The bloated and ineffective Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) professionals sector is now one of the major sufferers of the layoffs sweeping corporate America, according to new study.
According to data gathered by Revelio Labs, DEI teams reduced their headcount by approximately a third last summer as the IT sector let go of tens of thousands of employees. At the same time, other departments were only losing a fifth.
Outside the computer industry, “diversity” workers are being fired. According to analysts, retail giant Target set the pace, laying off 20 DEI employees in 2022. The top five companies were Capital One, Amazon, Applebee’s, and Wells Fargo.
As memories of George Floyd’s murder and the anti-racism demonstrations spurred fade, the cutbacks present difficult concerns for “Diversity Officers,” who have battled to remain relevant in business, achieving little gains despite big budgets.
Although DEI employees claim the positions increase morale across the board and attract more black, brown, female, and queer talent to companies, others have criticized the positions as a virtue-signaling exercise that encourages discrimination against heterosexual, white males.
Along with helping underrepresented groups get employment, DEI teams often run afoul of long-tenured workers due to their required training in dealing with racism, microaggressions, and even “white privilege.”
In interviews with laid-off DEI employees, DailyMail.com met with a California woman who said that her opinions on social problems made her “outspoken” at meetings and a Georgian who observed that popular DEI programs often fell short of their objectives.
A conservative policy organization’s director, Will Hild, said that he was not “surprised to see firms ultimately weary of supporting the wages of awakened activists who harass colleagues in the name of social governance.”
The creation of these departments often reflects pressure from awakened Wall Street elites to impose their progressive agenda on corporate America, he said. “These departments are products of a bloated corporate culture contributing little value to their companies.”
According to employment monitoring website Layoffs.fyi, tech companies Zoom, eBay, and Dell have recently joined the industry’s huge downsizing, which resulted in the loss of almost 150,000 jobs last year and is likely to continue apace till 2023.
When Elon Musk cut half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees after completing his acquisition of the social media company in October, he allegedly “brushed aside” diversity aspirations. Its Chief People and Diversity Officer, Dalana Brand, was one of those who left.
Bobby Berretta-Paris, who oversaw the LGBTQ+ initiatives at Tesla for five years, also made a significant exit from one of Musk’s businesses. Kristin Maczko, Google’s “Director of Global Mental Health and Well-being,” was also let go.
It is difficult to get an accurate picture of DEI layoffs. According to Target, DEI had overall growth in 2022. Researchers’ requests for response from Capital One, Wells Fargo, Applebee’s, and other corporations were not responded to by DailyMail.com.
Despite the 18,000 company-wide layoffs, according to Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser, the company’s “DEI goals have not altered”; the online retailer still employs “hundreds” of DEI specialists and plans to add more blacks, Hispanics, and veterans in the next months.
A human resources analytic company called Revelio sourced its information from open databases and job boards. Nevertheless, not all DEI employees utilize the initialism in their job titles; many of them performed regular roles in addition to working in the organization’s purported Employee Research Group (ERG).
A different personnel business, Textio, discovered that job postings for DEI jobs decreased by 19 percent last year, a greater decrease than for roles in law or other human resources.
Only data science and software engineering job postings had greater declines, at 24 and 27 percent, respectively.
The co-founder and CEO of Textio, Kieran Snyder, predicted that the surviving DEI teams would either be relocated or forced to juggle several tasks. She cautioned that they were “too crucial to be placed on a shelf when circumstances are rough.”
DailyMail.com talked to recently fired DEI employees, including a program manager at a logistics company in California that cut a quarter of its workforce this year and claimed to have just given lip service to diversification.
The 30-year-old woman, who requested anonymity, said that the IT industry is “dominated by white and Asian guys” and that her pleas for more funding for Black History Month and other similar events “fell on deaf ears.”
She said that “my outspokenness is part of the reason I was let off,” adding that most businesses were conservative with their DEI expenditure and “only do it to appeal to Gen Z and younger millennials.”
D’Jaris James, a DEI expert from Atlanta who was fired by ride-hailing company Lyft in November, claims the layoffs of her team showed how managers wanted to “hit profit” since many experts predicted a recession in 2023.
James said that the multibillion-dollar DEI sector was producing subpar returns on investment. She mentioned other $250,000 partnerships with black universities and other plans that fell short of creating a workforce that is more varied and integrated.
‘You’re not truly establishing procedures in inclusive communities where individuals can come in and flourish and develop into that environment, you’re just throwing funds into the label and idea of having varied pipelines,’ she said.
James’ worries are echoed by research on business diversity initiatives. In a 2018 Harvard University research, sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev came to the conclusion that these seminars were among the “most costly, and least successful” in the corporate sector.
Mandatory diversity training sessions on topics like “microaggressions” and “white privilege,” according to the Harvard Business Review, may make dominant groups feel like they are being singled out for criticism and “ignite prejudice or create a reaction” in the workplace.
According to Jenna Robinson, head of the academic think tank Martin Center, DEI teams generated conflict and hostility in American workplaces and had turned into “simply another type of administrative bloat.”
The fact that DEI teams are the first to be laid off when a recession begins “makes perfect sense,” according to Robinson.
Professional Studies at NYU While CEOs may seem to be abandoning DEI plans that can take years to yield fruit, Dean Angie Kamath said that she does not believe that “race and equality concerns are in the rearview mirror.”
Future business leaders, according to Kamath’s pupils, are not like their parents’ generation and “want to work for a company where they believe in the vision and in the authenticity of leadership,” she adds.
According to a survey conducted in 2020 by the market research company Quantilope, more than 75 percent of Gen Z customers valued “diversity and inclusion” at firms, compared to fewer than 50 percent of boomers.
According to Kamath, companies that rejected DEI teams will find it difficult to recruit talent from America’s most racially and ethnically diverse generation to date. Those that engage in DEI and “acknowledge it’s hard and necessary job” will persevere through it and prevail, she said.