Don’t Let D&I Die
Morag Hutchison, Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP
And this is a picture of me and my boys sitting together on a bench in St. Andrews. It was a lovely day, and I really like this picture for two reasons. One, it reminds me of a lovely day with my children, but two and more importantly, I look slim, I look young, it makes me really happy. Now, there’s a tenuous link to this bench. This is another brilliant picture, I think. It’s an illustration by a lady called Lily O’Farrell, and it shows what a lot of young boys are feeling, I think. This sense that because of D&I, there’s no room for them on the bench anymore, and that really concerns me. It really worries me. What’s driving it? It’s become politicized, it’s become a huge agenda. We’ve seen all the comments from Kimmie Bader, Donald Trump, talking about removing D&I rules from day one when he’s in power. There’s also the issue of influencers as well. Elon Musk, billionaires, people that have a loud, loud voice on social media. Elon Musk has said, D&I must die. He’s also talked about D&I as being discrimination against white people. Very vocal in his view.
The other issue we’ve got is certain sectors of the media where they promote anti-D&I messages. It creates clickbait for them. If there’s culture wars, if things are polarized, that creates clickbait, that in turn creates some revenue for them. So what’s at the heart of this? Harvard Business Review talks about three threats, status, merit, and moral. The merit threat, the sense that if I’ve got here because of my privilege rather than because of my ability, does that mean I don’t merit to be in the position? The moral threat as well. If I’m here because of my privilege, I’m benefiting from an unfair society. And that’s status threat. If you change the status quo, are you threatening my position? Are you putting me at danger? So there are your three main threats when you’re considering this issue. I know that my boys listen more to Andrew Tate than they do to me. I think they’re called boycasters, that’s the new kind of phrase that’s used. This message, “You’ve got to be strong, you’ve got to push back,” is a very strong message that young boys are hearing.
This guy, Robby Starbuck, I don’t know if you’ve seen him, he’s running a campaign in the US where he’s targeting companies that have a strong D&I initiative. And what he’s doing is he’s saying to consumers, “Stop buying from these companies because of their D&I initiatives.” Jack Daniels is one example of that. They’ve stepped right back from their D&I initiatives because of the campaign from Robby Starbuck. And they’ve said it’s because of the change in the cultural landscape in the US. I think that’s hugely worrying. One in three D&I roles have disappeared in LinkedIn over the last year, interesting statistic. 42% of employees when they were asked said that they think D&I in the workplace is destructive and causes difficulties. What am I asking you to do? I’m asking you senior leaders to be brave. Don’t walk away from D&I at a time where it’s more crucial than it’s ever been, I think.
We all know the business reasons for D&I, but I think there’s society reasons as well. It’s a lovely thing. This is your definition of D&I, a set of principles designed to make people of various backgrounds feel supported, welcome, and safe. Don’t we all want that? Is that not something we should all be trying to achieve? I just think it’s so important. So if you’ve got pushback on D&I, the three behaviors that the review talks about that you tend to see, is denial, where people just say there’s no D&I issue here, they don’t recognize the issues that minorities experience. Disengagement, they don’t come along to any of your events, and here’s my D&I monster. This is this kind of concept of, “Well, D&I has taken all the jobs away from the white males.” That just statistically isn’t correct, but it’s a very common pushback that I think you get when you’re dealing with D&I issues.
What should HR’s approach be, what should senior leaders approach be? The stick doesn’t work. It’s been proven that the stick doesn’t work, it just causes disengagement and bad behaviors. So it’s really looking at the sort of carrot approach to trying to encourage D&I. So when you look at the three behaviors I spoke about, denial, explain, listen to why people are not happy with D&I issues in the workplace. Explain the importance of it, explain it’s for everyone. Disengagement, obviously, you need to try and get people back engaged with this issue. There’s a brilliant campaign at Police Scotland run, called Don’t Be That Guy. It’s really worth looking at. And derailment. You have to debunk that D&I monster myth that people think exists. Actually, statistically the progress in D&I has been incredibly slow. So I guess I want to finish by saying, I want to be in a position where my boys understand the importance of D&I, they accept it, they see it as a good thing, and they know that there’s a place on the bench for them. So please don’t let D&I die in your organizations. Thank you.
