LONDON: I have now lost track of how many US organisations have backtracked on their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. What had been seen as a near universal “good” for business, now … isn’t.

Or rather, DEI was often publicly declared by business leaders to be good for business - but now we are finding out how much of this was performative.

In the wider corporate and organisational world, I think the (current) outlook is not so bleak. If you want to know why, follow experts on LinkedIn who inject nuance and data into this debate.

One of the most eloquent voices, DEI strategist and consultant Lily Zheng, states that “DEI is far from dead, but we can’t pretend that the performative pre-backlash status quo was the best we had to offer”.

Many thoughtful observers, such as Zheng, have been saying for years that a lot of DEI programmes just don’t work, while those that do work are long term, and are built on hard data that shows what does work as well as incremental change. That takes consistent, long-term effort - and a lot of cash.

It’s unsurprising that much of the DEI industry was built on lucrative “quick fix” training bought in by organisations keen to tick the right boxes. Too many of these inclusion efforts actually excluded a lot of people - often white men - and made some of them resentful. Resentment sticks around, in life and in workplaces. We are seeing the results of that now.

When it comes to unwinding diversity, we may shortly see a new sort of opportunistic consultant, offering training in DEI-unravelling and anti-woke leadership.

CREATING SOMETHING OUT OF THE DEI CRISIS

Sometimes, though, you have to blow things up or strip them right back and then remake them.

In a recent interview, Martha Beck, the US author, life coach and sociologist, spoke to Sam Baker’s The Shift newsletter, which is aimed at mid-life women. “If leaving a job or a relationship or whatever feels like you’re blowing up your life, ask yourself if the opposite may be true: If it may be that you’re bringing your real life into being for the first time.”

As it happens, I first read these words in a personal context, but then it struck me that the current situation with DEI in many workplaces is little different from an apparently stable life that suddenly unspools. We’ve had years of believing that DEI was entrenched at the heart of business practices and HR initiatives. Now, within a few weeks, it’s been upended.

Perhaps we can take our collective workplace wisdom and create something new out of this crisis.

I’d suggest, for example, that this is a good moment to have a reset, built around respect for our colleagues, whoever they are. Maybe think about inclusion in terms of human connection.

TACKLING LONELINESS AT WORKPLACES

You may think “connection” is just a workplace buzzword - when it’s used by leaders who lack evidence to set out a rationale for full-time return-to-office mandates, for instance. But it’s also true that connection is a basic human need - and in an increasingly polarised society, workplaces are ideally placed to provide it.

To take one example: We could all work together to combat loneliness. One in five of us is lonely at work, according to the 2024 Gallup State of the Workplace report. It is corrosive for the individual and, on an organisational level, unhappy workers are less engaged and less productive.

How to address this? One issue is that men often develop closeness differently from women. While I might use face-to-face time (coffees, lunch) to get to know someone, men’s connections are more often built on a side-by-side model: Watching sport or taking part in a shared activity. When I wrote in 2023 about men’s particular workplace loneliness issues, there was a huge response.

This is a very under-discussed subject - partly because, as loneliness expert Max Dickins told me, many HR departments are overwhelmingly staffed by women. The kinds of social activities and staff mental health initiatives that are put on at a corporate level might not suit men’s needs.

Recognising gaps like that should prompt us to think again, and look sideways: What are we all missing? Who is missing from this discussion? We need fresh thinking like this about inclusion, as we do about all sorts of other diversity measures.

Tackling loneliness is just one part of it - but this is a relatively fresh idea, one that appeals to everyone in different ways and stands to benefit us all.