NHS and DEI the cost £

[Imnobody4]

Wes Streeting disapproves but doesn't seem prepared to act.

www.thetimes.com/article/541f444c-999c-4c3c-b14f-bcbb08ffab68?shareToken=bbae8f8fc186da8ea8772b7b24d0a150

There have been a slew of recent job postings offering roles in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at salaries that exceed specialist junior doctors.
They include an NHS England EDI secondment position covering the southwest of England offering a pro rata salary of £122,000 per year, and a head of EDI role at a London trust with a salary of £91,336.
Junior doctors earn a basic salary of between £36,616 and £70,425, while consultants receive between £105,504 to £139,882 per year.
Since Labour came to power about three dozen EDI jobs have been advertised with combined salaries of more than £750,000 — enough for 600 new hospital beds.

''NHS hires diversity staff on double the salary of junior doctors''
Archived; https://archive.fo/Gp68K

Its madness that a DEI person is paid more than clinical staff, then add to that the cost of the litigation as a result of poor advice

It's time for an honest review of all public sector staffing

The next time the government want to put the NI contributions up to cover the cost of the NHS, I hope there will be a political party around to point out to the government how much money the NHS is wasting on positions that have nothing to do with patient care. 🤬

It's like having to employ a freedom to speak up guardian because NHS management and HR cannot be trusted to respond lawfully

Although it's in Scotland, the Sandie Peggie tribunal is helping to highlight unhelpful these roles can be.

This article focuses on the HR team's advice in the case:

https://archive.ph/Ri1a2

The bit that's not explicit in this article but is in the tribunal record for everyone to read is that the advice from the EDI lead, Isla Bumba, overrode the HR position on whether Sandie Peggie should have been suspended or not.

It's covered well in thread #18 of the NHS Fife case. In a nutshell, the timeline on when and why Peggie was suspended has been unpicked and there were no clinical safety concerns at the start of the first suspension. Instead, there was simply a message down from the EDI lead to Peggie's line manager that Dr Upton (the transwoman at the heart of this case) should use the women's changing room... because EDI said so.

There's a fascinating unveiling of the line manager's understanding of the situation in that thread: it's clear that even she would have self-excluded from the changing room if there was a male in there but she's been advised by the EDI lead that the doctor needs to be let in. It's very clear to anyone reading that thread that the EDI advice is at the centre of the decision-making in all of this, even to the detriment of following a fair process regarding suspension of an employee.

And it's equally clear that this EDI advice is going to cost the NHS a lot more money than it already has. That's before we know who wins. The case has just been extended by another 11 days in July, plus an extra couple of days in April regarding the disclosure and confirmation of witnesses to be called.

BonfireLady

And it's equally clear that this EDI advice is going to cost the NHS a lot more money than it already has. That's before we know who wins. The case has just been extended by another 11 days in July, plus an extra couple of days in April regarding the disclosure and confirmation of witnesses to be called.

Although not clear to the senior management of the NHS across the country if the article on the thread is anything to go by. 3 dozen mickey mouse jobs instead of 600 beds, not just this year but every year these jobs remain.

Although not clear to the senior management of the NHS across the country if the article on the thread is anything to go by. 3 dozen mickey mouse jobs instead of 600 beds, not just this year but every year these jobs remain.

Yes, I think their "oh shit" moment is going to be very publicly painful. A lot of the Be Kinders are going to suddenly have their eyes wide open and recognise that it wasn't bigotry after all when people called out this waste. There will be plenty more people ending up wondering (as I am still now) how they can be in agreement with a person like Trump on this subject. The national head-wobbling that's about to unfold will be immense.

It's doubly weird because the NHS is already known to have a pretty diverse workforce. Evey paramedic, nurse, doctor I've encountered has been from a different country, speaks a range of languages. It's one of its strengths. What would an EDI lead actually have to do? I'm happy to be educated on this if there is a genuine need.

I think what is often missing is tangible outcomes/ impacts / deliverables for DEI roles that directly link to improving organisational performance.

In my view, the NHS doesn't exist to perform a social engineering role in terms of addressing national/ global inequality. Its role should be to attract and retain the best gor delivering the best health outcomes. It is likely that people will make poor decisions about who is 'the talent' and what is needed to support performance and retention of talent due to bias linked to racism, sexism, ableism etc.

I am all for DEI expertise that addresses this.

Those DEI salaries are an absolutely minuscule fraction of what the NHS spends every year though. I just looked it up, the current year budget for the NHS is £192 BILLION. That's 192 x a thousand million.

There are also far far more doctors employed than heads of DEI.

I'm not a fan of DEI being pushed in Sainsbury's ads, but it is important in something that is a public service.

Whether trans rights should be a major part of that is another issue...

This podcast https://thisisntworkingpodcast.co.uk is interesting and useful. I stumbled across it and it doesn't seem to be widely known.

It's made by a Tanya De Grunwald, who seems to be a journalist specialising in HR and business issues and is sceptical of the value of much DEI/ EDI. There are maybe a dozen podcasts available and all of them touch on the problems arising from it. She doesn't use the words gender critical or terf, but she is at least very dubious about the way things have been going in the last few years and seeks a more business-focussed and sensible line. She has a two-parter with James Esses who, while not being someone I want to pin my flag to, puts the GC pov on a number of issues. I learned quite a lot from listening.

In one of the podcasts she reveals how major consulting company McKinsey has for years been promoting the importance of diversity in the workplace and how the more diversity, the better a business thrives. It bases its argument on reports and research which, if looked at carefully, turn out to be less than conclusive. And of course, once it's told clients that they need to be more diverse and sold them DEI/EDI as a concept, it sells them the training for all their staff. Follow the money!

Isla Bumba, the EDI person whom Esther Davidson turned to for advice re Peggie/ Upton is earning £40K+ pa, which is what a Grade 7 or 8 senior charge nurse would earn. On her Link In CV (which she's removed) she used pronouns and described herself as a passionate advocate for equality. She seems to be about 27 from her CV. She may only have been 25 when she landed this job, after working in the Covid tracing project. Given how poor her advice to Esther Davidson seems to have been, I think we can deduce that she has very limited HR or legal knowledge, so it's difficult to know what she brought to the job. If I was a 50-year-old senior charge nurse with life-and-death responsibility for patients, I think I'd be really pissed-off to discover an inexperienced 25-year-old know-nothing was earning as much or more than me. Bumba has been badly let down by the staff above and around her: it looks as if she's out of her depth. The whole thing will cost NHS Fife millions.

problem with dei is not that it exists, but that if's been highjacked by one group only and basically paralysed to do the work it's originally designed.

maybe scapping it is necessary to build up a true diversity advice programme.