On 20 March 2024 an independent Inclusion at Work Panel submitted a report to the Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch. The aim of the report was to identify best practices for workplace inclusion, outlining key areas of success as well as the common practices that often fail to yield positive outcomes. While the report does identify some valuable findings, ultimately it is hugely patronising to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) professionals and it fundamentally misses the point of workplace inclusion endeavours, in turn contributing to and upholding the harms of systemic oppression.

The report begins with the business case for EDI, citing that diversity ‘improves the potential for effectiveness, is conducive to innovation and creativity, and reduces groupthink.’ While this is true, the report at no point addresses the value EDI has for marginalised communities or for overturning historic social hierarchies. In fact, not once in this entire report are concepts of systemic racism or other forms of oppression mentioned. While this may be unsurprising considering that the government has denied the existence of institutional racism in the UK, this position has been hugely criticised, and for an independent panel on inclusion to take a similar approach is shameful. It is important to remember that it is in the best interest of any oppressor to deny the existence of any structures that may give them an unfair advantage. Furthermore, although it is useful to understand the business case for EDI, there is a long history of only valuing marginalised communities and their labour for their ability to make privileged groups richer (take, for example, slavery, which valued people of colour exclusively for this reason). When diversity is solely understood within a capitalist framework, and the importance of anti-oppression is erased, EDI becomes a tool for maintaining systems of oppression.

Instead of tackling oppression, the report argues that issues of ‘differential treatment’ and ‘disadvantage’ are incredibly complex and thus beyond the capability of corporate HR teams to understand and address. Not only is this unfairly patronising to EDI professionals, but it argues that the interventions delivered by these professionals are ‘abstract,’ ‘subjective’ and that outcomes are ‘impossible to discern.’ As evidence, the report argues for a greater need to increase a diversity of opinions: ‘An organisation may be proportionately representative of the population in gender and race. However, if the workforce remains largely socio economically and geographically homogenous (for example, composed of middle-class graduates from South East England) it is likely unrepresentative in life experience and values.’ While it is definitely important to ensure that there is class and education diversity, the idea that people of colour and white people, or people across different genders, of the same class, education and regional upbringing will have the same life experiences and values is absurd. Again, the lived experiences of marginalised communities and the existence of systemic oppression has been neglected here. To claim that EDI professionals are incapable of properly understanding the scope of their own field, while also failing to understand the basic tenets of intersectionality, demonstrates an alarming level of arrogance and ignorance by the Inclusion at Work panellists and brings into question whether they have the expertise to write this report.

The above issues continue as the report proceeds to cover the barriers to and guiding principles for effective EDI practice. Inclusion is positioned as ‘in the eye of the beholder’ and should not be based on ‘abstract, social-theoretical, definitions of privilege and disadvantage.’ Definitions of privilege and disadvantage are drawn off of decades of high-quality research as well as from the lived experiences of marginalised communities, and to suggest otherwise is to contribute to systemic oppression’s aim of denying the existence of institutional and ideological structures that limit fairness in our communities.

The report then moves into providing recommendations for successful EDI, starting almost immediately by arguing that professionals should not assume ‘that society-wide inequalities are present’ and to reduce ‘the use of resources on addressing inconsequential or absent issues.’ Systemic oppression is pervasive in every area of our country, and while it is true that its particulars are context-specific and should be understood carefully within each context, to suggest that it may not be present at all or is inconsequential is not only incorrect, but harmful. It is this kind of rhetoric that maintains inequality, exclusion and discrimination and should be wholly condemned.

• The report moves into some helpful insights from here, outlining key mistakes that many organisations are making, such as:
• Not collecting inclusion-related data
• Not having clear inclusion-related goals
• Implementing inclusion-related initiatives without clear objectives
• Implementing ineffective and/or counterproductive inclusion-related initiatives
• Not monitoring or evaluating the effectiveness of inclusion-related initiatives over extended periods
• Not being transparent about EDI progress

These are issues that Manchester Pride’s All Equals Charter team have also uncovered, and have been working for years with member organisations to address. However, the top barrier to inclusion our team identified is the belief in meritocracy, the myth that a person’s success is determined by how hard they work. In a system of oppression, access to opportunities is made more difficult for historically marginalised communities, and thus LGBTQ+ people, people of colour, women, disabled people and other marginalised groups have to work harder than privileged groups in order to achieve the same outcomes. By acknowledging that the system is rigged, equity initiatives function to rebalance power and make our society more fair. Instead of acknowledging this fact, the report instead makes explicit its position that workplace EDI initiatives need to ensure they do not undermine meritocracy. This not only reinforces this myth, but it functions to justify the oppression of marginalised groups, suggesting they need only work harder if they want better lives and that their struggles are of their own making.

