Microsoft fires DEI team: ‘No longer business critical’
Microsoft laid off a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team this month, seemingly because DEI initiatives are “no longer smart.”
‘Changing business needs’
"True systems-change work associated with DEI programs everywhere are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020," a team leader wrote in an email to thousands of employees, according to Business Insider. The team leader also suggested that Microsoft has “changing business needs” that are not aligned with DEI programs.
Microsoft was one of several tech giants and corporations that invested in DEI ideology after the death of George Floyd in 2020. At the time, the company vowed to double the number of Black executives by 2025.
A corporate trend?
The move to ditch DEI appears to be part of a recent trend among the very corporations who first turned DEI into a multimillion dollar industry four years ago. But as corporate giants such as Meta, Twitter, and Salesforce began looking closely at their bottom lines in 2022, DEI teams became among the first to go. The Gold Report reported last year that diversity executives have been laid off at a rate about 40% higher than their colleagues, according to an analysis by Revelio Labs. Hanold Associates Executive Search CEO Jason Hanold said there has been a 75% drop in searches for chief diversity officers (CDOs).
As of February 2023, Amazon, Twitter, and Nike each shed 5–16 DEI employees and, given the fact that the median DEI team size is three employees, “these outflows likely amount to the exodus of entire diversity teams,” reported the Daily Wire.
During the pandemic, some companies appointed employees to be diversity executives simply because they had the “right” skin color. But now Hanold says that 60% of diversity roles are being combined with other positions in the same company, a 10% increase from last year. Many CDOs, seeking to branch out of DEI, are looking for hybrid roles that will transition them into other positions.
According to an analysis of 575 earnings calls between April 1st and June 5th, mentions by executives of “diversity, equity and inclusion,” “DEI” or “sustainability” have dropped 31% compared to the same period last year. Most of the executives who have grown silent are chief financial officers.
