The new year brings with it a variety of challenges for companies, cities, and countries, and recent government elections and conservative movements promise to upend some behaviors and positions that many business leaders have embraced for years.
Here are a few trends in corporate social responsibility (or corporate citizenship if you prefer) that are worth tracking in the new year. None of these trends are completely new – most of them have been slowly growing over the past four years – but 2025 will see an increased acceleration that is in keeping with the new political landscape.
More “belonging” and less DEI. While many companies and institutions will continue to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs as a competitive advantage or business necessity, others will follow the lead of Walmart, John Deere, and several major universities (e.g., University of Michigan, which has eliminated diversity statements in faculty hiring and promotion) in de-emphasizing or discontinuing these efforts, which some consider too “woke.” Even relatively “safe” efforts such as sharing employment data with the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit that tracks corporate LGBTQ policies, are under attack. Watch for business leaders and companies to talk about the importance of “belonging” to their teams, families, and enterprises, or as Walmart puts it, “everyone included.”
More “security” and less ESG. While climate change will continue to be managed as a potential risk to businesses, watch for business leaders to embrace the idea of managing these risks as important to the security of their people as well as their business interests. Although many conservatives have discounted climate change as an important public policy issue in the past, some have begun to look at how these changes might negatively affect our national security interests (e.g., President-elect Trump is looking to Greenland and Canada as vital to the national security interests of the United States because of how climate changes are opening the possibility of navigating the Artic for trading.) Expect to see companies embrace similar language to explain why managing environment risks is critical to not only their own business interests but the security of their people in areas that are prone to natural disasters and the effects of climate change.
More employee volunteering and less remote work. As companies like AT&T and Amazon move to require their employees to be in the office four or five days a week, this change will open the possibility of engaging employees in volunteer efforts that have lagged since the pandemic. With many employees working remotely in different locations, traditional in-person volunteering took a back seat to online consulting and technical assistance programs where employees could assist nonprofits and small businesses from the comfort of their homes. But with more employees working in offices and customer service centers, there will be a renewed interest in finding ways of rebuilding teams and engaging employees in the communities surrounding their facilities.
More CEO silence and less employee activism. While the rise of CEOs speaking out on social issues reached a peak during the first Trump administration as employees demanded that their companies fight against conservative attacks on programs and priorities that they supported, don’t expect to see the same thing happening during the new administration. With many CEOs from Jeff Bezos to Tim Cook to Mark Zuckerberg working to gain favor with the new administration, and with many important senior government jobs going to current or former corporate leaders, more progressive corporate positions on matters of public policy will be largely muted, and efforts to allow employees to speak their minds freely will be channeled into internal online forums like Slack and Teams.
More sponsorships and less philanthropy. Many companies have cut back on supporting traditional charities such as higher education, arts and culture, and national humanitarian organizations in favor of assisting social justice programs and environmental organizations in the past four years. But with increased scrutiny of progressive nonprofit organizations at the federal and state level, expect to see fewer corporate philanthropic efforts that are subject to public disclosure and self-dealing rules, and more corporate sponsorship efforts geared toward small businesses, entertainment venues, athletic teams, and commercial enterprises where products and services can be displayed and promoted, and that are not subject to complex public reporting requirements.
Of course, many companies will stay the course and continue DEI, ESG, HR and CSR efforts that represent decades-long commitments, but others will find new approaches and new language to deal with different political realities and government leaders. What results from this corporate retrenchment is unknown, but the trends are clear, and the paths forward are strewn with mind fields for the unwary or unprepared business leader.