This Isn’t Working

Can you feel it? Change is happening — culturally, politically, and inside the workplace. Orthodoxies that shaped the last decade of daily life are being questioned and dumped. Which employers have noticed the 'vibe shift' and which have missed it? 

In this episode of This Isn’t Working, host Tanya de Grunwald is joined by journalist Brendan O’Neill - chief political writer at Spiked, and author of the new book 'Vibe Shift' - to examine why workplaces are both vibe shift battlegrounds, and some of the last places to formally recognise what's happening.

Together, they explore how years of values-driven management, DEI orthodoxy, and risk-averse corporate decision-making have reshaped professional life — and why dismantling or reforming these systems may prove far more painful than building them. 

If a cultural correction is underway, employers could soon find themselves caught between competing expectations from employees, leadership, and the wider public.

This conversation goes beyond headlines and culture war slogans to ask deeper questions about power, conformity, class, and institutional inertia. 

Why do organisations struggle to reverse course once a moral consensus has taken hold? And what happens when employees begin to sense that the rules are changing — but leadership hasn’t caught up yet?

Brendan argues that entire industries and professional identities have grown around enforcing particular cultural norms, meaning any shift away from them is unlikely to be smooth or quiet. Instead, employers may face resistance, confusion, and fierce internal pushback as expectations collide with a rapidly evolving social mood.

We ask:

- Why are so many people talking about a “vibe shift” — and what concrete changes are actually driving the feeling that the cultural pendulum is swinging back?

- Have employers become trapped by policies and workplace ideologies they adopted too quickly, without fully understanding their long-term consequences?

- Why do large organisations struggle to adapt when social attitudes change — even when employees themselves can sense the mood shifting?

- What role have HR departments and corporate leaders played in embedding cultural norms that may now be losing public support?

- Will workplace conflict intensify before things stabilise, and how should leaders prepare for backlash from staff who feel invested in the old consensus?

Provocative, timely, and often darkly funny, this episode explores the growing gap between cultural reality and workplace practice — and asks whether employers are ready for what comes next...

Enjoy the episode!

Buy Brendan's new book Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism And Technocracy https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vibe-Shift-Wokeness-Greenism-Technocracy-ebook/dp/B0G72K3PH8

The Brendan O'Neill Show https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast/the-brendan-oneill-show/

Freedom In The Arts
https://www.freedominthearts.com/

HR is under fire – and we need to talk about why. This blistering episode explores what's gone wrong, who's to blame – and how mistakes can be fixed. 

Recorded in London on 10 February 2026, this video shows what happened at our second 'This Is Working' event - an evening of frank discussion and clear-eyed analysis with senior business professionals from across the private sector. 

Host Tanya de Grunwald welcomed a panel of special guests:

Neil Morrison - HR Director, Severn Trent
Octavius Black CBE - Founder, MindGym
Akua Reindorf KC - Employment and discrimination barrister
Steve Harrison - Author of Adland’s Progressive Gaze: How UK Advertising Lost Sight Of The People And Things That Matter Most

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Want to attend our next This Is Working event?
Keen to see the report from the second half of this evening?
Drop us a line to say hello https://bit.ly/44jT7AW

00:00 Welcome - Tanya de Grunwald
11:26 Neil Morrison - HR director, Severn Trent
20:11 Octavius Black CBE - Founder, Mind Gym
35:30 Steve Harrison - Author, 'Adland's Progressive Gaze'
45:50 Akua Reindorf KC - Employment and discrimination law barrister

What happens when the workplace becomes a moral battleground, a group therapy session, or a political rally? And how should disruptive employees be dealt with?

In this darkly funny, unsettling, and sharply insightful episode of This Isn’t Working, clinical psychologist and culture critic Jaco van Zyl takes us deep into the psychological underworld of modern workplace activism.

Before empoyers can find solutions to emerging issues with increasingly demanding and unreasonable staff, they must first understand the problem - which Jaco argues has a large psychological component.

From moral grandstanding and identity performance to power, status, and the strange emotional rewards of self-appointed judges of what (and who) is 'good' and 'bad', this is a conversation that goes far beyond people policies, and into the human instincts driving today’s office conflicts.

As co-director of Critical Therapy Antidote, Jaco brings a clinical lens to what happens when ideology, therapy culture, and corporate life collide — and why HR often finds itself stuck playing referee (or 'Mum') in battles it was never trained to fight.

We ask:

- Why has activism become such a powerful source of meaning, belonging, and even excitement at work? Who is drawn to the idea of taking their identity and political views into the professional space, and why?

- Have employers played a part in encouraging bad behaviour - for example, by creating internal staff networks, pandering to demands for speech policing, and embracing flawed ideas like 'bring your whole self to work'?

- What are the psychological payoffs of calling out, cancelling, or 'educating' colleagues — and who really holds the power in these dynamics? What do disruptive colleagues actually want?

