How to Stand Up When It Comes to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Recently, several high-profile U.S. organizations have backtracked on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments. Rural chain store Tractor Supply said it would eliminate DEI roles and goals, and farm equipment company John Deere said it would no longer sponsor social or cultural awareness events. Their reversals were joined by what might seem like an unlikely ally: the Society for Human Resource Management, which in July announced that it would drop the term equity from its initiatives toward fairer workforces to focus instead on just diversity and inclusion.

I’m not a trained HR professional, nor a SHRM member, but I’ve talked to enough of them to know that SHRM’s decision caused an uproar. SHRM CEO Johnny Taylor tried to explain the decision by telling Axios in an interview, “We can’t come in and have a legitimate conversation with senior management when people are debating [what the ‘e’ means].”

But HR professionals I know are not having this debate. They understand that equity isn’t equality. They know we’re talking about equal access to opportunity, not trying to solve all of society’s issues.

What’s going on here? Loud voices are talking about workplace fairness issues, and they’re getting it all wrong. They’re pushing for a retreat, acting as a voice for all, when a majority of Americans support DEI and want a rational conversation about the benefits of inclusion. Organizations’ retreat in the face of activist social media criticism and other judgmental voices at the table might do more harm than good when it comes to a critical set of stakeholders: their employees.

Recent research, and my own experience dealing with team performance issues rooted in diversity, show that companies feeling the heat for their DEI efforts would be smart to slow down and focus on two things. First, they need to understand the consequences of giving in to the loudest voices outside their company. And second, they need to double down on building healthy engagement instead of polarization around diversity, equity, and inclusion inside their organizations.

The Dangers of Backing Off DEI Efforts

There are two challenges behind walking away from DEI work, even if the walk back is fairly modest in nature.

First, DEI programs are getting more popular with employees, not less. A growing majority of employees across gender, race, age, and political affiliation have an improved view of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the workplace. Americans increasingly agree that the goal of DEI programs is to “improve business outcomes” versus pushing a political agenda, and that belief is up 4 percentage points from last year overall, and up 9 percentage points among Republicans, according to research published in July by Edelman.

The group of people driving the backlash against DEI are out of sync with the opinions held and benefits seen by employees. In Edelman’s survey, which drew from 3,200 respondents, 75% of people agreed that workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are an effective way to address racism. It’s a phenomenon that’s growing: Fifty-six percent of workers over 55 said “an inclusive work culture with a well-supported diversity program is critical” to attracting and retaining them — up from 41% last year. And 86% of Democrats and 86% of Republicans (not a typo) said they are more likely to recommend their employer if their workplace has DEI programs, Edelman’s research says.

Across these groups, of course, are different levels of support, often driven by their own experiences with issues like microaggressions and bias in advancement. For example, the trendlines among younger (those under 30) women and men at work have diverged over the past five years. According to Lean In’s 2024 report “Women in the Workplace,” the percentage of younger women saying that gender diversity matters to them rose from 68% to 71% between 2019 and 2024. For younger men, it fell from 48% to 38%. The two groups reported different lived realities: Forty-two percent of younger women said their gender will make it harder for them to advance, compared to 11% of younger men.

The second challenge of capitulating on DEI commitments is that it doesn’t settle the issue with employees or customers. Internally, backtracking on DEI can create a firestorm of reactions among employees for what are increasingly popular programs. Tractor Supply, which went furthest in capitulation, faces a backlash from its own customer base, many of whom are both rural and diverse, including the National Black Farmers Association.

The bigger concern should be that, as Princeton professor Betsy Levy Paluck recently described to organizational psychologist Adam Grant on his podcast, what leaders say and what they support or do not support can shift the norms of acceptable behavior. For example, an employee calling a colleague “an affirmative action hire” would generally violate antidiscrimination laws. By walking back their commitment to diversity programs, companies may be inadvertently signaling a tolerance for that type of behavior.

Employees want companies to stand strong. Edelman’s research found that 76% want companies to recommit, not retreat. They said companies should address the criticism when DEI initiatives are attacked internally or externally, by defending the work and inviting conversation.

But how do you defend the work effectively and invite conversation without creating another set of firestorms?

