How should HR deal with ‘woke’ criticism?

If HR is labelled ‘woke’ by some within the business, is it a criticism and how should HR react to it, if at all? That was one of the issues discussed at the CIPD’s Festival of Work earlier this month and has been a regular discussion point in the HR press in recent times.

People Management looks at this and quotes Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers. He says the concept of woke is often used as a criticism by those who questioned organisations’ motives around diversity and inclusion, but the bigger picture is more important - businesses are still failing to be truly inclusive for all employees and should not be scared to address those imbalances because some people find inclusivity a difficult topic. We agree and we’ll come onto that.

Mortimer says 20% of the NHS workforce have an ethnic minority background and they continue to have a worse experience at work than white employees. He says: “If that’s wokery, that’s fine – it’s about doing the best for our employees and our patients. We’re rightly challenged to be more productive, and part of the answer to that is making sure we treat a significant part of our workforce far better than we have done over the last 75 years.”

HR Magazine asks whether ‘woke workplaces are causing senior employees to leave organisations’. They refer to research from recruiter Randstad showing a third of UK workers over 55 described their workplace as ‘too woke’ - excessively alert to social injustice - and it made them more likely to leave. The figures were lower for those under 55. Indeed, a third of workers under 25 still think their workplace isn’t woke enough.

Personnel Today reports on the same research and highlights an interesting gender split. While 22% of men told Randstad their workplace was too woke, only 13% of women said the same. Across the piece the research shows young females are the group least likely to criticise HR for being woke, whilst over-55 males are more likely to object to some of the D&I initiatives which they see as unnecessary.

So, what do we make of this? How should HR deal with this? Kate Dodd is head of Pinsent Masons’ D&I consultancy, Brook Graham, and earlier she joined me by video-link to discuss it: 

Kate Dodd: “It’s a really interesting one - we have always had a bit of pushback. So, the work that we do, particularly at Brook Graham, around building understanding, building inclusive practices through creating shared knowledge, basically, and there will always be in those types of workshops that we will be facilitating, there will always be voices that will say, oh, gosh, is this not political correctness gone mad, or I don't agree with this, comments from people who feel, for one reason or another, threatened by what's happening, or they feel that the status quo is just fine, or they think that the whole focus on diversity and inclusion is unnecessary, basically. That has long been the case and I’ve been doing this for many years, 22 years, and we've been having those voices in all that time. Now, it’s been something that has been dying down a little bit, I think, because people have started to really understand the business value of diversity and inclusion, they've started to understand that it translates into financial performance. So, these kinds of comments, I suppose, have been a bit less and what I've noticed is that, not just in terms of the professional work that I do but also social media etcetera, those voices are starting to gain traction again because, of course, it is part of the current political agenda.”

Joe Glavina: “So what’s your message to HR, Kate?”

Kate Dodd: “Yes, so my message to HR on all of this is don't pretend it's not happening, because there is a huge amount of political commentary around whether diversity and inclusion is necessary, does it single people out, does it objectify people, etcetera and that will be being echoed in boardrooms, in common rooms, in staff rooms, up and down the country. So, for HR it's really important not to pretend that it isn't happening at the moment and, actually, just tackle it and to say, look, we understand that these are very unusual political times at the moment, very uncertain times,  but as a business we remain committed to diversity and inclusion and so, for example, we're not going to start rolling back on our plans to publish our ethnicity pay gap, or we're not going to try and use an exemption to avoid reporting on diversity data, etcetera, because we're committed to this as a business regardless of what's going on outside of our business.”

Kate has previously talked to this programme about the problem of employee scepticism towards D&I initiatives and how to address it. So, asking whether D&I initiatives stop at an idea, rather than progressing to an active step that is implemented and that makes a difference. That programme is called ‘What is ‘diversity fatigue’ and how do you stop it?’ – we have put a link to it in the transcript of this programme.

LINKS
- Link to HRNews programme: ‘What is ‘diversity fatigue’ and how do you stop it?’