The Union’s recent Newsletter entitled ‘Diversity Washing’ was picked up by several national newspapers, radio stations and TV channels who questioned why Lloyds had rolled out such a dictionary.
Many focused on the stupidity of Lloyds telling its own staff – including those that worked for Scottish Widows – that the word ‘widows’ was banned because it could: “trigger unwarranted personal memories of trauma and upsetting situations”. The fact that Lloyds owns the Scottish Widows brand seemed to be lost on the diversity and inclusion team that came up with idea of the dictionary. It was literally beyond parody. In its editorial, the Daily Telegraph said: “Luckily Lloyds doesn’t own cheese-making companies with products such as Stinking Bishop and Black Bomber or there would be a complete nervous breakdown”.
The Bank was quick to throw the diversity and inclusion team under the bus. In response to media enquiries, the Bank said: “the voluntary inclusivity tool is designed to be a way for colleagues to explore how people may feel about different words and phrases. As is par for the course when crowdsourcing for ideas, some are better than others”.
That’s a major understatement. It was a crass idea, crowdsourced or not, that was bound to cause fear and resentment that Lloyds would be listening to everything staff said and disciplining them if they uttered the banned words or phrases. It was a virtue signalling gimmick of the worst kind, which should never have been given the green light. It’s made Lloyds look stupid.
We understand that the dictionary has now been taken down. Lloyds should confirm publicly that the dictionary, or anything like it, will never appear again.
Members with any questions on this Newsletter should contact the Union’s Advice Team on 01234 262868 (choose Option 1).
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