“A little help Xtra”. “Make it happen.” Or, in fact, “It’s a people’s thing.” Halifax has had some pretty good slogans over the years, and others that seemed to work for a somewhat boring financial institution that has its roots in a Victorian culture of hard work, savings, and savings. Somehow, “Drop Dead You Reactionary Dinosaur” doesn’t have the same customer-friendly ring.
Still, it seems like now is what he wants some of his customers to hear. Halifax isn’t usually in the news for anything more interesting than the latest move in mortgage rates. But this week, he’s been caught up in a very different kind of argument, and one that has desperately found him out of his depth.
Along with some other major banks, such as HSBC, it has decided to allow its staff to start displaying their pronouns on their badges and email signatures. Because? Apparently, in the unlikely event that you can find a branch that is still open, and, even more extraordinary, that there is a real human being behind the counter, it would prevent anyone from accidentally thinking that Gemma could be a woman or Mike a us. , rather than someone who would possibly identify as something else.
But pronouns are not a subject without controversy. Many feminists think that encouraging their use is the thin end of a wedge, part of the fear that biological women are being wiped out by radical awakened ideologues. Many other people don’t like companies getting involved in divisive political debates or engaging in flagrant virtue signage.
However, the bank’s social media team decided to strongly promote the new policy on Twitter. And when a few customers objected, they were aggressively told to take their business elsewhere. If you don’t feel completely comfortable with a world of gender fluidity, it seems like you have no right to start saving money, let alone taking out a loan to buy a home.
It’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened. When companies like Vodafone were criticized for joining the GB News advertising boycott at the launch of the channel, the complaints were angered by some of the companies ’social media teams. Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream company, is true that it has always had leftist sympathies. But his Twitter account is in an extraordinary dispute with Unilever, the company’s parent company, over the issue of selling ice cream to Israel.
It does not seem to matter if the management of these companies is comfortable with the messages that are issued on their behalf online. He seems to have abdicated from power a small group of activist employees so imbued with Twitter culture that they cannot recognize the difference between social media and the real world.
And it’s part of a broader problem with awakened capitalism, caused by companies that pay too much attention to staff opinions and too little to customers. Disney, for example, has found its tax status in Florida threatened after some of its employees tried to turn the Magic Kingdom into the Woke Kingdom (or Persondom, come to think of it) by campaigning for LGBT rights. Time and time again, companies find themselves caught up in cultural wars, often forced to hold private positions in an attempt to appease their left-wing staff.
There are two problems with this. The first is that companies do not need to take a political position. If they can make a decent product at a fair price and pay their staff and suppliers on time, this is more than enough for a social purpose. Everything else can be discussed elsewhere.
The second is that, by ceding control to junior staff, it means that private sector companies are falling into a more frequent affect in the public sector. They are losing the art of customer service and forgetting that respect for the opinions of others and tolerance for a wide range of political beliefs is just common courtesy.
They have to control the millennials. It turns out that Halifax needs some Xtra help with this, and many more as well, before losing millions of customers through endless virtuous signage campaigns.