“Are you ok?”

If you have so much as glanced at the headlines in the past few months, you have seen reports of the bloodbath DEI programs are going through.

Given that my business focuses solely on advancing women at work, I have been the recipient of numerous phone calls, emails and other forms of messaging asking some version of, “Are you ok?”.

My answer? Yes. Our corporate business is down. ERGs are stepping in to make sure their members get high-quality leadership development, but there will always be women in the workforce, and thus always someone to support.  

Here are the trends I’m noticing: 

As a result of the anti-DEI movement, non-effective programs are going away.

In 2020-2023, seemingly every company launched diversity programs. Some of these programs were research-based and had a proven impact on advancement and retention. Some of these programs were the equivalent of grabbing a random person walking down the street and asking them to pontificate on their life experience. Both of these programs were labeled “DEI”.

The non-effective programs took diverse talent away from their promotable tasks (sometimes for multiple days) with no returns, effectively hurting these employees by diverting their attention to other things that will not help them advance.  

I’m okay with programs that eat up your time but don’t give you any results going away.

Effective programs are being tied more closely to business priorities.

I did not start a company to advance women so that I could work in DEI; I don’t care where the mechanisms to support professional women sit, I care that they exist.

Luckily, many companies feel the same way. What I’m seeing now is companies quietly keeping the effective programs and swinging them under Talent Development. This move ties these programs more closely to their business purpose, which is to advance and retain the talent that will enable the company to achieve its growth goals.  

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs, sometimes called BRGs, etc.) are stepping in to fill gaps.

A few years ago, many of the ERGs I encountered were focused on mostly social events while the DEI departments did the heavy lifting of upskilling and leadership development.

That world is no more. We are consistently fielding calls from ERGs who are stepping up to fill the void left and ensure their members get the support they need in business skills like negotiation, networking, career advancement strategies, and time management. (If you run an ERG and need support, please check out our offerings here.) 

One last thought: I fundamentally believe that “diversity wins”.

McKinsey has been researching the impact of diversity on companies’ financial performance for a decade. In 2015, they found that companies in the top quartile for diversity had a 15% greater likelihood of outperforming their peers. That number today? 39%. The financial case for diversity is getting stronger, not weaker. 

Previously, highly talented candidates couldn’t tell if the employer they were considering was honest in its DEI commitment or just loud.

Today, those folks know if a company is truly committed to their development. For that reason, we will continue to see anti-diverse companies leak talent and truly diverse companies gain it. This will accelerate the trend McKinsey already identified, rewarding diverse companies with even stronger financial returns. I expect that the next time McKinsey looks at the impact of diversity on financial performance, it will be significantly larger than 39%.

I, for one, will not spend a second thinking about those companies that choose to walk away from their talent and therefore sink to the bottom of the business abyss.