Sorry gents, but saying gents at work is deemed 'not inclusive'

[SerendipityJane]

USING the term 'gents' puts you at risk of being old fashioned and not inclusive as it is unacceptable in a modern workplace, a tribunal has ruled.

The term - which as well as being short for 'gentlemen' is also often used to describe men's toilets - was deemed not suitable in a ruling involving one of Britain's biggest insurance companies

It came after a female Royal & Sun Alliance (RSA) employee sued for sex discrimination when she was included in emails from her boss addressed to 'gents'. informed that she was at risk of redundancy during a re-organisation following the sale of part of the busi- ness.

A male co-worker - who had the same job title as her - was also at risk. The head of the treasury department copied the Liverpool office, where Mrs Scott worked, into two emails addressed to 'Gents'. Mrs Scott tried to claim this was evidence of sex discrimination which had then affected the redundancy selection process. Gareth Quantrill,

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20250617/281539411922844

"hello everyone"
"hello all"
"you lot"
"listen up"

there are plenty of ways. I challenged a boss for "hello guys" i said i don't like it and i'm not a guy and we are male-dominated enough in our industry and i was sick of being looked over.

Told to stop being sensitive, so i stopped answering. Then got told off for being petty.

Then when we were all at lunch i heard that one of the men had been out on a date the night before. So i asked what the guy was like "I'm not gay, why do you think i'm gay"

After we finished the "that was homophobic of you" - the penny finally dropped and they stopped it.

Peeps 😂😂

Can you really, really not come up with an alternative all on your own?

It used to be inclusive, a long time ago: short for gentlefolk, gentlemen and gentlewomen. (Well, not inclusive of any NB people there may have been back then, I suppose...)

It's just that only the middle one of those three words has really survived in general usage until the modern day; but we do still use the word 'gentry', which is probably pretty much the equivalent of 'gents' now.

Was going to say folks too! It's my go to, so if it's terrible keen to know...

Actually thinking about it, I've never used it over email.... I'd go with hi etc

That’s very interesting. Are there any examples of “gents” being used as a shortening of “gentlefolk”? Gentlemen was itself until historically recently a pretty narrow category- Jane Austen uses it devastatingly to depict social snobbery. “Oh, I misunderstood you. When you said gentleman I thought you were referring to a man of property” (or words to that effect!)

Team
Colleagues
Everyone
A former boss of mine (in a small business) used to refer to us all as Chums which I found rather endearing.

Gents or guys both sound weird unless you are just addressing a group of men.

I admit to using ‘chaps’ ironically to an all-female group.

I use this all of the time as do my female friends!

I play in a female only sports league - we all use ‘guys’ when we are speaking to the team. It’s become common usage to mean a group of people of either sex and if any people get offended by it they need to get over themselves. Especially as the opposite of ‘guys’ was traditionally ‘gals’!

Guys may be used to refer to women, but is still a sexed word. Like fireman, policeman etc

There isn’t a perfect equivalent, but there are many ways to avoid using it.

Hi everyone if verbal, or just hello.

'Guys' is very outdated.

It’s possible to dislike a usage and consider it sexist without being “offended”.

Absolutely loathe this terms too. Do people say "Hey gals"? No it's always guys.

Folks is a much better alternative.

I also hate emails with Hi Guys as an intro. Total cringe. Ladies and Gents slso makes me cringe. I address emails to my team as Hello Everyone. Not to be inclusive but to avoid cringe which a lot of my emails from the "circle back" mob tend to be.

An all female team at a place I worked, a few of the team regularly used guys and even girls (women in their 30s) to refer to themselves.

I used to be the only woman in a team of 12 and regularly objected to ‘Gents’. It really made me feel excluded in a way that ‘guys’ somehow didn’t.

Somehow guys has come to mean everyone and I have used it myself.
I stick to ‘everyone’ or ‘folks’ or ‘all’.

I'd rather be called a gent or a guy than a folk. Yuck.