Long before diversity, equity and inclusion became a trend for many businesses, Henry Beards was overseeing DEI initiatives at UPS. That's why the recently retired human resources executive is taken aback by negative attitudes toward the policies and programs he says were designed to create a fair workplace.
“I feel terrible about it,” says Beards, who spent 30 years in HR and now lives in Charlotte. “The program is set up to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to perform and get paid to perform based on their skills.”
These days, DEI programs in all forms are under a blistering attack. President Trump is dismantling DEI in the federal government. In North Carolina, the UNC System has banned those programs. Lawmakers in Raleigh have moved to eliminate DEI from K-12 schools and state government
Some businesses — including Lowe’s, Target, Walmart, and Amazon — that once celebrated their programs are reportedly eliminating or scaling back their policies.
Dr. Nikki Lanier runs a consulting firm that helps businesses prepare for the future workforce with strong multicultural teams and racial equity. She welcomes the current turbulence DEI is navigating.
“It’s proven itself to present an opportunity that perhaps we didn’t anticipate,” said Dr. Lanier, CEO of Harper Slade. “And the opportunity is for companies to spend time now to really unpack and assess what they are doing in the name of advancing softer landings for how different experiences work. What are they standing for in terms of articulating a point of view and building infrastructure around multiculturalism in the workforce?”
Beards says DEI was built on a foundation to do right by all employees. His job was to put guardrails in place that kept the company on track. The task of DEI was to spot potential problems.
“Did everybody get a fair opportunity to have this position?” Beards said he asked as an executive. “Was everybody communicated to? From a disability standpoint, do they have the opportunity to work in the environment, and do we need to make accommodations for those folks? So it helped executives as well to ensure that we’re doing the right thing and we’re fair to everybody.”
DEI becomes a hot topic
DEI has been front and center in the public discourse for years — first as a response to high-profile killings by police that led to riots, protests and soul-searching, and then as a potent political issue in the 2024 presidential campaign. Experts point to a confluence of events, including the police killings of innocent Black people such as Breonna Taylor in Louisville in March 2020. Two months later, George Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. Both deaths happened as the country was in lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lanier believes the timing — as the public faced health fears — forced everyone to confront harsh realities. While the killings sparked nationwide protests calling for police reforms and racial justice, other sectors of society also faced questions about how they treated people of color.
“I think that marked for us a cultural rupture,” Dr. Lanier said. “And so in those moments, DEI — the work — surged forward not because it was new, but because for many, the work finally became undeniable.”
Beards agrees that business leaders wanted to understand where their companies stood.
“I think it created awareness for folks just to go back and to assess what we do as far as training processes, policies, and programs. What does that look like in our individual areas?” Beards said.
Dr. Lanier explains that employee engagement also contributed to DEI taking center stage. With some workers struggling to cope, employees pulled back emotionally from their companies. Noticing that engagement was slipping, some business leaders began to discuss internal efforts to ensure the workplace reflected their communities and to establish equitable environments.
'A balance'
Many people are ambivalent about DEI programs in the workplace.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” said Sterling Dilkey, a sales professional in Charlotte. “Sometimes it feels excessive. I think qualifications should come first, but I also think everyone should have a chance. I think there’s a fine line, a balance.”
“I think there’s a lot of division, a lot of political scrutiny that people are getting in all races and all cultures,” Dilkey said. “I think that the media has set us against each other, and I think if everyone slowed down and heard each other, we’d be in a much healthier political climate.”
Lanier says the hasty pursuit of DEI programs in the wake of major controversies has led to problems.
“I think we made a couple of missteps that we’re now paying for, or at least having to pivot because of,” Dr. Lanier said. “The first was that we framed this as a crisis. And so the urgency of equity in 2020 was consumed as a crisis. And what we know about crises is that they have a beginning and an end.”
Lanier added, “In treating it like a fire drill, we were very reactive and fast-moving and emotionally charged. We weren’t a long-term kind of business transformational thinking.”
She said when the crisis faded, so did the energy, attentiveness, funding, infrastructure and courage. Lanier believes the proliferation of DEI consultants also contributed to the negative view of DEI.
“We had a lot of folks that were coming in from the social justice space, from academic spaces, and they weren’t necessarily organizational strategists,” Dr. Lanier explained. “They weren’t steeped in business transformational concepts.”
“For organizations hungry for help, they didn’t know how to vet for quality, fit and strategic alignment. They were just kind of reaching into the ecosystem of consultants and pulling out whoever was in front of them and then kind of plopping them in front of these conference rooms and in front of boards and in ways that I think did more harm than good.”
Lanier said some consultants’ “reckless use of language” and words such as white fragility, anti-racism and white supremacy used in the workplace led to “more isolation than invitation.”
Beards, the retired HR executive, reflects on the influences that he believes are twisting and mischaracterizing DEI.
“You start getting folks asking questions as to whether it is fair to the other side,” he said. “Are these programs set up to only concentrate on minorities and females?”
Will DEI survive?
Based on the work she’s doing, Lanier thinks companies are trying to regain their footing. Resume Templates, a company that works with job seekers to craft professional résumés, says its recent survey of 750 U.S. business leaders shows some companies that cut DEI programs are bringing them back.
“I would tell you a lot of companies are not scaling back. I think they’re renaming,” she said. “We don’t necessarily need to talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, but we do need to talk about employee engagement, workforce pipeline, and preparing yourself for the future of work — and the elasticity that your leaders will need to be comfortable with in navigating differences in the workplace. That’s what we talk about.”
Introspection, Beards believes, is what is needed in corner offices. Companies should undertake an honest assessment of what the initiatives accomplished and who benefited.
“They have to look at what it was doing as a whole. They really do,” he said. “If I go back and look and you can run your statistics and your stats, it really benefited more non-minority females.”
“I think it’s a good exploration,” Dr. Lanier said. “I hate how we had to get here, but I think the end result will be a more impactful and thoughtful DEI-related program where the principles outweigh the anchoring to the actual narrative.”