Starbucks and CrossFit, Synonyms For The Global HR and D&I Crisis
Nordic Diversity Trainers were launched by Christian Thibault and Susheela Daniel in November of 2018. We had already spend more than one year of researching and planning and designing our programs when on April 12th 2018 two African American entrepreneurs got arrested by police in a Philadelphia Starbucks for not ordering coffee within minutes after their arrival. The baristas had followed company policies and made the emergency call. The Diversity and Inclusion disaster which appeared during Starbucks following intervention made it clear, that traditional D&I approach through most organisations H&R departments is dysfunctional.
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This motivated us to completely revise everything we had been planning and eventually lead to the publication of the book “Diversity Now” in May 2020.
Soon enough, only one month after our books publication, Starbucks demonstrated what they had learned: Nothing. The public had not yet forgotten and barely begun to forgive the coffee makers and now they banned their employees, also smoothly called “partners” from expressing any sympathy for the Black Lives Matters movement which, by now, was changing the world.
Yet, at Starbucks, nothing had changed. This despite all their advisors, consultants and their D&I department. In another swift move, Starbucks now announced they will provide their own “politically correct” t-shirts, but this was too little, too late. After having been given a second chance already once, the business will hardly be credible as a diversity friendly global citizen and non-racist enterprise in any foreseeable future.
How could this have happened?
Human Resource experts came on to explain how public support for Black Lives Matter would have made the company legally vulnerable towards employees demands to have the right to express sympathy for other “political” causes, such as “Make America Great Again” and that Starbucks has guidelines against political expressions in general in order to provide an inclusive environment. In other words, the business was just following its own rules, but did not question whether the right to live really is a political question, rather than a basic human right. After all, Starbucks had earlier publicly supported the Pride Movement.
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It is true, that the bread and butter of HR are legal and financial issues and to make sure that adequate workforce is available for the ongoing and planned processes. Meanwhile, HR managers are complaining to be an underestimated factor for a companies success and for not getting enough credit and spotlight. Well, bread and butter just aren’t enough. D&I have often been seen as an opportunity for HR managers to shine, but this field is not just purely about legalities and not even about inclusion, it is about transformation. It is impossible to combine diversity with inclusion while trying to cling on to old structures. Trying to do so leads to the lie many businesses are living and to the eventual loss of touch with global consciousness, as we have now seen in the case of Starbucks, CrossFit and many other formerly innovative and modern brands.
When the word “Inclusion” is spoken, it begs the question: Into what?
Geert Hofstede passed away early this year and while paying dues to his work, we should not forget that his original research was done in the 1960s and 1970s and that the aim was to learn how to “deal” with people from different cultures. His theories are still being taught at business schools today and inform how “inclusion” manager think today. We need to move on from that. Who wants to be included in a runaway train thats heading towards a cliff?
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