Some HR professionals are reportedly up in arms that the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has invited conservative activist Robby Starbuck to speak on a panel at SHRM’s fall conference.
SHRM announced in June that it was rebranding its annual Inclusion conference citing what it called a “challenging” diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) “landscape.” The conference, now dubbed SHRM Blueprint, will take place in late October in Louisville, Kentucky and will include a panel discussion which features Starbuck alongside CNN contributor Van Jones.
Starbuck has risen to prominence for publicly calling on a variety of companies to abandon their DEI efforts, and has previously referred to DEI as “poison.” Starbuck also hosts a podcast, “The Robby Starbuck Show,” and is presently a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
HR Dive reported on Wednesday that various HR professionals have been publicly criticizing SHRM over the move.
Joseph Riddle, director of consultancy Neurodiversity in the Workplace, told HR Dive that he thinks Starbuck speaking on a panel at SHRM’s upcoming Blueprint conference “goes too far.” Riddle told the outlet that he had initially planned to purchase a ticket to the SHRM Blueprint conference — “and then I saw that Robby Starbuck was going to be speaking.”
Similarly, HR Brew reported on Sept. 12 that they had received over 80 replies to their recent LinkedIn post about Starbuck speaking at Blueprint, and almost all disagreed with the move.
“I struggle to see how this will result in productive discourse and not just frustration and finger-pointing. After SHRM already backed down from many of its DEI initiatives in the face of political pressure, this doesn’t seem like a positive shift in a good direction,” Chris Fitzpatrick, a talent development expert, commented on the LinkedIn post, as reported by HR Brew.
Moreover, another LinkedIn user wrote in a comment on HR Brew’s post that Starbuck’s impact “would logically hurt business and the broader economy.”
“Regardless of what any of us think of Starbuck personally, his impact is one which would logically hurt business and the broader economy,” the comment reads. “When we combine ‘diversity groups’ including racialized people, folks with disabilities and members of the LGBTQ community, we’re looking at over 50% of the population. Workforces in the US and Canada are aging and labour supply is – or will soon become a business continuity issue. Failing to build capacity and strategies that attract and retain talent in an increasingly diverse workforce is the polar opposite of workforce sustainability. Not to mention that workplaces with effective equity, diversity and inclusion competencies have higher levels of engagement, retention, innovation, resilience and profits.”
“In the face of overwhelming evidence of the need for workplace equity, diversity and inclusion, the only purpose Mr Starbuck’s message serves is to provide ‘alternative facts’ to ease the cognitive dissonance that goes along with racism, homophobia, ableism and misogyny. He essentially positions equity (the highest form of fairness) as unfair,” the post continued.
Additionally, one LinkedIn user commented that “while I’m neither a DEI practitioner nor an HR leader, but as a previous SHRM conference speaker/member, I view this as the death knell for their organization.”
Moreover, one commenter on HR Brew’s LinkedIn post claimed that SHRM’s “leadership consistently revealed its enthusiasm for endorsing right-wing extremism.”
“Not surprised at all,” the commenter replied. “In my two years spent working at SHRM, leadership consistently revealed its enthusiasm for endorsing right-wing extremism.”
“DEI leaders wanting to silence a voice that disagrees with them only highlights my contention that DEI never stood for diversity or inclusion — it was simply a machine to peddle ideological conformity around left wing ideology and to give license to activism in the workplace,” Starbuck said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Especially after the murder of my friend Charlie Kirk, it’s more important than ever that we have difficult conversations.”
In response to recent reports of outrage in the HR industry, SHRM’s president told HR Dive in an emailed statement that “viewpoint diversity is one of the major, but often under-discussed, dimensions of workplace diversity. At SHRM, we are committed to fostering inclusive, respectful dialogue by engaging a broad spectrum of perspectives — including those of Van Jones and Robby Starbuck — to reflect the diverse viewpoints that shape our nation and the world of work.”
SHRM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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