(Formerly published February 26, 2024 to LinkedIn.)

Three years ago, sites like Indeed, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Monster, and ZipRecruiter were littered with DEI job postings. Companies were making global statements on their commitment to DEI. Now, not so much. What happened? This question deserves serious contemplation.

Many people hurried to put DEI expertise on resumes. Face it: no one wants to miss the party and the DEI party was in full swing. Oh, so much good intention. Companies rushed like rats in bright lights to create the illusion (or maybe we should say delusion) of DEI. Was the purpose a quick fix with little forethought? What really motivated this rush to onboard DEI officers and new hires? What caused the current slowdown? Why have we witnessed so much DEI pushback? More importantly, where do we go from here?

We do not have to look extremely hard to find problematic conversations about DEI initiatives and programs. Fortune (2024) recently highlighted the wave of DEI-backlash lawsuits that companies want to avoid. Interestingly, Harvard Business Review (2023) contributors argued that DEI programs often threaten employees’ senses of status, merit, and moral ideals which leads to multiple forms of resistance. Could this be from lack of DEI program forethought? I think so.

At least two glaring and unwanted results have occurred. The first is that many companies have actively excluded one group to advance another. When DEI is a quick-fix, band-aid approach discrimination, against one group to advance another, no one wins. The looming lawsuits attest to this. Additionally, in a quick-to-fix culture, the deemphasis of merit-based selection and promotion can occur. Finally, employees can feel threatened leading to suppressed innovation and profitability.

A second result is negative economic and social impact. DEI is now a dirty word to many, but as currently applied this should not be a surprise. A quick Google search for DEI “challenges” results in a maelstrom of DEI controversy articles suggesting that we are doing far less economic and social good than we want.

Merit gets lost and so does the personally rewarding drive to do well together

It is naïve to assume that most people do not want to do well. Doing well depends on others. Minus a few narcissists who think success is achieved in isolation and, despite others, success requires the help of many others along the way. Mrs. Jewel Blevins, Ms. Kelli Hopkins, and Ms. Karen Halverson Cross are just a few of my teachers who provided me with help along the way. My life is filled with folk who pushed and inspired me to succeed. Consequently, intentionally excluding one group to advance another is the opposite of doing well together. In fact, because of the growing diversity within the US and the connectedness among nations, doing business requires interacting with and impacting all kinds of groups. We should not set ourselves up for failure through DEI efforts that exclude certain groups. Doing well depends on doing well together. Inclusion without excluding is possible and should be the goal of DEI efforts.

Additionally, if some people have merit as their guiding performance measure, yet other groups have DEI plus merit, trust in advancement and reward processes may be at stake. Additionally, if DEI attributes overshadow merit, it can lead to loss of motivation, reduced performance, and suppressed innovation. Finally, the ability to do well depends on access to support inside and outside the company. If one group has access to a variety of resources not available to another group, the denied group may not reach its potential.

Still, some readers may ask, “but what about those groups who have been historically disadvantaged? Doesn’t the end, DEI efforts to assure diversity, justify the means?” The answer is “no.” What we have been doing is not working. We are not getting the kinds of results we need.

Negative economic and social impact results

Negative economic impact

We already know that current DEI initiatives can lead to expensive lawsuits. Additionally, DEI may consume valuable organizational resources needs while other needed resources are depleted. Company culture, efficient decision-making, and profitability may suffer. It is all connected. Diversity of worldviews, the representation of multiple lived experiences, ongoing conversations about diverse cultural practices, and trusted systems of merit are necessary for economic success.

DEI initiatives, a multicultural approach to hiring, balancing the scale or whatever euphemism is currently in vogue should create an environment where all people from all groups are valued and given the opportunity to succeed. Doing well depends on doing well together.

Negative social impact

Ideally, DEI should be about “do no harm” As currently applied, it often results in doing harm. Too many employees have felt threatened by DEI efforts, just ask around. “Defending” the status quo, “denying” the value of organizational diversity, and “distancing” themselves from solutions are behaviors many employees display when they feel threatened (Harvard Business Review, 2023). Reacting negatively to DEI reduces employee engagement levels. Reduced engagement negatively impacts the company’s internal social impact goals of bringing people together. It also negatively impacts external social ones; you cannot advance positive social impact in your community if your employees are distanced from each other and not highly engaged at work. Engaged employees are clearly to improved business performance of all kinds Gallup (2023).

Stereotyping is another negative social impact. Poorly executed DEI thought can reduce individuals down to a “type,” the exact thing that DEI should want to avoid. If the focus is on making representation a key metric of success, instead of representation plus many other metrics, everyone suffers. Employee engagement can nosedive. The diverse employee may quit. Colleagues may quietly quit or actually quit, costing the company time and resources it can ill-afford to lose. The reverse of doing well together is not doing well together.

Where do we go from here?

The DEI illusion (or delusion) needs to be critically and openly examined. We need to recognize that what has happened is not what we wanted. We need to figure out where DEI impeded economic and social impact. We need to acknowledge where DEI brought harm. We must learn from our mistakes. There is a reason something as benign and common-sensical as having a workforce and executive leadership that reflects our great country has been problematic. I argue that a much- needed first step is to slow down. There are no quick fixes.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author.