Already a subscriber?Last year, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly’s annual shareholders letter referenced the acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion 48 times. This year, DEI is nowhere to be found.
and Boeing’s safety woes, without providing evidence. Dozens of anti-DEI bills are being considered by state legislatures across the country, and DEI looks poised to become a wedge issue in this year’s presidential election. And many companies have held on to their programs since the Supreme Court ruled against Harvard and the University of North Carolina last June. Six months after the ruling, employment law firm Littler Mendelson reported that 91 per cent of the 320 executives surveyed said the ruling had not lessened their prioritisation ofBut that sentiment is far more subdued than it was in 2020, when corporate America poured more than $US50 billion into racial justice causes.
In its proxy statement last year, Starbucks said it was “holding our senior leaders collectively accountable” for goals that focused “on improvement in Black, Indigenous, and Latinx representation at the manager level”. It also had goals around executive mentorship for BIPOC employees, scores on inclusive leadership surveys and other metrics, Bueno says.
Betsy McManus, a spokeswoman for Starbucks, says the company has a goal of achieving “racial and ethnic diversity of at least 30 per cent at all corporate levels and at least 40 per cent at all retail and manufacturing roles by 2025” in the United States. Brewer Molson Coors, meanwhile, has erased DEI references from its “People & Planet” metrics, a change from last year. This year, it says, fostering an “inclusive culture” is central to its efforts. The company did not respond to a request for comment.Many large companies see a correlation between a diverse workforce and financial success, and routinely tout the “business case” for DEI.