The majority (85%) of companies globally now have a DE&I budget, and nearly one-half plan to increase it in the coming year, survey finds

While some reporting has suggested that businesses are backing off DE&I, a new survey found that most companies made it a bigger priority over the past year, and that leaders largely believe DE&I has a positive impact on their business.

“Even with some of the pushback people are getting, DE&I is still an investment for people,” Carin Taylor, chief diversity officer at Workday, exclusively told HR Brew. “We’re seeing that through the investment that people are continuing to make with budgets around DE&I.”

Nearly all (97%) companies have at least one DE&I initiative, and 78% prioritized it more over the last year, Workday found in its 2024 global survey of 2,600 HR professionals and business leaders. Companies also appear to be putting their money where their mouth is: 85% have a dedicated DE&I budget, compared to 76% in 2022, and 45% foresee increasing their DE&I budget over the next financial year, up from 35% in 2023.

“We’ve seen a lot over the last year or so, around people being fearful around some of their DE&I efforts,” Taylor said, noting that she’s not sure if business leaders will double down on DE&I or pull back, but that companies will review their company strategies and values. She believes that companies doing DE&I “for the right reasons” will push forward, regardless of the political climate.

Whether investments in DE&I initiatives are driven by internal or external pressures, the data suggests workers are the common denominator. Most (66%) organizations cited internal pressure from their leaders and employees as the main internal driver for investment, while the desire for a strong employer brand was the primary external force.

Workday also found that US organizations in particular cited business success and results, attracting and recruiting a diverse workforce, and promoting employees from underrepresented backgrounds as main motivators for continuing DE&I efforts.

With motivators driving programs forward, executives are increasingly examining the impacts of DE&I on their businesses. While just 23% of US organizations were measuring the business impacts of DE&I in 2022, that number increased to 82% a year later. Companies mainly examine employee engagement, diversity metrics (most commonly gender and age), and performance to DE&I performance indicators.

All in all, the majority of respondents believe that DE&I is having a positive impact on business outcomes. It appears to have had the biggest influence on engagement, with 74% of respondents saying they’ve seen an impact, followed by belonging and inclusion, health and well-being, performance, and retention.

Data in perspective. While Indeed data showed a decline in the number of DE&I roles advertised last summer, LinkedIn found that “VP of DE&I” is still among the fastest growing jobs in the US. And a recent report from Littler Mendelson, an employment law firm, found that the majority of CEOs expanded their DE&I programs in the last year.

Looking ahead. While nearly one-half (49%) of companies track diversity metrics, just 39% measure inclusion and belonging. Taylor told us that companies need to focus more on inclusion and belonging for DE&I programs to succeed moving forward.

She recommended companies look not just at their diversity metrics but at intersectionality to understand how people belong, and where leaders can make targeted improvements. Taylor also suggested that companies not shy away from their DE&I initiatives or the word “diversity,” as some have done in response to political pushback.

“What would be more important is for us to continue to have dialogue around what the word means as opposed to stripping it from our language because it makes us feel uncomfortable or we don’t understand it,” she said. “I would love to see us just go a little bit deeper on really helping people to understand what diversity is and the fact that everybody is diverse.”