By Callum Borchers
Culture warriors aren't the only ones applauding big businesses' rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Quietly, so are some of corporate DEI's architects.
They haven't wavered on the principles, but they say DEI needs an overhaul after companies turned it into a buzzword ripe for attack. Like " innovation," " sustainability" and other business principles-turned-corporate fads, DEI piled on some of workers' least favorite things: extra consultants, more awkward human-resources sessions and new chiefs with lofty titles and fuzzy mandates.
Some of the most visible steps that businesses took after George Floyd's murder in 2020 turned out to be ineffective, according to Harvard sociologist Frank Dobbin, whose research on racial and gender disparities in management is often cited as evidence for robust diversity programs. Those pledges companies made to fill certain percentages of leadership roles with women and people of color? Besides being legally risky, the goals seldom materialized, he says.
And the unconscious bias training that was supposed to produce antiracist allies? Turns out people hate being told they have hidden prejudices.
Dobbin's research with fellow sociologist Alexandra Kalev found that diversity-training programs commonly involve unconscious bias tests for employees -- rapid-fire word-association exercises with white and Black faces, for example. The drills push people to confront evidence of the invisible bigots living inside their brains.
Instead of feeling energized to improve, though, participants often respond with shame and anger.
"They tend to walk away from it thinking they've been accused of something they're not really guilty of, which is the whole history of the United States when it comes to race and gender," says Dobbin. "It really pisses people off."
DEI is an important response to that history and has accomplished much, despite sometimes uneven execution, says Olivia Christian, who juggles dual careers as a sportscaster and consultant to employee-resource groups for women and people of color at Google, Visa, Amazon and other firms.
"Why should I be embarrassed, as a Black woman, about efforts to give people like me the chances we should have had all along?" she says.
Dobbin's 2009 book, "Inventing Equal Opportunity," could be read as a prelude to the current moment. It traces the ebb and flow of corporate diversity efforts, from attempts to comply with President John F. Kennedy's "affirmative action" executive order in the 1960s to recasting diversity as a management strategy in the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan threatened to end affirmative action.
Little wonder the backlash against DEI, led by activist Robby Starbuck, has been so forceful, he says. Major companies including Walmart, Ford, Boeing and Lowe's have curbed their diversity initiatives, and Dobbin expects more could backtrack as President-elect Donald Trump returns to office.
Be practical
Bo Young Lee used to ask her team a basic question when she was Uber's diversity chief from 2018 to 2023: What's your job? Usually the response was about empowering women and people of color. Wrong, Lee told them.
Your job, she told her DEI staff, is to help the company make more money by ensuring discrimination doesn't cost it talent, customers or a good reputation. What seemed obvious to her -- that every program in a for-profit business feeds the bottom line -- registered as blasphemy to some others in her field, Lee says.
"Somebody once came to me and said, 'So-and-so acts like an ally, but they're really just trying to get brownie points,'" Lee recalls. "I go, 'I don't care why they say yes. I only care that I can get them to do the right thing, whether they truly believe it or not.'"
Uber placed Lee on leave last year, and she ultimately left the company, after some employees complained that workshops she led -- titled "Don't Call Me Karen" -- were overly sympathetic toward white women. She is now president of research and advisory at AnitaB.org, a nonprofit that advocates for women in tech.
The way she sees it, DEI should worry less about people's private thoughts and motives. Focus on policies that ensure everyone is treated fairly, so they can do their best work. That is good for business.
"If there were more women and trans people and gay people in that first product-design meeting at Uber, would they have started off by building a safer product and would that have avoided all of the scandals that started emerging in 2016 and 2017?" Lee wonders.
She also thinks DEI would benefit from a name change. She suggests OAL for opportunity, access and leadership, which she considers more disarming.
Back to business
Some organizations are trying to rebrand DEI with other versions of the acronym. Among the linguistic variations that S&P 500 companies cited in their sustainability reports this year: leading with "inclusion," dropping "equity" and adding "belonging" or "culture."
(Is there anything more corporate than overworkshopped terminology? Ask any director of human resources, er, people management...no, wait, talent and culture.)
Businesses largely remain committed to the principles of DEI, if not the acronym itself, says Ani Huang, senior executive vice president of the HR Policy Association, a group for HR chiefs. She points to a recent Teneo report that found 94% of S&P 500 companies measured some version of DEI in their sustainability reports this year, down from 99% last year.
The effect of Trump's incoming administration bears watching, Huang says, because restrictions placed on the DEI programs of federal contractors could influence other employers.
In this environment "a lot of companies are more focused on explaining how diversity goals are directly tied to business goals," she says.
The argument that more diverse leadership teams are directly linked to greater profits has come under fire. Still, companies know they risk missing talent if they don't actively recruit a range of people, says Fayruz Kirtzman, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry who advises companies on using DEI to help the bottom line.
She says a lot of businesses stumbled in recent years by publicizing demographic targets. Intended to keep companies accountable to the numbers, the goals were easily misconstrued as reverse discrimination.
"By the time the message trickles down, it's heard as, 'They won't hire a white guy,'" she says.
A federal appeals court this month ruled Nasdaq's racial and gender targets for listed companies amount to unlawful quotas, casting doubt on the future of demographic goals inside companies.
Kirtzman says her conversations with clients today sound more like they did in 2019, when key concerns were how to recruit highly skilled people who might have been overlooked in the past and ensure they feel welcomed and empowered.
"As important as the conversation was that followed George Floyd's murder, it muddied the water as we suddenly started to talk about social justice and social constructs," she says.
Now that there is a backlash, she says: "I'm sort of talking everyone off the ledge and saying, 'Let's go back to what this was designed to do.'"
Write to Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 22, 2024 21:00 ET (02:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Comments