Call me a contrarian, but something seems a bit “Filet-O-Fishy” about the one-sided press coverage regarding the recent DEI “rollback” at McDonald’s.
The world’s biggest restaurant chain, which feeds sixty-eight million customers a day, posted an update to the corporate diversity, equity and Inclusion (DEI) goals and ambitions on the company website.
Their announcement, titled “Our Commitment to Inclusion at McDonald’s,” was a 1,000-word “note” sent to their owner/operators, company employees and suppliers, highlighting results across their three legs of DEI efforts. This included sharing updates, reaffirming their “steadfast” commitment and laying out what will be modified moving forward.
Their transparency should be applauded.
But like my mom always used to say, “If you look hard enough for something, you’ll eventually find it.”
For those looking to take down DEI, this announcement was proof that their anti-DEI campaign is winning. Yet to me, this was proof that a company of their size and scale could course correct in this area—successfully.
McDonald’s Delivered
But you wouldn’t know it by the headlines. My feed has been flooded with story after story shouting: “McDonald’s ends, rolls back, flips, steps away from, walks back or retires their DEI programming.” One went as far as MAGA celebrates win, joining other companies who’ve done the same.
Did anyone actually read through the whole document? If so, why is everyone skipping over what they accomplished—which is how the announcement starts?
For the sake of brevity, I want to focus on the four DEI practices they said they’re going to “modify,” as these are the four areas the press is highlighting in their coverage.
As I see them, these aren’t cuts to DEI—they’re benchmarks that have been reached and signs of growth in this area of business.
#1: We are retiring setting aspirational representation goals and instead keeping our focus on continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations.
In the first half of the document, McDonald’s broke down all of the representation goals they reached in 2024, due to their commitments. Therefore, they do not have to, or need to, keep these aspirational representation goals on the books. The course has already been corrected across employees and franchisees. Corporate culture can evolve from here.
“As we close out 2024, we want to highlight a few of our accomplishments that touch all three legs of the stool at McDonald’s:
- Employees – We achieved strong leadership diversity with over 30% of our U.S. leaders from underrepresented groups. On pay equity, we achieved gender pay equity at all levels and in every market as you can see in our 2024 Purpose and Impact Report. The most recent employee Pulse Survey also highlighted that, 84% of employees feel that ‘McDonald’s is an environment that allows me to be myself’ and 78% of employees scored McDonald’s positively on our Inclusion Index overall.
- Franchisees – We recruited the largest Registered Applicant (RA) pipeline in recent years, including the largest number of RAs from underrepresented groups in our history. In the U.S. we have made meaningful progress addressing cashflow gaps across our franchisee groups.”
#2 – We are pausing external surveys to focus on the work we are doing internally to grow the business.
These external surveys refer to outside, third-party non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social organizations that develop corporate surveys with benchmarks to evaluate a company’s strength in certain areas, based on policies, data and so forth.
In this case, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index specifically has become somewhat of a target list for conservative groups to use as a way to identify companies they believe should adjust their DEI programming.
McDonald’s doesn’t need to keep participating in these surveys because in the decade-plus the company has been doing this work, they’ve already made the changes and reached the standard set by the HRC. In fact, they have exceeded expectations in this area.
McDonald’s has received a perfect score of 100 on the HRC Corporate Equality Index for multiple years, including 2023 to 2024. In 2020, McDonald’s received a score of 100 for the fifth year in a row. McDonald’s has also been recognized as one of the “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality” for seven consecutive years.
#3 We are retiring Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge in favor of a more integrated discussion with suppliers about inclusion as it relates to business performance.
This Pledge for Better DEI Practices document asks vendors to also commit to being more inclusive on their DEI journey. Pledges are generally not considered legally binding on their own, nor are they mandatory. Most companies the size of McDonald’s have these pledges, but based on the report, with a U.S. aspirational spend of 25% with diverse-owned supplier spend being reached three years ahead of schedule, these pledges are unnecessary. Having a spend percentage that high for Minority/Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs) is an incredible feat.
#4 We are evolving how we refer to our diversity team, which will now be the Global Inclusion Team. This name change is more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work.
The word “diversity” has become a polarizing, politicized term. What’s the easiest solution? Use the term “inclusion” instead. This is a semantical change, and McDonald’s switching to a new term is in line with many other companies today, which are moving to their internal terms such as belonging, retention, impact and equity.
In addition to those four steps, McDonald’s shared how they took four more steps to ensure they were not only reinforcing the strength of the company but also maintaining their reputation across DEI:
“Last year, we completed a comprehensive Civil Rights Audit (CRA) that looked at all aspects of inclusion across our system. We also engaged with shareholders to understand their expectations and assess the overall landscape of shareholder proposals. Following the Supreme Court ruling in STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, we also assessed the shifting legal landscape to anticipate how this ruling may impact corporations such as McDonald’s. And finally, we benchmarked our approach to other companies who are also re-evaluating their own programs.”
DEI, Like Other Corporate Functions, Is Evolving
Now that you’ve read through each of these modifications, does it seem to you that McDonald’s is really cutting their DEI efforts? Or are they simply evolving into the next chapter of their growth as a company? They put in the work and got the results. Now they’re ready to embark on the next steps of their journey.
That should be the headline.
As the rhetoric around DEI continues to get louder for clicks, companies should continue to stand strong on their beliefs and not be bullied or forced by outside third parties and political interests to either keep their DEI teams or to eliminate them. Companies should act according to their brand values.
Perhaps most importantly, the numbers invested into all these programs matter. If you take into account the totality of the people, the families and the businesses whose lives and lifestyles have been enhanced by McDonald’s inclusion efforts, you’d see the human impact of making great business decisions.
And that’s what we should be discussing.
So, McDonald’s, keep evolving what you do, making progress toward empowering all Americans along the way.
I’m loving it.