First published on Friday, March 7, 2025
Last updated on Friday, March 7, 2025
Welcome to HR Heartbeat, where we take a look at the week’s most pressing HR and employment law stories. With over 18 years’ experience in employee relations, I give my opinion on current trends impacting your business, as well as my own personal commentary on all things HR and legal.
Is “masculine energy” and the end of DEI coming to the UK?
It’s hard to ignore recent events over in the USA, where President Donald Trump has since shutdown all federal DEI initiatives, urging the private sector to follow suit. And many of course have, with the likes of Walmart, McDonalds, Meta and Amazon ditching or scaling back their own diversity policies.
Many businesses, according to Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, have been “neutered”, and need more “masculine energy”. It’s not surprising then that a number of us across the pond here in the UK have expressed concern that Trump’s rhetoric could normalise certain attitudes in the workplace and have questioned whether similar action would be taken here by UK employers.
So far though, there’s little evidence of UK firms changing their diversity policies. Take the UK accountancy giant Deloitte, which has signalled a split with its US counterpart, saying that it remains “committed” to it’s diversity goals.
After all, the Equality Act protects against discrimination. And since 2017, organisations with over 250 employees must report their gender pay gap. The current UK government has also expressed a continued interest in levelling the playing field under the Employment Rights Bill. So to answer the question, no, I don’t think this signals any major change in UK working culture.
The growing risk of ignoring menopause in the workplace
Employment tribunals linked to menopause have tripled in two years, with claims rising from 64 in 2022 to 204 in 2024. These cases cover disability discrimination, unfair dismissal, as well as sex and age discrimination—highlighting not only a huge shift in how menopause is viewed in the workplace, but a growing HR and legal minefield for unprepared employers.
For me, it’s been a long time coming. After all, menopause has been a blind spot for many UK businesses for decades. Symptoms like brain fog, anxiety, and fatigue can be misinterpreted as performance issues, while hot flushes and joint pain can make work life extremely uncomfortable.
Yet under the Equality Act, menopause-related conditions can already qualify as disabilities. With potential changes on the horizon, such as day-one unfair dismissal rights and mandatory equality plans, claims may even rise further.
My solution? Awareness and action. Businesses must educate managers with e-learning tools, implement more menopause-friendly policies, and where possible, try to facilitate flexible working arrangements. More than avoiding costly legal battles, it’s about looking after your team, especially when they’re going through something natural and outside of their control.
Healthier workplaces: the next big political push?
If you’ve never heard of an APPG before, you’re not alone. These new All-Party Parliamentary Groups exist across a huge range of topics, all the way from Artificial Intelligence to zoos. But the newest one, the APPG on Healthy Places, is one worth watching.
The cross-party group aims to tackle a major challenge: how workplaces can improve the nation’s health. Their first meeting, driven by lobbying from the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), highlighted that over a million people in the UK don’t have access to even basic health support at work. That’s a problem for employers too by the way—as poor health directly impacts productivity and your business’s success, (an estimated loss of £138 billion a year I might add).
The discussion broached a range of topics. But the main takeaway? There’s political appetite for change. And with workplace health reforms expected this spring, employers will need to be paying attention. The question now is whether or not the government will step up and turn this momentum into action.
And that’s a wrap from me. Tune in next time for my take on the latest headlines and employment law stories, helping keep your business ahead!
