As we approach the five-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020, it’s time for a critical reassessment of what has—and hasn’t—changed in the UK’s approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
The Dilution of a Movement
As someone whose journey into diversity, equity, and inclusion work began through grassroots social activism and my lived experience as a person of colour, I’ve watched with growing concern as DEI has transformed from a framework for justice into a corporate buzzword. What was once a powerful call for systemic change has, in many organisations, become diluted into performative gestures that fail to address the root causes of inequality.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, many British companies rushed to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Statements were issued, black squares were posted on social media, and promises were made about creating more diverse and inclusive workplaces. A 2023 survey revealed that 57% of UK businesses considered equality, diversity, and inclusion as strategic priorities in recruitment. But as the initial shock and outrage faded, many of these commitments proved to be shallow and performative.
The Roots of DEI in Social Justice
To understand the true meaning of DEI, we must reconnect with its origins. In the UK, the fight for equality has deep historical roots in the struggles against colonialism, the civil rights movement, and campaigns against racial discrimination. DEI emerged from these movements as a framework for addressing systemic inequalities and creating more just and inclusive societies.
While the term “DEI” may be relatively recent, the concepts it encompasses: fairness, equal opportunity, and representation have been central to social justice activism for decades. In the UK context, milestone legislation like the Race Relations Act of 1965 (later strengthened in 1976 and 2000) and the Equality Act of 2010 provided legal foundations for anti-discrimination efforts, but the work of transforming cultures and institutions has always been driven by grassroots movements and community activism.
The Rise of Performative DEI
As we approach the somber five-year mark since George Floyd’s murder, it’s crucial to evaluate how UK organisations have responded to calls for racial justice. Unfortunately, what we’ve witnessed in many cases is the emergence of performative DEI. This approach treats diversity as a checkbox exercise rather than a commitment to genuine transformation.
A recent Hays UK report found that 43% of respondents feel their organisation’s leaders have a hiring bias, suggesting that despite the rhetoric, discriminatory practices remain embedded in many workplaces. This gap between what organisations say and what they actually do highlights how DEI initiatives often become performative gestures that fail to create meaningful change in organisational culture and practices.
Performative DEI is characterized by superficial actions: posting black squares on social media, making public statements about solidarity, or hosting one-off workshops without addressing systemic issues within the organisation. In the UK context, we’ve seen this manifest in particular ways. According to a 2023 report by OpenDemocracy, many UK companies and institutions expressed solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters but failed to follow through on their promises. For instance, as of 2023, just 22% of the companies on the UK FTSE 100 publish the ethnic breakdown of their workforce, and only 9% disclose their ethnicity pay gap.
The Business vs. Social Justice Tension
At the heart of the problem is a fundamental tension: DEI originated as a framework for social justice, but it has been repackaged as a business strategy. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with making the business case for diversity (research consistently shows diverse companies perform better financially), this framing often leads organisations to pursue DEI initiatives only insofar as they serve business interests, not because they are morally right.
In the UK, this tension is particularly evident. A 2025 EY UK report highlighted the “critical role of diversity, equity, and inclusion in improving productivity and workforce innovation in UK companies amid an unpredictable macroeconomic environment.” While this business focus can help secure buy-in from leadership, it risks reducing DEI to a set of performance metrics rather than a commitment to justice and equity.
This tension has created what some critics call the “DEI industrial complex” a self-perpetuating cycle where leadership and some DEI providers fuel the continuation of inequities they claim to eliminate by buying or providing interventions that don’t work. These interventions often place the burden of change on under-resourced volunteer groups like DEI councils, rather than treating DEI as a core business function deserving of proper resources and decision-making authority.
Moving Beyond Performative Gestures to Meaningful Action
So how do we reclaim DEI as a force for genuine transformation?
Recognize DEI as a Systemic Issue
Meaningful DEI work requires acknowledging that inequality is embedded in our systems and structures, not just individual attitudes. This is particularly important in the UK, where discussions of racism often focus on individual prejudice rather than systemic discrimination. Research shows that racial disparities persist in education, employment, housing, and criminal justice, not because of individual biases alone, but because of structural factors that reproduce inequality. One starting point is to examine your organisation as a system. Who sets strategy? Who gets to opt out of equity work? Where does power concentrate; and how does that shape outcomes?
