For the past year, it’s appeared that corporations have been “consumed by panic” over conservative criticism on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, wrote Taylor Nicole Rogers for the Financial Times. However, a dozen executives have told Rogers that despite the backlash, it hasn’t affected their company’s DEI initiatives.
Out of the 194 chief human resource officers that research group The Conference Board surveyed late last year, none of them said they planned to downsize their DEI programs in 2024. However, a number of Silicon Valley corporation cut diversity budgets last year in response to fears of a recessive, and lawsuits prompted companies such as Comcast, Goldman Sachs and Pfizer to make initiatives that were developed for racial minorities available to all employees.
Many corporations continue to focus on diversifying their workforce, Rogers wrote, with Disney boosting the number of executives that identify as a person of color from 21% to 28.5% over the past five years and Nike growing its representation of ethnic minorities from 56% to 63% over the past seven years.
“It is quite bold of them, considering how much legal action is being taken against companies, so my hat’s off to them,” Ken Janssens, cofounder of Windō, which aggregates data from hundreds of companies, told Rogers. “While [other companies] might tout DEI less publicly, they will stay the course.”
