Trump: The good, the bad and the downright ugly
What's the impact of Donald Trump’s move against business commitments to diversity, ethics and inclusion and should we be concerned? If not, why are some in Gloucestershire too worried to go outdoors?
Dear readers,
Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Raikes Journal, our digital email magazine covering Gloucetershire’s business, charity, education and training sectors - and more.
Today we try to make sense of what some of the noise from across the other side of the Atlantic, orchestrated by President Donald Trump, around diversity, ethical and inclusion policies - and what that might mean for Gloucestershire.
Why?
Anxiety levels in some quarters are through the roof. When we picked the phone up to one contact they told us the impact was such in their community that some people were feeling scared when they left the house.
We wanted to take a look at what that roll-back on DEI by big US firms with global footprints means for the UK, there are certainly plenty of those firms here in the county, and for UK firms committed to our own versions of DEI.
Are we really about to reverse the general direction of travel - towards a more inclusive, diverse workforce, a trend towards a business model that understands having purpose delivers packback on the bottom line?
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Andrew Merrell (editor).
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Trump: The good, the bad and the downright ugly
Just what is the impact of Donald Trump’s move against business commitments to diversity, ethics and inclusion and should we be concerned? If not, why are some in Gloucestershire too worried to go outdoors?
By Andrew Merrell.
It’s easy to dismiss what the leader of another country says, especially one thousands of miles away, but the impact on some here in Gloucestershire of Donald Trump’s rhetoric and executive orders is being felt.
His war on diversity, ethics and inclusion in business (DEI) - the organisational frameworks used by business on that side of the Atlantic - is sending shockwaves beyond his own country.
As are the soundbites of the man appointed US special government employee, businessman Elon Musk, who’s waging his own war against what Americans call ‘woke’, and we’ll translate as ‘an awareness of social and political issues affecting African Americans’.
In his closing address at the World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos in January, President Trump said he would “cancel all discriminatory diversity equity and inclusion nonsense”, adding that US policy decreed there were only two genders, male and female.
And those words and what followed is what’s driven the shockwaves being felt even here in Gloucestershire – not just by some of our biggest businesses, but having a serious impact on some in our community now too afraid to step outdoors.
Richard Stevens, chairperson of Pride in Gloucestershire, which exists to unite, celebrate and empower the county’s LGBTQ+ community, said: “There is definitely anxiety as a result of the executive order about trans people, not just around all the DEI roll back.
“There are people out there who have been reading this stuff and they clearly feel like they have been given power to attack others on social media.
“The level of online abuse has increased and some people in the community are now wondering if that is going to be the way it is.
“The trans community is scared to go out of the door. People are scared and worried.
“It feels, for some, as if he (Trump) is trying to eradicate the entire trans community. There is concern about the impact that will have.”
As for the impact on businesses in the US, that had been easier to see, said Stevens.
“On the business front, you only have to look at Meta (the internet giant that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Google and Amazon. They have all fallen into line,” he said.
“There is some push-back. Apple has said a flat ‘no’ (to rolling back its DEI policies), but there is concern about what means for firms here that have headquarters in the US - which is where their own policies start.
“The question people are asking is, ‘what does that mean for the workforce here?’.
“Many businesses here have opted for a more inclusive approach, and because in law we recognise protected characteristics, it means we have a more engaged, productive workforce.”
One reading, he said, of the UK’s direction of travel is we have been becoming a society increasingly comfortable with itself.
According to ONS stats, in the UK 3.8 per cent of those aged 16 and over identified as LGB in 2023, up from 2.2 per cent in 2018.
But despite all the noise from Trump’s camp and the news coverage, evidence of major change – or any change – on any great scale among UK business is hard to come by.
Wealth management firm St James’s Place, the biggest Gloucestershire-headquartered business by turnover, told Raikes it had no plans to roll back on its commitment to DEI.
But sweep back across the county from Cirencester to Cheltenham and you come across Accenture, which employs nearly 600 staff in the county and is based on the Bath Road.
Julie Sweet, Accenture plc’s chief executive officer, told the Financial Times just last week the business had begun “sunsetting” the diversity goals it set in 2017, along with the career development programmes for “people of specific demographic groups”.
Sweet said the policy changes followed an “evaluation of our internal policies and practices and the evolving landscape in the United States, including recent executive orders with which we must comply”.
She added that Accenture - Fortune Global 500 company - would stop providing data to external diversity benchmarking surveys on DEI and would end DEI targets, no longer using them to measure staff performance.
External partnerships would be reevaluated “as part of refreshing our talent strategy”.
Why was Sweet so keen to move so quickly?
Accenture, a global giant with a major footprint in America, also wins lucrative contracts from the US Government.
What impact all that will have for Accenture staff here in Gloucestershire is unclear.
Raikes asked the expert employment team at law firm Willans if it had noticed any changes yet.
“Discrimination claims are always ongoing, but with regards to Trump and the effects of recent events, it’s too early for this to have filtered through to our clients’ behaviour, e.g. updating D&I policies or schemes. That’s not to say that it won’t at some point though,” said a spokesperson for the Cheltenham firm.
