This is the second in a two-part series on the future of workplace DEI. Read part one: ‘The Death of DEI?’ here

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As I sat down to start writing, the BBC pinged up on my phone to tell me that Google has become the latest major US firm to drop many of its diversity commitments. A little further digging confirms a hypothesis I put forward in the first half of this series; DEI initiatives in private sector organisations which fail to demonstrate how they contribute to increasing shareholder value are toast. And indeed, the financial results published the day before had led to over $200 billion dollars being wiped off the value of Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

I’m not going to apologise for sounding like a broken record on this subject; it really is all about the numbers. HR leaders at all levels must do more to understand and demonstrate how their work fits into the organisation’s core results and purpose.

So how do we go forward?

An interesting theory has been put forward by American legal scholar Kenji Yoshino. He suggests there are two types of DEI. The first type is lifting DEI – targeted interventions focused on specific groups. The second is levelling DEI – the removal of bias in decision making.

And the simple fact is that lifting DEI, in both the US and UK, has always been legally tricky. In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 allows for positive action in decision making – a form of lifting DEI. However, as the RAF demonstrated recently, the pressure on individuals to reach lifting DEI targets can result in actions that cross the line into illegality.

Meanwhile, popular means of delivering levelling DEI are often ineffective. An example is blind recruitment. Whilst the commonly cited example of the BBC’s orchestra using some sort of The Voice style selection method certainly makes sense, blind recruitment in other industries has often failed to make a tangible difference.

And that’s because whilst something like orchestral selection can be based almost exclusively on musical skill, most modern recruiters are consciously and unconsciously evaluating hundreds of different signals; many of which are cultural or are absorbed through presence in elite environments.

The irony is that there’s not a lot of diversity in diversity practice. The playbook is embarrassingly consistent – blame the starting situation on unconscious bias, increase diversity in the employee population, then increase diversity in leadership. But, as we’ve already established, these achievements alone aren’t tied to organisational performance. Hence something that is successful and award winning at the DEI or HR level can be completely irrelevant at the organisational level.

Most importantly, how diversity and inclusion is communicated must change. Some really interesting research has been published by More in Common, the thinktank founded in the aftermath of Jo Cox’s murder, about a group they call the Progressive Activists.

Progressive Activists are one of More in Common’s British Seven segments. Their definition is one that neatly fits with DEI practitioners:

“A passionate and vocal group for whom politics is at the core of their identity, and who seek to correct the historic marginalisation of groups based on their race, gender, sexuality, wealth, and other forms of privilege. They are politically engaged, critical, opinionated, frustrated, cosmopolitan, and environmentally conscious.”

But what’s interesting is More in Common’s findings about Progressive Activists relative to other groups. Despite making up 8% of the UK population, this group is overrepresented online, in the media and in policy settings. And crucially, More in Common found that not only were Progressive Activists’ views often at odds with the other six identities (who make up 92% of the population), they also dramatically overestimated how many people shared these views by factors of two to three. The research also found this group to be more dogmatic in their views and exclusionary of those who do not fully align with their positions.

It’s worth reflecting on this, as it also factors into why so many organisations here and abroad have begun dismantling DEI efforts.

Because as a profession, we’ve become guilty of the very groupthink and affinity bias that we seek to eliminate in others. Has our response to pushback, apathy and injustice been to become more combative and militant? Possibly. And have our successes been a mirage, driven by a wider social and political drift that has suddenly been reversed by democratic mandate? The fact is that increasing numbers of people are looking to Trump, AfD, Le Pen, Reform and others for the answers to their problems; problems which haven’t been solved by mainstream political ideas – ideas that have included DEI.

Put simply, most people aren’t buying what we’ve been selling. And because of that, most of our colleagues aren’t really fussed about what we do.

There should be affirmative action, and it should be based on colour, but that colour is green. Scott Galloway

Dragon’s Den star Steven Bartlett hosted a roundtable on his Diary of a CEO podcast shortly after President Trump’s inauguration. As they discussed DEI, participant Scott Galloway, Democrat supporter, entrepreneur and business professor, raised the point that, where Ivy League DEI initiatives had increased the number of people of colour in the student population, this was almost exclusively limited to people with similar economic backgrounds to existing students. His point was that affirmative action in these universities was giving a double boost to some students, who already had high levels of wealth privilege. Poor people of colour had no more chance of benefiting from these initiatives than they did before.

The Achilles Heel for DEI in the UK has long been the fact that white working-class boys have worse economic, educational, and employment outcomes than any other group. Our language doesn’t support this huge segment of the population. Where we have delivered benefits to this group, we’ve often focused our words on the others the initiative helped.

We believe that what we’re doing is right. Which means we’re not good at reflecting on whether how we’re doing it is wrong.

That needs to change. The environment has changed. Those we thought were onboard were simply acquiescing to the prevailing narrative for an easy life. We made fundamental assumptions that were wrong.

I believe inclusion, and specifically social inclusion, is the key to the rebirth of DEI. But this must be an inclusion that talks to everyone – in-group and out-group, minority and majority, that invites, rather than imposes.

This is an opportunity for a revolution in DEI. A chance to diverge from the orthodoxy of DEI practice and try new things. What is broken down can be rebuilt stronger and better than before.

But that must start with an acknowledgement that what has come before may be right in theory, but wrong in execution. So, I urge you now to reflect rather than rage.

The new workplace inclusion will be one that delivers tangible benefits through the lenses of employer, society, and the employee. But there must be interdependence, alignment, and demonstratable cause-and-effect. Favouring any one of these three beneficiaries will cause the whole thing to collapse… again.

We must measure and communicate how our inclusion work delivers change across all three of these lenses. The past is a DEI which has been rejected by swathes of society in the US, UK, France and Germany. The future must be one where DEI listens and responds to all voices – just as we’ve always said our organisations should.

Recommendations for Practitioners

1. Reframe DEI in business terms: Connect your initiatives directly to organisational objectives, talent acquisition/retention, and innovation metrics.
2. Broaden your inclusion lens: Develop programs that address socioeconomic diversity alongside other dimensions of difference.
3. Build coalition support: Engage with employees by focusing on common values rather than ideological alignment.
4. Measure what matters: Develop robust measurement frameworks that demonstrate both the human and financial impact of DEI work.
5. Communicate differently: Adjust messaging to resonate with different audiences rather than using specialised language that may alienate.