DEI - To Trump or not to Trump

Why the UK must keep building inclusive businesses

It can be a bit of a scrabble when you’re asked to comment on Today, Radio Four’s flagship political program. But I had an incredible stroke of luck this morning. I was asked to comment on how UK companies are responding to Trump‘s dismantling of DEI programs in the US.

I had prepared numbers about current board diversity, financial results from companies with diverse teams and survey results on public opinion. However, what I could not have known was that Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Alphabet, would have so perfectly lined up my interview in the segment he spoke in before mine. He was interviewed about the AI safety summit that has recently taken place in Paris. Amol Rajan, the presenter, was challenging him about why tech platforms had been so slow to understand the dangerous aspects of their products, particularly those in social media.

Eric said “part of the problem is that the people building these services tend to come from a small number of universities in a small part of the world and so they did not always think as widely as they perhaps should have“. I whooped as I listened because he had just brilliantly and unintentionally made the case for why the work on diversity is both so important and far from finished.

The sight of those tech billionaires, all men, crowing together and watching the US inauguration was deeply affecting. I have worked on the edges of the technology sector for my whole life and to see these men as representations of what success looks like felt very uncomfortable. Much as we might try to fight it in Europe, the US does set the technological tone globally and at the minute it feels as though we could start sliding backwards.

In the UK there is a real tension in the business policy landscape between moving towards the US with more deregulation and less emphasis on sustainability and inclusion and holding our own position, as a country of good governance and with an ambition to increase representation from all under-represented groups.

The numbers should speak for themselves. Making sure you have a diverse workforce is not only a question of social justice but it’s also a question of economic strength. Businesses that embed diversity have 25% higher financial results. As importantly, 76% of potential employees care about diversity when making a choice about where to work.

More in Common, the research group did some work digging into the issue. Reassuringly, they found that 46% of people believe diversity and inclusion initiatives have had positive outcomes for the UK. Digging a bit deeper even within the constituent group they call ‘backbone conservative’, 39% believe the same. What I see as president of the British chambers of commerce backs up these numbers. Our members, often SMEs who account for 85% of the economy, recognise that broadening gender, demographic and ethnic diversity is vital and gives the UK a competitive advantage.

However, some global companies are turning towards the political headwinds, not away from them. How infuriating yet unsurprising that Accenture, who gets 8% of its global income from US government contracts has ended all its DEI programmes. Or that the all powerful Goldman Sachs has decided it’s just fine to work with all male, all white boards when they could have such a powerful influence.

Of course some programs may have been ineffective or worse contributed negatively to performance and it is essential to monitor outcomes carefully, but the speed with which some companies are reverting back to an old fashioned way of working has surprised me.

I hope we do not set up debates about DEI as too binary. It could be true that forcing employees to put their pronouns on an email might be unhelpful as well as being true that actively encouraging the most diverse set of candidates to apply for a role is worthwhile. It is certainly true that progress is not linear and will take work and time.

There have been many amazing programmes over the last two decades in the UK but there is still much to do. Here are some of the statistics I keep coming back to.There is only one disabled person on the board of a FTSE hundred business. Only 12% of executives in FTSE 100 companies are women. Just 15% of AIM listed companies have women on their boards. Only 19% of FTSE 100 have non white representation.

In the technology sector, the numbers are even worse and are flatlining. As a percentage, there are more women in the House of Lords, a 1000 year old institution than in the digital sector, which did not exist 50 years ago. All female founding teams secure just 2% of venture capital funding and only 17% of software engineers are women.

On Tuesday, Elon and Donald had a surreal press conference in the Oval Office. While literally attacking the government’s “wasteful” DEI programmes, Elon’s son, X, was talking loudly beside him and playing with the desk.

Can you imagine if it had been a woman in the oval office standing over the president while her child talked and played in front of her and she described how she was dismantling the machinery of government. She would have been hung out to dry.

and yet, with no irony and no consequence, Elon could bring his child to work, safe in the knowledge that he is so rich and powerful, childcare can be anywhere, anytime. Think what we could unlock if childcare was so easily sorted out for all.

I hope that the UK continues to build on the progress of the last few years. In my opinion, there is so much more national opportunity to be had by creating a more inclusive and diverse business community than by diminishing its importance. Not only could we create more economic equity but we will have increased UK competitiveness.