Several organisations including Amazon and Meta have ditched their diversity goals and programmes. Goldman Sachs have become the latest company to scrap their diversity programmes following the Trump administration’s signing of an executive order which was aimed at ending "radical and wasteful government DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] programs". However, when probed over whether businesses were suddenly changing policies around diversity due to the White House’s position, Richard Gnodde, Goldman Sachs vice chair, said: "I can only speak for ourselves, I don't think that's the case,” instead explaining the company felt “that [DEI] policy was put in place to try and drive a change in behaviour and I think that's happened.".
DEI programmes were put in place at Goldman Sachs to pledge that they would only aid a business listing shares on a stock exchange if it had two diverse board members, one of which had to be a woman. The policy came into effect in 2020 for organisations looking to move public. "I think what is important is that you have a diversity of views on that board and if you look at these companies they've all embraced diversity, it's moved along,” Mr. Gnodde said. "I think it has served its purpose. Our ambitions are to continue to take things forward and frankly to go much further than we have been.".
Google, Meta and Amazon are among the other companies to recently scale back or remove their DEI programmes and goals. Meanwhile, after reports in the Financial Times that Deloitte were also set to “sunset” their DEI programmes in the US, the boss of Deloitte UK has signalled they remain “committed to our diversity goals”. Labour are set to contrast with the US further in this regard, planning to bolster DEI protections including introducing mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting and strengthening employment rights.
Professor Keon West recently wrote for The Independent to explain what science and studies say about Trump’s approach and how it would impact on DEI - noting that while “ DEI’s track record of successfully improving diversity and inclusion” was “inconsistent”, years of research indicated Trump’s executive order would not accomplish any of the goals it set out to. Indeed, making them worse was a more likely outcome.
