SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
President Trump is ending what's known as DEI in the federal government, but corporate America has already been rolling back many DEI pledges for business as well as political reasons. NPR business correspondent Maria Aspan reports on the future of diversity in the workplace.
MARIA ASPAN, BYLINE: In 2020, after George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer, Corporate America made a lot of promises to fight racism. For example, many companies rolled out programs to increase diversity. This is Walmart's CEO, Doug McMillon.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DOUG MCMILLON: Social justice and equity are essential parts of our core business.
ASPAN: But today, things have changed. Walmart recently said it won't renew the funding for the racial equity center it launched in 2020. It joins McDonald's, Amazon, Facebook, and many others who are ending some diversity programs. A Walmart spokesperson tells NPR that the company is working to make all employees successful. The other companies have said similar things, but critics are pretty scathing. Portia Allen-Kyle runs Color of Change, a nonprofit focused on racial justice. Five years ago, she thinks a few companies really took their promises to heart, but she adds that for many others, it was business as usual.
PORTIA ALLEN-KYLE: The many who, you know, just wanted to sprinkle some DEI on top, especially after George Floyd, and, like, that was never going to be a viable strategy.
ASPAN: Conservatives have attacked DEI for years, claiming that it's reverse discrimination. But the backlash really started in 2023 after the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action at colleges and universities. And it's picked up speed since Donald Trump won reelection. But there's also a more subtle undercurrent here. Back in 2020, it was trendy for big companies to pledge to help workers and help the planet while still making more money. But they couldn't always follow through.
SEKOU BERMISS: It is always going to be difficult if you are a for-profit publicly traded company to have your leader talk about anything other than maximizing profits, right? Like, that is in the U.S., the way we are wired.
ASPAN: Sekou Bermiss is a management professor at the University of North Carolina, and he's pretty unimpressed with how big companies rushed into some DEI promises.
BERMISS: It was being pitched as kind of this, oh, diversity is always going to help the bottom line, and that - no one would ever say that that actually studies this. They'd say, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but it's never always.
ASPAN: Bermiss' research has found that when companies increase the diversity of their executive teams, they generally don't see a financial impact, good or bad. But there are benefits. Having a more diverse team can help create products that appeal to more consumers or help employees feel more satisfied with their jobs. Some big companies say, this is exactly why they're standing up to the diversity backlash. Costco, for example, recently told investors that its DEI policy helps it attract and retain employees. Costco also says diversity is part of its code of ethics. And Bermiss thinks that's exactly what more companies should be emphasizing.
BERMISS: Do we think representation is something we should do? It is the morally right thing to do? Because if yes, then you do it for that reason, not because you believe, well, if we get two more Latinos on the board, our stock price will go up.
ASPAN: Despite the headlines, some employers are still spending money on this. Paradigm, a company that advises employers on inclusion, saw a 12-percentage point increase last year in how many of its customers had dedicated budgets for DEI. Joelle Emerson is Paradigm's CEO.
JOELLE EMERSON: I see this less as a rollback of DEI and more as sort of an evolution to the next phase of this work based on evolving data, based on evolving understanding about what actually works to create workplaces that work for everyone.
ASPAN: Now, when companies like Walmart say they still want to make everyone feel included, Emerson hopes they'll follow through, even if they do it more quietly.
EMERSON: I'm actually pretty optimistic about the future of this work. I'm not optimistic about the acronym DEI, nor do I particularly care.
ASPAN: So the politically charged acronym might go away, but she hopes more diversity in the workplace is here to stay.
Maria Aspan, NPR News, New York. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.