DEI: Are Businesses Dumping Workplace Diversity?

The Bottom Line

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Business

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Major US businesses have begun ditching or scaling back their diversity initiatives. Will UK firms be next? Evan Davis is joined by three guests who specialise on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) schemes, as well as environmental and sustainability issues. Do they see signs of UK companies shifting their stance? And to what extent is the DEI industry - and their jobs - under threat?

Guests:

Daniel Fellows, General Manager of Diversio UK and EU Erinch Sahan, busines and enterprise lead at Doughnut Economics Action Lab Chris Turner, Executive Director of B Lab UK

Production team Producers: Farhana Haider, Simon Tulett and Eleanor Harrison-Dengate Sound: James Beard Production Coordinator: Katie Morrison Editor: Matt Willis

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.4	Hello, welcome to the podcast edition of the bottom line.
0:08.3	It's an extended remix version of what went out on the radio
0:11.9	with bits we didn't have time to include.
0:14.7	Now, it is hard to keep up with everything that President Trump is doing in the US,
0:19.0	but he and his close allies like Elon Musk couldn't
0:22.3	have been clearer about one thing that they think the time is up for numerous practices that
0:27.8	have become pervasive in the corporate world, most notably DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion.
0:36.7	Now, it was a controversial press conference the President gave
0:39.3	recently the day after the plane crash in Washington, in which he speculated that DEI policies
0:45.6	had hindered the recruitment of the brightest people into air traffic control. The President's
0:52.2	views and the fact that he won the election with the majority of the voters behind him
0:55.9	seems to have led to a pretty substantial rethink on DEI in the US and indeed on some other ideas in the corporate world.
1:05.1	It's been amazing watching senior business folks in the US like Mark Zuckerberg pivot, pivot in their business practices, to be more in
1:12.3	line with the President's worldview. And we thought we should talk about this today. Dei, for sure,
1:18.3	but also ESG, Environment, Social and Governance Standards. Is that vibe shift that is apparent in the US?
1:26.8	Is it coming here? And with me to discuss this,
1:29.7	I'm joined by three guests. Let us first meet Daniel Fellows, general manager at Diversio,
1:35.6	UK and EU. Diversio, I'm sure that is a meaningful part of the title of the company,
1:41.8	diversity there, Daniel. Tell us what Diversio is, what you do.
1:46.2	So Laura McGee, our CEO and founder started in 2019. She worked in McKinsey as a consultant
1:51.2	and worked with many business leaders who understood the value of change and we need to invest
	...

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