Most recently, DEI policies have been unfairly blamed for the downfall of California’s Silicon Valley Bank, with conservative commentators and politicians attacking the lender’s “woke” policies as well as the state’s commitment to diversity in the workplace, The New York Times reports.
Texas and Florida also have been at the forefront in attacking DEI. The chief of staff for Texas governor Greg Abbott recently put out a memo noting that workplaces that support such initiatives discriminate against groups, which the memo did not identify, Quartz reports. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has pushed to kill DEI-focused programs and workplace commitments within its school system, while the state has pressed to end DEI workplace training programs.
If they have not already, business leaders need to hit back against the attacks and definitively show their commitment to DEI with their own employees as well as their customers and the wider greater public, Jeffrey Siminoff, senior vice president of the Workplace Dignity program at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, writes for Quartz. “In the end, this builds trust with employees and prospective employees, who increasingly care about matters of inclusion. Why? Because it shows them that core values are firmly rooted and don’t quickly yield to such pressures, particularly when the pressures either derive from misunderstanding about what the commitments actually are or are rooted in divisive narratives that put under-represented or vulnerable groups at even greater risk,” Siminoff writes.
Jeffrey Bowman, co-founder and CEO of Reframe, has seen employers falling behind on their DEI commitments, almost three years after Floyd’s murder, Employee Benefit News reports. His employee management firm aids companies and their HR staff to create more inclusive cultures. “We were made promises post-George Floyd that came with a lot of excitement and energy within corporations,” Bowman says. “But the fatigue sets in because there's more to do than corporations actually have the capacity to do.”
Bowman notes that even strong employer DEI commitments face huge obstacles when the workplace has long been set up to favor white cisgender men. “Many of these companies have been around for over 50 years—none of their systems were set up for Black and brown people,” he says. “They really didn't understand the amount of work change required. It's not something that will be fixed in two or three years.”
Bowman adds that "the ownership of DEI needs to be between the CEO and the chief human resource officer if you want more than small pockets of change.”
“Otherwise, it's not sustainable,” he says.
Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation, doesn’t have much faith in companies’ commitment to DEI. He says it’s no surprise that a recent study found the attrition rate for DEI officers is 33% (as of end-2022) versus 21% for non-DEI staff. “DEI officers are tasked with everything from changing hiring practices at a company to holding racist managers accountable, and yet they have no actual power to do these things,” Mystal writes. Mystal adds that “it’s not a surprise that these positions are being phased out, because it’s a no-win job in the first place.”