August EWJ 24 - Flipbook - Page 47
Diversity, Equity and
Inclusion - A Poisoned Chalice?
by Peter Crowley - Windsor Actuarial Consultants
My guess is that DEI could ultimately cost businesses
hundreds of millions of pounds….
Your organisation states that diverse businesses are
more successful. Have you investigated this?
(You are unlikely to have. If you say yes, you get asked
if you know the difference between causation and correlation, and the example of multinationals being
more diverse… another 2-3 minutes of torture)
• First, there is the manpower and overheads taken
up with the cost of presentations – or the “hard sell”.
• Then, the cost of implementation, the interference
with current, (appropriate) procedures.
So you just parroted it without any thought?
(Everyone thinks - I see – political.)
• Then, legal and reputational costs when the
inevitable Employment Tribunal (ET) cases are heard.
Now let’s look at some specifics. Your DEI
promotional material states:
“There is still a lot of work to do regarding our pay
gaps for people from ethnic minority backgrounds
and LGBT+ employees. The bonus gap between
white and ethnic minority colleagues for 2019/20 is
x%. (above 20%) The bonus gap for LGBT colleagues is y% (above 15%) for the same period. We
recognise that this cannot continue and are committed to taking steps to address this.”
Let’s start with race.
• Finally, the cost of the restoration to a rational employment basis, where inappropriate recruits and promotes have to be paid off, and replacements found.
Let’s just look at the third.
Imagine you are the HR director of a firm which
introduced DEI three years ago, with much public
fanfare, and are giving evidence against an employee
who was passed over for promotion, when the firm
appointed someone with X. (“X” being a protected
characteristic)
Why does your firm award bonuses? (merit)
The questions (in red) to you go something like this:
Your company had no history of racism (or whatever)
prior to the introduction of DEI, did it?
(some expansion into other “ism”’s)
No
And is or was your bonus awarding system racist? (no)
Then what are these steps you’ve you been taking?
Have there been any complaints about the changes?
(Bonuses are a difficult area to fiddle, Everyone immediately sees who gets what, or word gets around
quickly. “Diversity” bonuses are likely to sink morale).
Then why did your company need to introduce DEI?
(The real answer is - because everyone else was doing
it – but that doesn’t sound good. You may be better
off telling the truth, though….)
Now let’s look at recruitment. Were any specific instructions given to recruitment agencies regarding the
inclusion of more diverse candidates?
(Probably a need to seek more X candidates)
So DEI was introduced for political – PR – reasons,
rather than to support any professional need?
(This will roll around a bit, but in the end you cannot
professionally justify your DEI campaign, unless you
admit to past racist/sexist practices).
And what did the agencies say to that?
(Point here is that agencies are likely to have received
a number of such requests and would be wondering
where all these high quality X prospects are going to
come from – did agencies express scepticism?)
Let’s move on.
Can you please define DEI for the court?
You start. “Well, Diversity is the quality of having a
di….”
And how did the agencies respond to the new
instructions? Did they deliver more X candidates?
(The point here is that agencies are unlikely to be
racist, so would have been forwarding suitable candidates of all qualities prior to DEI. Commissions are
based on a recruit staying for a period, such as a year,
so agencies would not be motivated to “take a
chance”.)
You are interrupted – I’m sorry, I didn’t mean the
individual words – we all know what they mean – I
hope everyone here has a GCSE in English Language
– but, clearly, the combination is supposed to mean
more than the individual words. What does the
expression mean?
(You are likely to flounder. However, if you DO find a
definition, please send it to me. I have reviewed hundreds of “blurbs”, including those from legal regulators and law firms – and, believe it or not, NONE of
them actually defines DEI…although 150,000 of them
have to commit to it….)
EXPERT WITNESS JOURNAL
And were they of the same standard as other candidates?
(Have agencies with less integrity been pushing clearly
lower ability candidates?)
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AUGUST 2024