How to Have Real Conversations About Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

In my 25 years of building and leading teams in technology companies, which often lacked diversity in leadership, I’ve seen issues of inclusion create real challenges for teams that impede the work. I’ve also seen how diversity can enhance organizational performance — but not without continual efforts.

Here are three approaches that I’ve used.

Let people voice their concerns about DEI programs. Don’t stifle the conversation or run away. According to employees, the top factors that would help them understand the sincerity of companies’ DEI efforts are allowing open dialogue and anchoring programs back to company values.

When I worked at Google and Slack, I found that the basic corporate training around diversity issues was helpful but not as effective as a team conversation about core concerns like bias in hiring. Some people were concerned we might be lowering the bar for diverse candidates, whereas others saw potential for unfair bias in the process.

As a team, we talked about the value of establishing a level playing field based on merit and building an unbiased process — two goals that can easily be aligned. My leadership team committed to ensuring we had a diverse slate of candidates, representation in the hiring process, and clarity around the skills we would assess to make hiring decisions. Getting specific helped build a common understanding and aligned us around our values.

Use the words diversity, equity, and inclusion — not DEI. Explain what the words mean, correct misinformation, and tie them back to business results. The term DEI, like ESG, can draw almost automatic emotions from people. I’ve found that describing what we mean by each word and how each might play out to the advantage of the business helps get past some of that emotional reaction. Picking up on the story above, what we were doing was building equity into the hiring process, not equality: We weren’t setting targets or quotas for hiring. But we were working hard to create a level playing field for talent.

A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll shows the power of explanation. While 61% of the 2,274 Americans polled said they support “diversity, equity, and inclusion programs,” the level of support rose to 69% when survey participants were given this more detailed definition: “programs to hire more employees from groups that are underrepresented in their workforce, such as racial and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities and to promote equity in the workplace.”

Citing the litany of studies that show how diversity reduces the risk of groupthink, increases innovation, and improves company performance is a decent starting point for tying diversity efforts back to business results. But wherever feasible, it’s better to get specific about how a lack of inclusion is holding us all back.

At Google, I took on leadership of a team that had some deeply rooted diversity issues. Women who had greater expertise in their field were often being talked over by men and unable to get their points across — an issue of inclusion. The women on the team also believed that they were being promoted less frequently than men regardless of merit — an issue of equity.

From a business perspective, the mansplaining was holding us back. It didn’t take a lot of conversations in smaller groups to find out that the people being ignored or talked over had key information for improving the performance of a struggling product. That understanding didn’t lead to a loud berating of men but instead private coaching conversations with a few leaders who had the opportunity to set a different tone.

Keep in mind that memos don’t create trust; employee engagement does. Let’s face it, too often executive communications are scripted and stilted when it comes to diversity-related issues. That’s not unexpected: These topics can feel like dangerous, unfamiliar territory to most senior executives. So it’s important not just to help them understand how to ask questions and engage but to make space for employees to lead the conversation and propose improvements.

I was the executive sponsor of Mahogany, Slack’s employee resource group for Black employees. One of the key lessons I learned is the importance of making space for private conversations among members of the group, as well as open conversations with allies and executives. I found that supporting the ability of groups to talk through issues among themselves, as well as hearing from senior leaders, was a valuable way to earn people’s trust.

At Google, I supported the team creating a working group to talk through a litany of issues and make proposals. This included resetting our norms for meetings. Our team was distributed across cities, and women in operations roles were more likely to be in remote offices. The issue of being talked over was exacerbated by being remote — the male leaders in the room dominated the conversation. Simple rules like “remote office goes first” when someone is looking to talk — and having a moderator in the main room at headquarters who would help them break in — made a huge difference.

Small, simple actions like those helped alleviate concerns and wouldn’t have come out of executive talking points.

If you’re an executive and you understand the importance of not only having a diverse group of people around the table but also building an inclusive environment where you can get the best out of them, it’s your duty to build that environment where feasible. And that means speaking up when misinformation is being thrown around.

Your employees are looking to you to stand up to the anti-DEI heat. Given that Gen Z, who will make up over a quarter of the U.S. workforce in 2025, is 51% white and 49% Latino or Hispanic, Black, Asian or Pacific Islander, Native American, or mixed race, this is no longer optional. If you’re not already investing in building teams that are diverse, inclusive, and grounded in equitable access to opportunity, you’re not only falling behind — you’re letting down your own employees.

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