritocracy.

9
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
3 months ago
Reply to  Art Simtotic

DEI is unethical, irrational and unsafe. I just hate everything about it, for the same reasons every other sane person does. It never ever used to be a ‘thing’ until recent years, and yet we all managed just fine, we were efficient and the world turned just fine. Various discriminatory legislation has been in place for years and employers adhered to this. Meritocracy used to be given.
Another reason I hate DEI is that it’s manipulative and attempts to shove square pegs into round holes.

I don’t know about you but no matter where I’ve lived I’ve never come across a single male librarian, secretary, doctor’s receptionist ( be it GP or any hospital department or clinic I’ve ever visited ), for instance. By the same token, I’ve yet to see a single female building site or road worker on my travels, I’ve hired many tradesmen/handymen and none happened to be women, and I’m going to stick my neck out and say oil rig workers will be mainly, if not all, men.
But are these various industries and employers discriminating against one sex or the other? Of course not. The reason being that people will always gravitate and apply for jobs based on their own personal preferences and their capabilities. DEI attempts to manipulate this. If the above sectors had a recruitment drive to try and attract more applicants from the opposite sex I think they’d still fail miserably. People, when there’s no outside interference, will always organically go for certain types of jobs, because this is just part of the human condition.

If a department or business only had employees from one single ethnicity, does that automatically mean they’re discriminating against people? Certainly not. It would have to be proven that the employer is passing over better qualified /experienced candidates in order to recruit a poorer standard of applicant just because they favour that person’s skin colour, or whatever characteristic it may be. So it’s all a nonsense and people should be left well alone to just go about applying for whatever jobs they want, and employers to carry on hiring whoever they see as the best fit, because this is the way it’s always been and it’s worked pretty damn well for society for donkey’s years. “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”springs to mind.

3
0
kev
kev
3 months ago
Reply to  Mogwai

I totally agree with Equality of Opportunity

I don’t agree with Equality of Outcome (Equity), or quota’s. Neither did MLK.

Where is the pride in knowing you got a job based on ability, and not just because you ticked some HR box?

3
0
John Y
John Y
3 months ago

In practice, DEI means Discrimination, Exclusion and Indoctrination.

7
0
SomersetHoops
SomersetHoops
3 months ago

If people working for American companies in any other country don’t like any reasonable conditions set by their company, they should leave and find another place to work. If they have had the fortune to have found a cushy job in a bloated HR department they should now not be surprised to find many of those jobs no longer exist.

0
0
Dallas Beaufort
Dallas Beaufort
3 months ago

The grooming days are coming to an end

0
0

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