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<\/p>\nOn July 16, 2021, Carl Borg-Neal logged on to his computer at home in Hampshire for online training organised by his company, Lloyds Bank, called Race Education for Line Managers. \u201cI thought, great, that\u2019d be interesting,\u201d Borg-Neal recalls.<\/p>\n
It was part of the company\u2019s Race Action Plan, a wide-ranging policy introduced by Lloyds Bank\u2019s HR department in 2020 in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, \u201cto address the specific challenges we know our Black colleagues and customers are facing\u201d. <\/p>\n
The 90-minute course was being run by an external company called APS. Borg-Neal, then aged 56, struggled to log on to the Teams call, which a hundred or so participants were joining. He missed the first few minutes but he remembers the trainer saying: \u201cWhen we talk about race, people often worry about saying the wrong thing. Please understand that today is your opportunity to practise, learn and be clumsy.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was soon tested to the limit when the training moved to the topic of language and intent versus effect; Borg-Neal asked a question. He wanted to know how you should manage two workers, from the same ethnic group, saying \u201csomething to each other which if said by somebody outside of that group may be considered offensive\u201d. The trainer \u201clooked at me blankly\u201d, he recalls. Borg-Neal is dyslexic and finds people often don\u2019t understand his wording, so he gave an example. \u201cLike the use of \u2018n*****\u2019 by black people.\u201d <\/p>\n
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Carl Borg-Neal was awarded more than \u00a3473,000 in compensation for unfair dismissal for using a racial slur in a Lloyds Bank training course<\/p>\n
TELEGRAPH MEDIA<\/p>\n
\u201cShe immediately goes off on one, she launches a vitriolic attack,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI mean, she basically started screaming, shouting at me. I tried to apologise. I said, \u2018I didn\u2019t mean to upset anyone.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Surely he knew that the n-word is almost uniquely offensive \u2014 one of the most hateful racial slurs in modern English? \u201cI know that, yeah,\u201d he says. \u201cThe neurodiverse brain works very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lloyds Bank\u2019s HR department launched an investigation that lasted six months. At the end of it Borg-Neal was told he had used \u201ca racially loaded and offensive word which is totally unacceptable in the workplace, and as such, contravenes the values of the group as an anti-racist organisation\u201d. He was dismissed for gross misconduct. \u201cOf course I was upset, initially [about] the fact that they were branding me a racist, then I thought, \u2018Oh shit \u2014 income. I\u2019ve got to fight this.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
He did fight it, a process that took two years, ultimately winning his employment tribunal and being awarded more than \u00a3473,000 in compensation, a very large sum considering he was on a modest salary (in banking terms) of about \u00a358,000 a year. The tribunal judge ruled that Lloyds had failed to take Borg-Neal\u2019s dyslexia into account, that Lloyds\u2019s HR department had handled the investigation poorly and that Borg-Neal\u2019s use of the n-word \u201cwas a well-intentioned relevant question not used abusively or to describe a person or group of people\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Lloyds worker who used racial slur wins discrimination payout<\/a><\/p>\n He is adamant he is not racist. \u201cI would never intentionally use the word, and felt foolish and embarrassed that it had slipped out due to the way my dyslexia brain functions, but the reaction and lack of understanding that followed seem cruel and excessive.\u201d<\/p>\n I am speaking to Borg-Neal at a busy City restaurant, just around the corner from his former employer\u2019s headquarters. I ask if he was pleased when he won after two difficult years that prompted insomnia and depression. \u201cI felt a bit numb, if I\u2019m brutally honest, I\u2019ve gone through so much. But it\u2019s still not finished, is it?\u201d Why? He starts to cry. \u201cBecause it\u2019s still happening to people. I was contacted only this week by a woman in the civil service. And she\u2019s been sacked and gone through hell. HR are still destroying people\u2019s lives. Unnecessarily.\u201d<\/p>\n What is HR for?<\/p>\n The idea that human resources \u2014 an industry that likes to call itself \u201cthe people profession\u201d \u2014 is responsible for ruining anyone\u2019s career seems a far-fetched notion. But the Borg-Neal case, while an isolated and extreme example, highlights a number of worrying workplace trends, not least the rise in complex employment tribunals, which numbered 42,000 last year. <\/p>\n Most importantly it hints at an identity crisis afflicting both the private and public sectors: what are workplaces for? Are they there to maximise profits and deliver great products and services? Or are they vehicles to improve society and the wellbeing of their employees? And what is HR\u2019s role in all this? <\/p>\n One thing is certainly true: the number of people working in HR has steadily grown in recent years. The British Labour Force Survey (LFS), the official record of those in employment, shows a 68 per cent increase, from 284,000 HR workers in 2010 to 476,000 in 2024. Back in 2010, HR workers made up less than 1 per cent of the total workforce of the UK. Now they are 1.45 per cent of the workforce and they outnumber doctors, those working in the police and all forms of lawyers. No other leading western country except the Netherlands has such a large chunk of its workers employed in HR.