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Banning Banter in The Workplace? Say Goodbye to Your Culture!

Written By Kevin Scott

On January 28, 2025

Banning Banter in The Workplace? Say Goodbye to Your Culture!

Banter allows us to build relationships with our colleagues and makes our workdays more enjoyable. However, what happens when banter goes too far? Despite being considered often harmless, employment tribunals related to banter have been increasing across the previous several years, with 66 taking place in 2022. The complexities and nuances of banter and its role in shaping the culture of a workplace begs the question – is it time for organisations to ban banter?

Cutting straight to the point – no, we should not be banning banter. We shouldn’t be banning anything! Banning things is often not good for organisational development; it's often lazy leadership and only deals with the symptoms of issues and not the root causes of the problems at hand. Plus, banter has huge benefits and contributes to positive workplace attitudes which build team spirit and camaraderie. The real challenge for leaders isn’t eliminating banter, but fostering an environment where people are accountable for understanding the impact of their words rather than hiding behind ‘it was just a joke.’ So, how do business leaders navigate situations where the joke falls flat?

The truth is, it's not easy. The complexities of the topic make it difficult. On one side we have healthy workplace banter which boosts productivity and leads to happy work environments. However, it’s a topic which carries a lot of risk when not managed correctly and can go very wrong, very quickly. Tolerances for jokes, behaviours and actions differ from person to person, making it hard to distinguish the grey line which sets these workplace boundaries.

We often talk about the banter line as being on a bit of a cliff edge, and on the other side of that cliff edge are three buckets, the bullying bucket, the harassment bucket (including sexual harassment), and the discrimination bucket. All three present legal and cultural nightmares for organisations to navigate, especially when you consider that society is moving much faster than legislation, and when it comes to bullying, harassment, and discrimination, it’s not just employees who directly experience it who can make a claim but also those who witness it.

So, how do we tackle it? The key is to create a culture where our employees feel comfortable to challenge. We call this a ‘speak up culture,’ whereby the minute someone says something inappropriate; people feel comfortable to call out the other's comment or behaviour.

Creating a speak-up culture makes it easier for line managers to understand when they need to pull everybody back to the right side of the line and mitigates the lengthy processes of investigations or disciplinaries because you will have a workforce who feels psychologically safe to challenge inappropriate behaviours. You will also have trained your line managers in how to reel everybody back across the line if they are not already able to do this organically. Creating a culture like this is not easy to achieve and takes a lot of work, needing effective management, open communication, and patience to be maintained.

Banning banter outright is a terrible intervention and will have the opposite effect you are looking for, creating an unappealing culture which nobody will want to work in. As society continues to change culturally, and acceptable discourse evolves, your teams will be best placed to navigate these changes with minimal disruption. There is no way you can be expected to monitor what happens in every team across your organisation, but in the eyes of the law, you are accountable for it!

The Article

Let's be honest about what happens in most inclusion strategy meetings. Someone presents a slide about engagement scores. Someone else mentions that the values poster needs updating. A third person says, with commendable optimism, that they're 'making progress.' Then the CFO asks: 'What's this actually costing us, and what are we getting back?' Silence.

This is where Return on Inclusion® comes in. And it's why your finance director is going to love it almost as much as your Head of DEI.

So, What Is Return on Inclusion®?

Return on Inclusion® (RoI®) is the world's first methodology that measures the commercial and cultural impact of inclusion investment with genuine financial precision. It was created by Dawn Hurst, Co-Founder of EA Group, over 20 years of research and practice — and it won the PwC Innovation Award. It's not a survey. It's not a maturity framework. It's an audit that speaks the language of business.

The methodology assesses 150 data points across 20 organisational domains — covering everything from pay equity and leadership representation to staff retention, procurement diversity, and innovation metrics. The result is a monetised ROI figure: how much value your inclusion investment is generating, and how much it could generate if you got serious about it.

"The Global Mentoring Programme was by far one of the best growth journeys I've taken in my entire career."

— Gianfranco Bianco, Global Web Business Analyst, Sandvik Coromant

The Numbers That Make CFOs Pay Attention

Across clients including SSE, thyssenkrupp, Royal BAM Group, HSBC, and MUFG, the Return on Inclusion® methodology has delivered:

  • An average 19x return on every pound invested in inclusion
  • Current trajectory clients averaging £8-10 return per £1 spent
  • Clients on a focused strategy reaching £19+ per £1
  • Validated results across 35 countries and 4,000+ organisations

SSE discovered they had already returned £4.52 for every £1 invested — and that with a more strategic approach, they could reach £15 per £1. That's not sentiment. That's the language boards speak.

 

 

"The work points out explicitly that SSE has returned £4.52 for every £1 invested in inclusion initiatives. But we also learnt that by implementing a more strategic approach, we can aspire to returning £15 for every £1 invested. This is very compelling evidence for a value-focused organisation."

— John Stewart, Director of Human Resources, SSE plc

How Is Return on Inclusion® Different From Standard DEI Metrics?

Standard DEI metrics tell you what your workforce looks like. Return on Inclusion® tells you what it's worth. The difference matters because:

  • Headcount diversity metrics don't reveal whether your inclusion investment is generating commercial value
  • Engagement scores don't tell you whether inclusion is reducing attrition or increasing innovation
  • Maturity frameworks don't give you a monetised ROI to defend at board level

Return on Inclusion® does all three. It connects inclusion data to business performance, so you're not arguing from principle — you're arguing from evidence.

The Metimur Platform: Self-Service Return on Inclusion®

Historically, a Return on Inclusion® audit required EA Group's consultants and budgets starting at £50,000. Metimur changes that. The platform puts the same PwC award-winning methodology in your hands as a self-service audit tool. You run it yourself. You get the same rigorous 150-point assessment. You receive a board-ready report with your monetised ROI across three scenarios — starting from £5,000 per year.

"Return on Inclusion® gave us the clarity we needed to make meaningful change across all four of our divisional businesses and increase staff retention and colleague engagement."

— Shelley Caton, Director of Inclusion and Diversity, BAM UK & Ireland

Who Needs to Read This

  • CHROs and HR Directors who need board-level justification for inclusion spend
  • CFOs and Finance Directors being asked to sign off DEI budgets
  • Heads of DEI who are tired of being asked to prove their value in engagement score terms
  • CEOs navigating ESG reporting requirements that increasingly demand inclusion data

If any of those sound like you, you're in the right place. And if you want to see the numbers for your organisation specifically, the Metimur platform can produce them in days — not months.

Related Reading

  • How to Measure DEI ROI: A Step-by-Step Guide for HR Leaders [Article 02]
  • DEI Data for the Board: What Directors Actually Want to See [Article 04]
  • DEI ROI Statistics 2026: The Data Every Inclusion Leader Needs [Article 06]