Is HR Under Attack - And Is The CIPD Having An Identity Crisis? (Ft. Levi Pay)

Female employees are often the most vocal champions of extreme workplace ‘inclusion’ – but how much power have they really held? Do we risk letting men off the hook, for allowing bad ideas to infect organisations? And are we in danger of erasing the vital role played by all the women who have risked everything to push back on ‘woke’ at work? In this special live episode, recorded in front of an audience at the Battle of Ideas festival in London on 17 October 2026, Tanya de Grunwald is joined by author and academic Joanna Williams, whose book How Woke Won charted the takeover of our institutions by identity politics. Together, they take on the fashionable theory that women alone are responsible for the rise of ‘woke’ at work, and argue that the truth is far more interesting. They ask: - What does a ‘woke’ workplace actually look like? Rainbow lanyards, pronouns in email signatures and posters for menopause awareness training are the obvious giveaways. But Jo argues the real tell is who sets the priorities: the people who do the core work, or a DEI team and a professional managerial class with very different concerns. - What is the ‘feminisation’ theory, and does it stack up? American writers Helen Andrews and Heather Mac Donald argue that around 2015, women tipped into the majority in professions like law, medicine, academia and journalism, bringing with them values that put consensus before confrontation and emotion before reason. Jo agrees the timing fits, but warns that correlation is not causation. - Does it matter that HR is so female-dominated? As a survivor of the CIPD’s Festival of Work, Tanya estimates the crowd is 95% women. But Jo says HR’s growing power, not just its headcount, is the real story, and the seeds were sown long before 2015. - Was a crisis of purpose the real culprit? Jo argues institutions were hollowed out first, and ‘woke’ rushed in to fill the gap. Why could universities no longer simply say they exist to educate, the NHS to treat the sick, or the BBC to report the news? - Did feminism’s blind spot on class make things worse? Jo contrasts BBC presenters in posh suits fighting over the gender pay gap with the women cleaning, catering and doing hair and make-up behind the scenes. Tanya points out that industries which let their talent pipelines narrow, such as publishing, journalism, charities and fashion, have fallen hardest for ‘woke’. - Where were the men? Finance, law, comedy and the unions are all male-dominated, yet ‘woke’ thrives there too, and most leaders are still men. Tanya asks why so many women who stood up to this stuff found no backup from male colleagues, and why so few men were willing to take on other men pushing gender ideology at work. - Why couldn’t leaders just say what their organisation is for? Jo’s answer to ‘woke’ is disarmingly simple: a university’s job is to teach, a bank’s is to make money. Activism is fine, but do it on your own time, not your employer’s. What’s needed now is a return to prioritising purpose. - The audience joins in too, with Kate Harris of LGB Alliance renewing her call for a public inquiry into Stonewall’s grip on UK workplaces, a lively debate on the ‘diversity equals profit’ myth and why ‘bring your whole self to work’ was never as simple as it sounded. Tanya closes with a challenge: the UK’s organisations don’t have a courage deficit, she argues, they have a courage problem at the top. Lower down, we’ve simply taught people that speaking up doesn’t pay and keeping quiet does. Enjoy the episode!

Should people have to pretend their male colleague is female (or vice versa) just to keep their job? Until now, 'trans inclusion' has asked employers to put the comfort of trans-identifying staff first. But is it time for a more balanced approach, considering the impact on everyone around them, and the productivity of the organisation that employs them? Is using someone's preferred pronouns really a small courtesy, or is it a greater imposition than it seems? And is affirming trans-identifying people actually helping them, or are their colleagues unwittingly digging them deeper into a belief that's doing them harm? To explore these questions, Tanya de Grunwald is joined by Dionne Joseph, a London-based clinical psychologist with more than 30 years' experience who writes as 'Dr P' on X. They ask: - Did employers get so fixated on pronouns and toilets that they missed the bigger picture? Dionne argues they 'made a molehill out of a mountain', when the real question was whether some of these colleagues' needs could ever be met in a workplace. - What happens to a team's productivity when everyone in the meeting is asked to pretend John is Jane? Drawing on the classic Stroop experiment, Dionne makes the case that asking people to override their instinct to recognise sex slows thinking, dampens performance and puts staff on edge, which is hardly a 'small courtesy.' - Is 'I don't mind a man wearing a dress to work, as long as I don't have to pretend he's a woman' really a workable compromise? Tanya describes the unspoken power dynamic of small talk at the biscuit table. Dionne sees cross-dressing at work as a boundary violation and warns that every concession an employer makes will simply be followed by the next demand. - Are employers doing trans-identifying staff any favours by affirming them? From office crowdfunders for top surgery to unsupervised staff network lunches, Dionne argues that every colleague who plays along risks digging the person deeper into what she sees as a mental health problem rather than an identity. - Has the 'kind' employer quietly become a coercive controller of its female staff? Dionne says she is inundated with messages from women dreading Monday morning. She argues that mandatory lanyards, training and Pride screensavers impose a belief system on the very people expected to keep quiet about it. - Why can't staff admit that a colleague's presentation gives them 'the ick'? Tanya tackles the argument that any such reaction is on a par with racism. Dionne, who is black, explains why she finds that comparison profoundly insulting. - Should employers be asking whether staff on high doses of cross-sex hormones are fit for safety-critical roles? Dionne argues the effects of these hormones on mood and cognition have never been properly studied. She says she'd want anyone taking them in a high-risk job, such as pilots, air traffic controllers or surgeons, to have regular neuropsychological testing. Tanya isn't asking Dionne to write anyone's HR policy. As she says, that's a job for employers and their lawyers, and a follow-up is already on the cards over at her new business network platform This Is Working (ThisIsWorking.net). But she's convinced this is a conversation sensible employers are already having behind closed doors, about who they hire, what they're asking colleagues to go along with, and who is really paying the price for 'inclusion.' This is not one for the faint-hearted, but it might just be the conversation everyone's having out loud a year from now. Enjoy the episode... Join Our New Network: This Is Workinghttps://thisisworking.net Dr P on Xhttps://x.com/Psychgirl211