<\/p>\n The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) acts as the HR trade body. Founded in 1913 as the Welfare Workers\u2019 Association, today it provides HR professionals with credentials if they pass some exams. Peter Cheese, its chief executive since 2012, says smaller businesses \u2014 sometimes with as few as 30 employees \u2014 might now have a dedicated HR person in a way they would not a generation ago. <\/p>\n His body points out that HR executives have faced \u201ctesting times\u201d in recent years, first with organising staff to work from home during the Covid lockdowns, then with demands from employees to work more flexibly once they were called back to the office. It states that its top priority is to \u201cdeliver social impact by tackling the barriers to better, inclusive work\u201d. <\/p>\n However, there are concerns not just about the growth of HR but also about its shifting, uncertain focus. Tanya de Grunwald, 45, started off as a journalist before running a club for large UK employers and campaigning against unpaid internships. She now has a podcast, This Isn\u2019t Working, which examines the HR industry. <\/p>\n \u201cThere seems to be a fundamental confusion \u2014 and this includes those within the CIPD \u2014 about what HR is for,\u201d she says. \u201cA surprising number of people think HR is about making the world of work a friendlier, more inclusive place. They\u2019ve lost sight of the fact that they work for the organisation that employs them \u2014 it\u2019s actually all about productivity.\u201d In her view, staff training and perks should be there to help recruit and retain workers, not to \u201cmake the world kind\u201d. <\/p>\n From \u2018welfare officers\u2019 to change agents <\/p>\n The history of a dedicated person within a company to look after workers\u2019 conditions, pay and benefits stretches back to before the First World War among enlightened employers, notably the confectionery companies Cadbury and Rowntree. In 1911 the chemist Boots appointed Eleanor Kelly as a \u201cwelfare officer\u201d; she secured washing facilities for the 6,700 female employees. By 1934 the clothing chain Burton had a large welfare department that offered free dental checks, eye tests, a savings deposit scheme, a gymnasium and a ladies\u2019 cricket club.<\/p>\n Boots the chemist appointed a \u2018welfare officer\u2019 in 1911 and invested in washing facilities and a sick room for female staff<\/p>\n Throughout the 20th century, as the concept of management science took hold, welfare morphed into personnel \u2014 in charge of hiring, payroll, benefits and firing. <\/p>\n Personnel, however, was essentially a back-office function. This all changed in the late 1990s, thanks in part to an influential 1997 book by Dave Ulrich, an American academic, called Human Resource Champions, which tried to advise businesses on how to cope with globalisation. <\/p>\n The term \u201chuman resources\u201d had been used since the 1950s by politicians and business leaders as a synonym for \u201cworkforce\u201d and to differentiate it from an organisation\u2019s \u201cnatural resources\u201d at mills, shipyards and quarries. But Ulrich argued companies needed HR departments to act as commercial partners \u2014 \u201cchange agents\u201d to make companies more efficient. HR executives were no longer merely administrators, they should help shape strategy and a company\u2019s \u201cculture\u201d. <\/p>\n In 1998 Marks & Spencer had a managing director in charge of \u2014 among other things \u2014 personnel. By 2004 it had appointed a dedicated HR director to sit on its executive committee. In Britain the proportion of companies whose HR director sits on their executive committee jumped from 47 per cent in 2005 to 85 per cent in 2017. <\/p>\n HR has always included an element of learning and development \u2014 M&S started a training department back in 1934 \u2014 but over the past decade, in some workplaces, training has shifted from acquiring skills to doing your job better to wider societal themes and wellbeing initiatives. <\/p>\n Legislation has partly fuelled that shift. The Equality Act of 2010 laid out the \u201cprotected characteristics\u201d of individuals that have to be taken into account at work, including age, disability, sex, religion and sexual orientation \u2014 something that led to HR putting on lots of training to ensure employees were compliant. <\/p>\n However, John Hayes, the managing partner of Constantine Law, which specialises in employment law, says: \u201cMost of the Equality Act was essentially a codification and consolidation of existing anti-discrimination law in this country \u2014 not much of it was new law.