Conversation about what is going on in America and the potential impact here are a hot topic in UK human resources teams and HR-focused media.
Gemma Irvine (pictured below) is operations director at Cheltenham-headquartered HR People Support, which acts for numerous SMEs across the county and beyond.
Irvine said what was happening in the USA was “definitely a talking point”, but stressed it was both important and helpful to view what was going on in context.
“The US has very different legislation - including positive discrimination targets that they have to meet. I don’t think we are on that level. Perhaps they are trying to roll back a bit.
“What that means for UK businesses linked to US firms that have to toe the line to reflect what the US is doing, is yet to become fully clear.
“From a societal level people will take away different messages and we don’t know what the impact will be from that perspective.”
In the UK, she said, “the reality is businesses know how beneficial it is to have a diverse workforce”.
“We also have changes which protect workers rights coming through, there is so much this Government is looking to try to do to develop all these elements.
“Whether that is about neurodiversity, celebrating differences, or ethnic diversity – there is a lot coming through which can have a positive impact on a business.
“The reality for small businesses, certainly for the ones we work with, is they are probably so far away from positive discrimination targets that US business has.
“We are more focused on things like mental health, positive inclusion events, open and honest cultures.
“A positive culture, where staff can turn up and be themselves, where you have an inclusive, open environment - where you have contracts and processes that support people and create a work environment where people are enjoying their work, are more productive.
“When you see that from a small business perspective it is really powerful.”
Chris Turner, the executive director of B Lab UK, which runs the BCorp programme, joined a debate on BBC Radio 4 on the impact of Trump’s attack on DEI.
Would it be impacting the B Corp movement - whose mantra is ‘people. planet, profit’?
B Lab organisation would be looking at its criteria, he said, but that was ongoing anyway to ensure the B Corp process remained rigorous and meaningful - so it was not easy, but also not unnecessarilly onerous either.
“Being a business leader is difficult and getting more difficult. We are not here to add to the increasing number of obligations they already face.
“There is a mass of businesses in the UK committed to our partnership who will continue in the same direction.
“Culturally, in the UK, there has not been the same level of opposition trying to turn what we say into some level of ideology, which it is not,” said Turner.
Daniel Fellows, the executive director of Diversio, a digital platform focused on diversity, inclusivity, equity, training and hiring in the workplace, was also part of the debate.
Fellows predicted “80 to 90 per cent of businesses would continue doing what they do” despite the changes in American “perhaps only dropping the word DEI from their literature”.
Dr Stewart Barnes is ceo of Gloucestershire-based leadership development experts QuoLux™, which has a focus on the impact of purposeful business and on the power of business as a force for good.
It developed the Good Dividends model to help companies understand the benefits of creating positive social impact in their communities and wider society through purpose-led leadership.
Get that right and the impact was felt not just in its community, but a company’s vital bottom line.
So if the war on DEI is such a talking point for businesses, why isn’t it top of mind for all our business leaders here in the UK currently?
“In terms of the clients we work with – which are mostly SMEs – the primary focus at the moment is how to deal with the changes to National Insurance contributions and the wider uncertainty. The focus is on costs,” said Irvine, referring to the Chancellor’s decision to raise NI contributions from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent and the national minimum wage by 6.7 per cent from April.
“They are going to have to find those costs in an already targeted budget. Yes, they are going to try and find that in the business, but they are going to struggle to find that.
“I think the businesses we work with are looking to be cost-effective, not necessarily restructure, but maybe freeze recruitment, look at job roles – what can we do differently, what can we put a squeeze on, look at the financial processes, and hopefully that will be enough.
“We are not talking to businesses about restructuring and what that will look like. We are not seeing redundancies just yet. If that happens, it will possibly begin around April time then possibly again later in the year.”
Rob Case, a tax specialist and partner at Gloucestershire-headquartered accountants Randall & Payne, agreed.
“Most of our clients of hard-working SMEs and probably don’t fall into the category of corporate, and they are too busy focusing on doing what they do to worry about issues around DEI,” said Case.
“There are more pressing issues at the moment for us to support them with, certainly around national insurance contributions and the like, for them to spend time focusing on anything else.”
So is there any positive to come from what Donald Trump is doing in America?
Playing devil’s advocate, Dr Barnes suggested there might be one element.
“Over here, we have been told by the incoming Government how bad it is time and time again. Trump has told businesses the USA will be great again and told them how good it will become.
“Whether you believe it or not, the difference is that businesses over there feel like it will get better. There is some confidence as a result. There might be a lesson there?”
The Raikes Journal contacted Gloucestershire Constabulary and was told the number of reports of hate crime (that covers both hate crimes in general and specifically LBGT+ targeted abuse) in Gloucestershire have gone down since December 2024. The reflects reports made only directly to the police.
The spokesman for Gloucestershire Constabulary gave us this link for anyone concerned about, wanting to report, or who was the victim of hate crime.