President Trump sent DEI to the woodchipper in 2025, right? Job done, and America moved on? This episode exposes the truth: that the real story is more complex – and much more interesting. This week, Tanya de Grunwald is joined by Andrew Crapuchettes, the man behind a 2022 ad mocking woke workplace culture that, four years on, has just gone viral all over again – for reasons the pair discuss. A successful businessman with a fascinating back story, Andrew is also the founder of RedBalloon.work, the US job board connecting employers and employees who value merit and hard work, and reject identity politics, speech policing and ‘woke’ workplace culture. Andrew and Tanya ask:

What happens when the smartest employers finally stop being afraid to talk? In a format flip, journalist Nick Wallis turns the microphone on Tanya de Grunwald herself, pressing her on the launch of her new online platform, This Is Working. For years, the mantra "no debate" silenced essential discussion, not just around the trans issue, but on race, identity, politics and almost anything that touched the culture wars. But Tanya has spent three years watching that silence crack, quietly normalising calm, professional debate on the subjects that employers needed to discuss five (or more) years ago. Now she's convinced the freeze is over, and that the private sector is already leading the thaw. Nick asks: - What exactly is This Is Working, and why is Tanya so sure there's demand for an online space where professional people can have meaty, unfiltered discussion about workplace dysfunction? - What's the mood among employers right now — and who's showing the greatest enthusiasm for fixing the problems that "no debate" created? - What does global demand for this discussion look like — why are there so many overlapping themes, and which countries are hungriest for it? - Why does Tanya think the private sector is leading this shift, when the loudest complaints about broken workplace culture have historically come from elsewhere? - Why have so many organisations lost their way on DEI, leadership and cancel culture — and how did well-meaning people end up doing so much damage? - What solutions are actually emerging, and which employers are furthest ahead in working them out? Drawing on his own investigations into the UK's Post Office scandal, Nick also asks Tanya for her view on whether moralising is misplaced in a workplace setting, and what she predicts will be the two big forces that will make sure common sense overrules the nonsense... Enjoy the episode! This Is Working Check out the new platformhttps://thisisworking.net/ Freedom In The Arts https://www.freedominthearts.com/ Mathias Dopfner, CEO of Axel Springer on 'The Essentials' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya1eUc8-L4E

What questions does Jason Arday's death raise for the UK's HR industry, and why is no-one even asking them? In what's likely to be the only podcast to drill into this hot-button topic, Tanya de Grunwald is joined by returning guest Jaco van Zyl, a psychotherapist with an interest in large group social phenomena. Jason Arday's story has been picked apart everywhere — on the front pages, on LinkedIn, at a vigil in Trafalgar Square attended by thousands. Everywhere, that is, except the one industry that arguably has the most to answer for. Tanya went looking for reflection, accountability, or even just discussion from the UK's HR and DEI establishment. She found almost nothing. Tanya and Jaco ask why an industry facing what should be an existential reckoning has instead gone completely quiet — and what that silence says about where HR really stands on diversity, hiring, and truth-telling. They ask: - Why did the tone shift so violently the moment Jason Arday's death was announced — from hard questions about his story to instant, uncritical sainthood? - What is "narcissistic large group regression," and does it explain the language of assassination, lynching and retribution aimed at journalists that Tanya heard at his vigil? - Has HR lost the public's trust in meritocratic hiring and promotion so badly that the phrase "DEI hire" was inevitable — and why did the industry fail to engage with the reason it was coined in the first place? - Why has the CIPD and the wider HR trade press stayed almost silent on all this, with just one article on Jason Arday published across HR Magazine, Personnel Today and People Management? Is this failure further proof that the CIPD's reputation is in tatters? - Did McKinsey's now-widely-disputed "business case for diversity" reports give HR the cover it needed to avoid a harder, more honest debate about race in the workplace? - If HR professionals were having these conversations privately, why weren't they happening in public — and whose job was it to create that space? Tanya doesn't let anyone off the hook — including herself, revisiting her own early, well-meaning naivety about diversity and inclusion work back in 2017 and 2018. But her sharpest fire is reserved for an industry body she says dropped the ball entirely, choosing advertising revenue over difficult conversations, and for a wider HR world too frightened of what lay beyond its own echo chamber. Jaco brings the psychotherapist's lens — on doctrine, groupthink, and what happens when institutions lose their nerve — to a story he warns is a symptom of something much bigger still to come. Enjoy the episode...