\u201d He argues that the volume of tribunals is not the result of more complex law but partly because \u201cemployees are more educated, more aware of their rights. So they look stuff up on Google and they will find they\u2019re entitled to certain employment law rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Fixing the toxic workplace <\/p>\n Many of the courses, policies and codes of conduct introduced by companies and their HR departments are a reaction to a time when offices and factories could be particularly unpleasant places to work. In 2025 there are fewer bosses with wandering hands and a penchant for casual racism and sexism than a quarter of a century ago. In many organisations, sensible HR policies have undoubtedly made the office a better place to be.<\/p>\n Victoria Schmeda, 41, admits that her previous view of HR bosses was that \u201cthey sit around all day doing nothing\u201d, but shortly after joining BCD, an executive travel agency, last year she started to feel ill. She was diagnosed with bowel cancer in February. \u201cHR were amazing. I mean, it\u2019s the first time I had cancer, so I had no idea about what to expect \u2014 my oncologist told me it was going to be a long journey with chemotherapy, then radiotherapy. And HR said, \u2018Let\u2019s just take it one week at a time.\u2019 They have just been very reassuring.\u201d<\/p>\n In practical terms she has been given plenty of time off for appointments, but also had her workload reduced and changed. \u201cI\u2019ve been given several small projects and those really give me a sense of accomplishment. Everything has been done in a way to make me feel that I\u2019m still part of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n Peter Cheese at the CIPD stresses \u201cthe importance of driving supportive cultures that help attract and retain the breadth of experience and talent needed, and to address issues of discrimination and harassment that continue to be too prevalent, and are underpinned by law\u201d.<\/p>\n Ironically, the Lloyds Bank race education course \u2014 like many of these programmes \u2014 was partly designed to ensure managers did not inadvertently break the law and get dragged into a costly employment tribunal. One employment law firm, Irwin Mitchell, even offers HR managers \u201cemployment tribunal training\u201d so they can be taught how to \u201cstay legally compliant and how to avoid unfair dismissal claims\u201d.<\/p>\n This is one of the arguments for why HR has become so swollen as an industry: employment legislation has become more complex, leading to more tribunals. <\/p>\n Unproven training out of control<\/p>\n Pamela Dow, 45, a former senior civil servant and the co-founder and chief operating officer of Civic Future, an organisation that tries to get more people into public life, is concerned about the time workers spend on HR-led training courses \u2014 and the fact they might be harming the economy, not least the public sector. <\/p>\n The former government adviser Pamela Dow believes some HR-led training courses are harming the economy by reducing productivity<\/p>\n A Freedom of Information request revealed that in May alone, 200 training events in working hours were held across seven government departments \u2014 an average of ten per working day. These included a \u201clistening circle for trans colleagues and allies\u201d and a \u201csapphic sounds\u201d music session.<\/p>\n Between 2020 and 2022 Dow was in charge of setting up the Campus for Government Skills, run out of the Cabinet Office \u2014 a project designed to improve learning and development courses for civil servants. As a result she came across many third-party companies that sell their products to HR departments \u2014 in both the private and public sectors \u2014 from employee happiness surveys to the almost dizzying array of services exhibited at this year\u2019s Festival of Work, organised by the CIPD. These included YuLife, an app to \u201cgamify wellbeing\u201d that rewards workers if they take a walk or meditate, and which is being used by Tesco and Santander; OpenUp, a platform of on-call psychologists \u201cfor building resilient and engaged teams\u201d that numbers KPMG and McDonald\u2019s as clients; and Paws in Work, which provides \u201cmental health training, alongside one-of-a-kind adorable puppy therapy events\u201d to the likes of Google and JP Morgan. <\/p>\n Dow argues that it should not be the role of an employer to offer therapies to alleviate mental health problems, but many do so out of fear of potentially being sued by a worker. \u201cThe chilling effect of the Equality Act and its lazy definitions is that if your employer fails to offer you something for your \u2018protected characteristic\u2019 \u2014 from blindness to self-diagnosed adult-onset ADHD \u2014 you can take that employer to an employment tribunal,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Then there are those, such as APS, that provided the race awareness training to Lloyds Bank and Borg-Neal. This was set up by John Amaechi (APS started off as Amaechi Performance Systems), originally from Stockport, who made a name for himself as a basketball player in the NBA. After his sports career he returned to the UK and became a diversity coach and \u201cleadership transformation expert\u201d. He has an honorary professorship from Exeter Business School. <\/p>\n![\"NINTCHDBPICT001022551912\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/1fa96e4c-8ac5-47a7-8a87-9d2c09a7e2cd.jpg\")
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