Muminat Adekunle, MBA Alumna from Warwick Business School, sounds the alarm over recent attacks on diversity & Inclusion. For her, by eroding DEI, companies risk more than just bad PR – they risk losing talent, innovation, trust and positive workplace culture.

DEI: Liability or legacy? by Muminat Adekunle.

Should DEI die?

This is the question currently echoing through boardrooms all over the world. After years of screaming DEI from loud corporate megaphones and brandishing bold LinkedIn banners for many years, companies – big and small – are now publicly axing DEI.

It really begs the question – were they wrong all along and this is perhaps an eureka moment to correct a fallacy? Or perhaps, is it just a convenient retreat, a business decision that favours capitalism? And if not, what changed? 

The great corporate divide

From his first day in office, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, made his position clear, declaring war on what he called the “social engineering” of race and gender in public and private institutions. The weeks that followed would witness what could only be described as the great DEI divide of the corporate world. Companies that once wore their DEI commitments like diamond trophies are shedding off the tag like old skin; as though diversity and inclusion was a temporary phase of corporate adolescence.

Firms that once brandished their DEI stance with shiny press releases are making 360-degree U-turns. Meta, which had in 2020 set a five-year goal to increase the number of underrepresented employees by 30%, publicly abandoned that ambition in the very year it was meant to be achieved. Amazon, another “poster child company” for DEI progressivism, has also outright rescinded its DEI commitments.

Others have opted for a more discreet exit, quietly deleting DEI website pages, renaming relevant teams to softer labels of “belonging,” “access,” or “engagement, donning a new garment for the movement. A few remain stoic in their DEI stance, braving political pressures. What we are seeing isn’t just a shift; it’s a schism. One that may have dire consequences far beyond sustainability reports.

Does it even matter?

Research reveals that diversity is actually good for business and not just for investor relations and sustainability report optics. According to McKinsey’s 2023 “Diversity Matters Even More” report, companies with gender and ethnic diversity of their executive team are 39% more likely to outperform companies with lower diversity. That’s not social engineering. That’s strategy.

Diverse teams are not just checkbox concepts. They see challenges from more angles. They design better products, avoid tone-deaf campaigns and reach wider markets (McKinsey, 2023). Ask Unilever, whose inclusive design principles helped grow market share in underrepresented regions. Or Nike, whose investment in minority communities initiatives did not just tell stories of inclusion; it exponentially impacted their consumer base.

Even ESG investors are paying attention. Inclusion metrics are fast becoming part of sustainability indices and creditworthiness assessments. In other words, if a company is not thinking inclusively, it’s already behind. So when companies say they are scrapping DEI to focus on “performance,” it is worth asking: which performance? Short-term comfort or long-term competitive advantage?

By treating DEI as a business liability instead of a systemic opportunity, companies risk more than bad PR. They risk losing talent, innovation, consumer trust and ultimately, the kind of workplace culture that can make them prosperous.

What changed?

DEI began as a solid conviction. A rallying cry. A long overdue acknowledgement that fairness, access and representation could no longer be something that was optional.

Somehow, something changed along the way. It became polished. It became this shiny thing that companies did so they could have a big, fat sustainability report that screamed diversity to potential investors and partners. And it became performative; something companies had to do to look good. It was the buzzword of corporate reports and conferences and for a while, it served its purpose. Until it did not.

The danger in abandoning DEI lies not just in the rebranding but in the reasoning. If the argument is that inclusion “lowers standards” or “creates division,” then it is obvious that the way some companies perceived it was quite flawed in the first place. Scrapping DEI because it is “politicised” is like quitting a marathon because the weather changed. If fairness is being branded as divisive and unfair to those with none, then perhaps diversity, as it was portrayed by brands, was an illusion and not representative of inclusion at all. It was a façade that became an inconvenience to capitalism.

And yet, there lies the greatest irony. In his justification for scrapping DEI, President Trump himself echoes what DEI truly represents: a “colour-blind, merit-based” ideology that stands for one thing – fairness. A system where everyone gets a fair shot. One that demands transparency for transparency; and asks that people be seen, heard and treated with dignity. It asks that opportunity should not depend on the gender, race, religion or caste. It asks that accent should not determine the speed of one’s ascent on the corporate ladder. That fairness be real, not rhetorical. And now, even DEI is losing its voice.

Culture eats labels for breakfast

But maybe that’s the point. When all is said and done and buzzwords have been wiped from the websites, expunged from LinkedIn banners and the rainbow branding fades off, what remains?

Culture. Not the carefully curated one that has been carefully packaged into policy and onboarding documents. The real one. The one that determines who speaks and who stays silent; who gets promoted and who is promised promotion. The one that determines how people treat others when HR isn’t looking. DEI never needed branding; it needed breath. Breath to live within organisations and shape how things actually work. Changing the label does not change the culture.

The decision to scrap DEI in response to political pressure — or because it’s no longer the PR gold it once was — should give any responsible business a pause on whether the company’s culture is built on conviction or convenience? If inclusion was only ever sustained by acronyms, then perhaps, optics was the real objective and not culture.

A label can make a company look progressive. A culture makes a company progressive. So yes, companies can choose to drop the label if they must and rename DEI as “Belonging,” “Culture,” or whatever gets past their legal team but unless the lived experience of employees shifts, it is all just DEI greenwashing. If people still feel excluded, silenced or flattened into sameness, then the transformation remains superficial. Unlike language, culture does not tell lies.

To be or not to be…diverse?

So, should DEI die? Perhaps, the bigger question is: what happens if it does? And more importantly, what if it doesn’t?

DEI was never a branding question or a linguistic expression. It was always a business one. A leadership one. A human one. The acronym may be fading from slide decks and web pages, but the need for inclusion is not. If anything, it’s more urgent in a world that is more polarised and more diverse than ever. Inclusion, by any name — or no name at all — is what enables companies to solve better, build smarter, matter more and matter longer.

So call it “belonging,” call it “culture” or call it “dsjhfsdhgfjhgdfhgi”. Ultimately, what matters is not the outfit but the substance and DEI is more than a name. So the real question companies should ask is, “Can people truly thrive here without needing to conform to be accepted?” Until that question can be answered with conviction — and action — DEI will remain a label. Not a lived experience.

Useful links:

• Link up with Muminat Adekunle on LinkedIn
• Read a related article: Navigating the Maze: The inherent paradoxes of workplace justice in DEI
• Download this and other articles in the special issue Global Voice magazine #32
• Discover Warwick Business School
• Apply for an MBA at Warwick.

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