Center Marginalised Voices
Too often, DEI initiatives in the UK are designed and implemented without meaningful input from the very people they’re meant to benefit. Recent studies show that while many UK organizations have diversity policies, they lack diverse representation in leadership positions where key decisions are made. Authentic engagement requires creating spaces where marginalized voices are not just heard but centred in decision-making processes. This means going beyond token representation to ensure that diverse perspectives shape an organisation’s culture, policies, and practices. Approaches rooted in participatory design and equity-centred facilitation and a formalised use of staff networks can offer valuable starting points by building governance structures that include marginalised staff in shaping strategy, not just responding to it. Independent researchers such as those at Zest can help draw out voices in a systematic, objective and rigorous fashion.
Commit to Ongoing Learning and Action
Real change doesn’t happen through one-off training sessions or diversity statements. It requires ongoing commitment to learning, reflection, and action. The UK’s historical reluctance to confront its colonial past and legacy of racism creates specific challenges that require sustained effort to overcome. Organisations must be willing to engage in difficult conversations, confront uncomfortable truths, and make substantive changes to address inequities. This includes examining how power is distributed within the organisation and being willing to redistribute that power.
At Zest, we’ve seen the impact of embedding individual and team coaching solutions that build Authentic Confidence: the capacity to be true to yourself, stay connected with others, and act competently under pressure. This is especially powerful when people face resistance or backlash, it helps them stay open, aware, and adaptive over time.
Allocate Meaningful Resources
Effective DEI work requires dedicated resources—financial, human, and institutional. Despite the UK’s professed commitment to equality, a concerning trend has emerged where DEI roles are being cut or outsourced. According to Diversio, many UK organisations allocate insufficient resources to DEI initiatives, often viewing them as optional extras rather than core business functions. Organisations serious about equity must allocate budget, staffing, and decision-making authority to DEI initiatives, just as they would for any other strategic priority. Without this investment, DEI efforts are likely to remain superficial and ineffective. To address this, treat DEI as you would any strategic priority; embed it in financial planning, organisational design, and leadership KPIs. Review who holds the DEI workload and ensure it is fair, recognised, resourced, and rewarded.
Focus on Transformation, Not Transactions
True DEI work is transformative, not transactional. In the UK , where politeness and conflict aversion often prevent direct confrontation of inequalities, this can be particularly challenging. Organisations need to move beyond short-term, cosmetic changes to address deeper cultural and structural issues. As BSR notes, businesses should be “more intentional about how they are setting DEI targets and see them not as mere transactions but as opportunities to create meaningful transformation, both within the business and at the community level.” This requires a willingness to examine and change fundamental aspects of organisational culture and practice.
This can be addressed by shifting the focus from short-term metrics to long-term relational change. Facilitate regular, reflective spaces for leadership and staff to build psychological safety, deepen understanding of identity and power, and commit to adaptive cultural change. We’ve seen the impact of this first-hand through team coaching programmes we’ve delivered; where honest dialogue, held safely and skilfully, has led to shifts not just in individual mindsets but in how teams function and make decisions together. Transformation starts in the spaces where people feel safe enough to be honest and challenged enough to grow.
If you’re curious about how Zest could support this kind of work in your organisation, we’d be happy to have a conversation. Please get in touch at connect@zestpsychology.com.
Moving forward
As we mark nearly five years since the global outcry that followed George Floyd’s murder, we must honestly assess whether the corporate promises and pledges made in that moment have translated into substantive change. For many organisations, the answer is unfortunately no. We must remember that social justice movements have always faced resistance. The history of civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and disability rights shows that progress is rarely linear. Pushback often indicates that change is happening, though not without struggle.
Rather than abandoning DEI in the face of criticism, we must reclaim its roots in social justice and its commitment to systemic transformation. This means moving beyond diversity as mere representation to addressing the underlying power structures that perpetuate inequality in British society.
The moral of this story is simple but profound: DEI is not just a corporate programme or a set of policies; it’s a commitment to creating a more just and equitable world. When organisations approach DEI as a superficial exercise or a marketing strategy, they not only fail to address real inequities but also undermine the transformative potential of this work.
True DEI work requires courage, commitment, and a willingness to challenge the status quo. It requires seeing DEI not as an add-on to business as usual, but as a fundamental rethinking of how we organise our workplaces, communities, and society.
In the UK, where conversations about race and inequality are often characterised by discomfort and avoidance, this work is especially challenging but no less necessary. We must be willing to confront the colonial past and its ongoing legacies, to acknowledge the systemic nature of racism and other forms of discrimination, and to take concrete action to dismantle oppressive structures and build more equitable ones in their place. The question isn’t whether we’ve gone “too far” with DEI, but whether we’ve gone far enough. True social change in the requires us to dig deeper, reach further, and commit more fully to the work of creating a world where everyone can thrive.
Author: Mariam Hussein – Social Media Manager
