As layoffs hit diversity teams, leaders offer their perspectives on the state of DE&I progress

The police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 prompted a summer of racial reckoning, and with it a massive push for corporate diversity, as organizations sought to align themselves with the racial justice movement. While protestors flooded streets on a global scale, corporations made public statements that Black lives matter.

As Lauren Romansky, then managing director of global product management at Gartner, said in an internal company interview last year, DE&I leaders who struggled to implement change for years were suddenly called upon to facilitate a revolution. “Heads of DE&I, who used to be pushing for change, are now receiving so many inbound requests for plans and actions to do so,” she said.

For a moment, wheels began to turn as corporate America invested in diversity: Listings for “chief diversity officer,” “head of diversity & inclusion,” and “vice president of diversity & inclusion” jobs more than doubled on careers website Glassdoor between June and July 2020 and reached an all-time high by October. Last year, consultants were mobilized en masse to soothe racial tensions within workplaces and help leaders align their brands with social justice movements.

Nearly three years later, layoffs have torn through the tech industry, and HR and diversity teams have been on the chopping block. Many other chief diversity officers, meanwhile, have left their jobs. As a result, some DE&I professionals have expressed skepticism that efforts to place diversity at the forefront of the corporate agenda was only a rhetorical exercise in response to a summer of simmering tension.

“Unfortunately, we are still missing the incentives for the most powerful people in business to feel like this work matters,” Abadesi Osunsade, a DE&I consultant who was recently laid off from a global VP of inclusion and belonging position at a London-based tech company, told HR Brew.

While the shockwaves at prominent tech companies have DE&I leaders on edge, shareholders have begun demanding more transparency from corporate leaders on diversity data and initiatives—presenting glimmers of a foundation for change, Mandy Price, co-founder and CEO of DE&I service Kanarys, explained.

“This is something that companies will have to continue to prioritize, because of the various stakeholders holding them to account for it,” Price said.

CDO exodus. Chief diversity officers have one of the shortest tenures of C-suite executives, lasting an average of two years, according to Korn Ferry. They’ve been leaving their jobs in droves, even before the summer of 2020. Some 60% of S&P 500 CDOs left their jobs between 2018 and 2021, the same report found, and 56% of respondents to an April Korn Ferry survey said their company only created its CDO position after the summer of 2020.

For Osunsade, her VP position “was very much a role that was created in response to the cultural shift” spawned by the Black Lives Matter movement, she said. Though she expected to have a few years to implement a DE&I strategy, she “learned that my role was impacted due to macroeconomic conditions, and that my role wouldn’t be replaced.” Osunsade thinks her example is emblematic of broader experiences of DE&I leaders, and that the homogeneous makeup of the corporate world makes it difficult for those at the top to embrace DE&I.

“They’re not as intimately impacted by microaggressions, or issues unfolding in the news. So, it’s very difficult for them to understand why budgets need to be constantly carved out to support this work,” she argued.

Slow change. In the DE&I field, change is often incremental, sources previously explained to HR Brew. However, Price said that it’s starting to manifest in certain areas, especially in corporate boardrooms. Shareholders of Nike, Walmart, and other companies have pressured leadership to publicly release diversity data, normally only seen by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). A paper published last year by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance predicted a growing momentum behind corporate racial equity audits, writing that “companies will be pushed to critically and objectively examine their current internal practices and policies relating to equity and inclusion.”

Some changes in the legislative arena have also prompted what Price sees as movement in a positive direction. She pointed out the recent pay transparency law in New York City, and a new SEC rule requiring Nasdaq companies to maintain at least two “diverse board members” at all times, as signs of activism planting seeds for a new kind of corporate ethos on diversity.

Even as belt-tightening has pushed some organizations to trim their diversity budgets, Price said employee sentiment might force the pendulum back toward championing DE&I. “This is still something that is of critical importance to employees, and something that they want to see that their workplaces take seriously,” she said.—SB

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