Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives have been in retrenchment for the last couple of years, but 2025 is starting with a serious downturn. This has been politically driven by a less inclusive narrative in social discourse and led by governments, as well as legal challenges, particularly in the U.S., where it has been argued that initiatives to increase representation are failing to provide a level playing field. These changes, subtle at first, have become more aggressive and overt, for example Mark Zuckerberg expressing that he wants more ‘masculine energy’ at Meta and Amazon sending explicit instructions for staff to ‘wind down’ DEI programs.
But not every employer is falling in line, and so we are inadvertently starting a field experiment to see the impact of these choices on hiring, retention and talent progression.
Research Supports DEI
DEI research has show that an employer’s brand and public presentation matters when it comes to attracting the applications. Research shows that employees interpret signals from news articles, policies and social media that can be interpreted as an employer brand, and that this affects who applies. A strong brand is associated with fairness, and the likelihood that ‘people like me’ will be able to get along well and progress within the company. When you limit who you represent, you limit your pool of applicants.
Despite this well established relationship in Strategic Human Resources Management, Amazon, McDonald’s and Meta are publicly heading in the opposite direction. In doing so, these companies are directly sending the signal that race/ethnic minorities, women and people from LGBTQ+ identities are no longer their target employee or talent. Nor, I might add, white cisgendered heterosexual males who want to work in inclusive environment. These demographics make up well of half of the human population of their existing staff, their prospective hires and, critically, their customers.
Direction Of Travel
Some of these announcements represent a u-turn from previous corporate “values”. For example, McDonald’s has been lauded for its career progression support, which has achieved significant success at supporting working class people to becoming qualified managers. Current employees may experience the change as betrayal, leading to serious motivation, productivity and retention issues. Meta and Apple were once ranked highly as employers, but have slipped in recent years, with workers citing toxic culture hallmarks of excess, unpaid working hours and lack of transparency.
But here we diverge. Whilst Amazon, McDonalds and Meta are basically giving up trying on inclusion, Apple is pushing back. These companies claim they have sufficient legal protections in place to avoid the challenges seen of late in the U.S. and are publicly stating their commitment to minoritized and marginalized staff. It signals authenticity in their efforts. This will certainly win them favours with younger recruits, research from Deloitte indicates that Gen-Z and Millenial recruits favour purpose-led businesses with inclusive cultures. The next year or two will see how well a positive attitude to diversity impacts on productivity and profitability.
Risky Business
Management science indicates that these changes are a very risky business. Presumably someone in the HR departments have raised these concerns before and it makes one wonder who finds these inflammatory, derogatory comments logical. Or, is it possible that the corporate behemoths consider themselves too big to fail? History has not been kind to that sort of confidence.