To address the above issues, the key item missing from this report is the metric by which an organisation should measure success. With a high focus on the financial cost of EDI initiatives, the report implies that the outcomes of any inclusion-related initiative should only be to increase revenue. However, the report often mischaracterizes the situation, suggesting that organisations have massive EDI budgets (which is rarely the case) and that this money is regularly wasted. One example provided is that billions of dollars were pledged following Black Lives Matter protests, however the report fails to mention that very little of this money was ever actually paid.

Curiously, the only times the report identifies how expensive it is to fail to uphold the Equality Act of 2010 is in regards to cases unrelated to marginalised communities. For example, on more than one occasion they refer to Maya Forstater’s legal battle, in which it was found that she was discriminated against for holding ‘gender-critical’ (meaning, transphobic) beliefs. The report also mentions multiple instances in which white people were discriminated against, such as when both Cheshire Police and the Royal Air Force incorrectly applied the positive action provision of the Equality Act, and when it was ruled that ‘holding a view that does not subscribe to critical race theory is a protected characteristic under the “religion or belief” section of the Equality Act.’ There are no examples in this report of the huge financial expense an organisation can incur from discriminating against marginalised groups. Instead, the report argues that ‘white working-class populations were often more disadvantaged than ethnic minority groups,’ yet again ignoring intersectionality, while misrepresenting the data and pitting marginalised communities against one another.

Rather than calling for the overturning of laws that protect transphobic and racist beliefs, the report continues by repeatedly arguing that true diversity can only be accomplished by increasing the diversity of ‘thought’ in organisations. A great deal of space is dedicated in this report to defending those with views that do not ‘align with a perceived dominant culture’ or with ‘unpopular’ views and beliefs, especially related to race and gender. Essentially, those with transphobic and racist values feel they do not have freedom of speech in the workplace, and the report argues that EDI initiatives need to take a ‘neutral’ stance. If diversity and inclusion are concepts that require us to include hateful people and values then these concepts have become deeply removed from social justice, anti-oppression and the liberation of marginalised communities. Positive social change-making requires us to challenge the status quo; it is inherently incapable of a neutral stance.

Next, the report outlines several different workplace EDI schemes. However, not one scheme mentioned covers LGBTQ+ inclusion specifically. In fact, sexuality is only given a passing mention once in this entire report, and while transphobic values are upheld repeatedly, there are zero mentions of trans inclusion present. This is perhaps unsurprising considering Kemi Badenoch’s history of anti-LGBTQ+ (especially anti-trans) work, and only further demonstrates the significant need for intersectional LGBTQ+ inclusion programmes like the All Equals Charter.

The report ends with three recommendations, the first prioritising money and the third focussing on protecting ‘beliefs.’ However, the second recommendation is almost a welcome one: the development of a digital toolkit that will enable ‘managers in every sector to assess the rigour, efficacy, and value for money of a range of D&I practices.’ This sounds like a useful tool, though again the metrics for assessing success must be given consideration, something that seems unlikely given the approach of this report.

To be clear: the point of workplace equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives is to enable organisations to contribute to the systemic change needed to liberate intersecting marginalised communities from institutional and ideological systems of oppression. This is why programmes like the All Equals Charter are so valuable, providing expertise into the root causes of inequality, exclusion and discrimination to professionals in order to bring about meaningful and positive social change for companies, colleagues, customers and communities. When EDI is removed from this focus, as is the case in this report, there is a danger that marginalised communities will continue to face harm through justifications that manipulate and misrepresent values of fairness and freedom.

To learn more about how your organisation can avoid the common barriers to successful EDI and how the All Equals Charter’s expert team can support you with creating a bespoke and meaningful intersectional inclusion action plan, get in touch with us today for a free meeting. Together, we can not only improve your workplace for marginalised communities, but improve our society as we create a world where everyone is free to live and love without prejudice and where LGBTQ+ people and culture are universally celebrated.