A reassessment of diversity goals could create more inclusive and fairer organisational cultures, argues the London Business School’s Elinor Flynn
In the past few weeks, the world’s largest retailer, Walmart, became the latest company in the US to announce that it is significantly reducing its emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and has cut several diversity initiatives. Like other organisations making similar announcements, Walmart’s pivot seems to be rooted in a combination of concerns about exposure to legal risks following the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action combined with pressure from conservative stakeholders. In response, the organisation has said it remains committed to “foster[ing] a sense of belonging for all”, suggesting it is aiming for a climate of inclusion rather than a set of formal initiatives.
As a diversity scholar, I understand why many supporters of DEI are dismayed by these changes and rollbacks. The growing chorus of announcements of DEI cuts and proclamations that “DEI is dead” makes it seem like the workplace diversity gains made in the past several years are at risk of being undone. However, I want to propose that the corporate reckoning around diversity taking place right now represents opportunities for organisations to reevaluate and potentially shift their approach to DEI, without abandoning the same core principles and goals of increased fairness, inclusion and representation.
Diversity initiatives
Walmart scales back diversity initiatives
The first opportunity this moment presents is taking an honest inventory of whether your organisation has embraced diversity initiatives that are most likely to be effective versus the easiest to implement.
Reactance to DEI is not all in bad faith; decades of research shows the efficacy of diversity initiatives is mixed at best, with many initiatives provoking unintended consequences such as increased negative stereotyping of target groups or negative organisational perceptions. What is more, recent research indicates that the diversity practices that are most likely to be adopted by companies, such as mandatory diversity or implicit bias training, tend to be the least effective. In contrast, formal mentoring programmes or targeted recruitment are less often used but more likely to be effective.
Ultimately, the source of many of the challenges that underrepresented groups face are rooted in organisational cultures and thus call for deeper reassessments of norms and expectations about how work gets done and assessed. Rather than defending all forms of DEI investment on principle, we should encourage organisations to be more discerning and take an evidenced-based view about what they invest in and why. In the long run, this is likely to increase the perceived credibility of both DEI research and practice in ways that will make DEI more sustainable over time.
Behavioural nudges
The second opportunity this moment presents is to consider implementing practices that are not explicitly “DEI initiatives”, and thus may be less likely to elicit backlash, but which nevertheless advance diversity goals. An emerging body of work suggests that organisations can still achieve their aims of more diverse representation outside of traditional DEI approaches, such as through behavioural “nudges”. Nudges are interventions designed to shift behaviour by changing the context in which choices are made without limiting the options available or changing incentives. For example, making hiring decisions in groups, instead of in sequential isolated decisions, can prompt decision makers to be more attuned to the diversity of the pool when deciding who to interview or hire. Other work suggests if you give managers feedback about their prior decisions (for example, 25% of the people you interviewed were racial minorities, compared with 37% on average by your peers), you can increase their motivation to be more inclusive going forward.
Nudges can also be designed to target the behaviour of underrepresented groups the organisation is seeking to support. For example, when it comes to applying for a promotion, shifting the default from opt-in (you must decide to apply) to opt-out (everyone is considered, unless you take yourself out of the running) or making the qualifications required for job opportunities more transparent have both been shown to increase women’s applications to male dominated positions.
The beauty of nudges is that they are cost-effective strategies that can help organisations achieve diversity targets while avoiding the critique that managerial decision-making is being constrained or that they are anti-meritocratic. As a result, they can help organisations attract more diverse talent and overcome bias, while making organisations less vulnerable to claims of reverse discrimination.
A final opportunity centres around changing the way leaders talk about diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Despite evidence that diversity in the workplace creates discomfort for people from all backgrounds, organisational leaders are very hesitant to acknowledge this reality and instead tend to discuss DEI in a uniformly positive way because they are afraid that doing otherwise will make them seem prejudiced.
However, paradoxically, research that I conducted with researchers at New York University and the University of Minnesota has found that when leaders instead adopt a more nuanced framing of DEI – one which acknowledges diversity offers benefits and presents challenges (contingent diversity rhetoric) – leaders are actually more successful at motivating employees to engage in diversity initiatives. What is more, we found that by presenting a more realistic view of DEI, not only do leaders not come across as prejudiced, they increase employees’ awareness that making DEI successful for the organisation requires collective effort and responsibility. Therefore, our findings suggest that organisations are more likely to be successful at meeting their diversity goals by shifting their diversity rhetoric to be more balanced and realistic.
A change of approach
In conclusion, the scaling back of investment in DEI need not represent a wholesale abandonment of the goals of greater equity and inclusion in the workplace. Rather it represents an opportunity for organisations to re-evaluate whether their current strategy is working as intended. Although appetite for DEI investment may be changing, organisations will expose themselves to serious risks – reputationally and competitively – if they do not remain committed to increased fairness and inclusion, and significant proportions of employees continue to say that an organisation’s diversity is an important factor they weigh when deciding whether to apply for a job. Therefore, let this be a moment in which organisations commit to a more nuanced and evidenced-based approach to diversity, which increases the likelihood of realising the benefits of more inclusive and fair organisational cultures, while reducing reactance and scepticism.
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