- When and how does a drive for 'inclusion' slide into aggression, coercion, and control - and why can't activist employees tell when they've overstepped the line?

- How will problematic employees respond when employers finally push back towards a more grounded, professional working environment? What strategies can they put in place to mitigate explosive reactions from troublemakers who have become accustomed to getting their own way?

By turns disturbing, witty, and uncomfortably familiar, this episode offers a rare psychological look at the hidden motives, emotional currents, and unintended consequences shaping today’s “values-driven” workplace.

Enjoy the episode!

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Critical Therapy Antidote https://criticaltherapyantidote.org/

Freedom in the Arts https://www.freedominthearts.com/

Has the 'vibe shift' reached UK companies - and who's to blame for the 'inclusion' practices that turned out to be such bad business? 

We have brand new insights to share - straight from the mouths of UK employers. At the launch of our new business network 'This Is Working', 50 senior leaders, lawyers, HR professionals, risk experts and business owners gathered for a rare, open conversation. We also heard an exclusive talk by Alex Edmans, finance professor at London Business School, titled: 'Was there ever a business case for DEI?'

What emerged from the evening was striking: the problems employers face today were not created just by activists and HR, but by decisions made across multiple departments — including legal, risk, compliance, recruitment, communications, and senior leadership.

In this candid episode, Tanya de Grunwald is joined by FTSE 100 Chief Strategy Officer Paul Sweeney and architect and business leader Patrik Schumacher (of Zaha Hadid Architects) to unpack why employers are finally ready to admit that everyone played a part in creating the current confusion and mess — and why only cross-functional honesty will get us out of it.

We cover:

IS THIS THE MOMENT PRIVATE-SECTOR EMPLOYERS FINALLY START TALKING TO EACH OTHER? Why did so many senior leaders turn up ready to speak openly — even on taboo topics? And what does it signal that, despite the sensitive themes, not one person opted out of being photographed?

HOW DID HR, LEGAL, RISK AND LEADERSHIP ALL CONTRIBUTE TO THE CURRENT PROBLEMS? From unlawful policies written without legal scrutiny, to risk teams who missed the clear dangers from HR policies, to leaders who dodged difficult conversations — how did so many disciplines independently make decisions that collectively led us here?

WHY WILL FIXING THIS REQUIRE A TEAM EFFORT? Employers now see that these challenges cut across policy, culture, governance and leadership. No single department can repair this alone. We explore why only joint, honest, cross-disciplinary discussions can untangle what’s gone wrong.

CAN WE MOVE FROM GROUPTHINK TO GROWTH? After years of silence, deference and “be kind” culture, organisations are realising how dangerous it is when teams stop challenging each other. What happens when leaders actively encourage disagreement, scrutiny and open debate again?

WHAT DID PROFESSOR ALEX EDMANS REVEAL ABOUT THE ‘BUSINESS CASE’ FOR DEI? We examine his keynote showing that demographic diversity was never the performance driver employers believed it to be — and why firms are now refocusing on cognitive diversity, evidence and commercial realism.

HOW DID WELL-MEANING POLICIES CREATE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES? From recruitment practices that illegally skew hiring, to training that shut down discussion, to policies that exposed organisations to legal and reputational risks — how did siloed decisions spiral into today’s problems?

WHY HAS DISABILITY BEEN IGNORED — AND WHAT DOES THAT TELL US We revisit powerful contributions about disability being crowded out by more fashionable causes. What can this teach employers about how “inclusion” drifted away from evidence, need and fairness?

WHY TALKING — OPENLY, HONESTLY, AND SOON — IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD Across the room there was agreement: employers must stop whispering and start talking. Only by sharing what’s gone wrong, and comparing notes across functions and organisations, can we rebuild workplaces that are lawful, functional and genuinely inclusive.

This is a hopeful, energising episode about the start of a new phase for UK employers — one in which leaders finally have the confidence to speak plainly, work collaboratively, and fix the problems created during a strange and turbulent decade of workplace culture change.

* WISH YOU WERE THERE? 

Buy our bundle including the video of Alex's talk, and the anonymised report capturing the audience discussion
https://bit.ly/47ZBokp

(It's free to those who attended on the night - contact Tanya for details)

Who is still pushing 'woke' at work - and why is it so hard to challenge? This entertaining episode (recorded at the Battle of Ideas on 19 October 2025) explores the exasperating power of virtue signaling, lived experience and cancel culture at work. And we ask: what will it take to restore balance and neutrality to the UK's workplaces?

With thanks to Eric Kaufmann - professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, and author of Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Produced a Cultural Revolution - for joining Tanya de Grunwald for this special live episode.

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This Is Working - Tanya's new business network
Launch event - Tuesday 4 November, 6.30pm, Central London
https://thisisntworkingpodcast.co.uk/were-launching/