The desire to make workplaces more diverse and inclusive has been going on for at least as long as I’ve been in a job. As a Personnel Officer, one of my early tasks was completing diversity returns to the Government, I’m not sure they ever achieved anything but the intention was there. I remember the IPM (as it was then) snowflake campaign, remember that? And I’ve seen the law change, develop and progress over the years. Are things better now than when I started in work? Yes. Are they as good as they need to be? No.

And throughout the majority of my career it is fair to say the broad consensus, in the UK at least, has been that fairer, more equal workplaces are a good thing. I think that still remains the case to this very day. If you asked ten people whether they thought selection, progression, and promotion should be based on ability and past performance, or whether it should be based on gender, race or some other characteristic I’m pretty certain they’d all say the former. And yet over recent years it has sometimes felt like one of the most divisive debates in the world of work. So divisive, that most people don’t want to write or talk about it.

Look across the pond and you can see this playing out in the proclamations being made by the incoming administration. Is this really one of the most important issues for the leader of any nation to address? Probably not, but then it really isn’t about that it is about throwing some proverbial red meat to supporters in the artificial culture wars. But on the other side of this argument, in the opposition trenches, there are people equally to blame; people making similarly ridiculous proclamations but without the established power. The people that declare that your personal behaviours and beliefs are not enough, the people that have denied large sections of the population a voice in the name of redressing historical unfairness, the people that make others feel scared to think, feel something different or to ask questions, the people who actively seek to divide rather than to unite.

And this is the nonsense that detracts from the real work that is happening in the vast majority of organisations across the UK, where people are still trying to create better, more inclusive and diverse workplaces because it makes good business sense and because it is the right thing to do for our communities. These are the hard yards that make a bigger difference than the soundbites or statements, the icons or the indices. Whatever the campaigners on either side say, do you think it will result in fewer women being employed or promoted? That it will setback our understanding of supporting neurodiversity in the workplace? That it will mean that we see fewer black and asian executives?

D&I isn’t dead, although there are parts of the current approach that definitely do smell funny. And that happens when the agenda steps into social engineering and unfocused activism rather than being about driving better business outcomes, driving organisational performance and customer satisfaction and moving slowly, but steadily closer to a meritocracy for all.