Over the past year, the headlines about DEI have been impossible to ignore. With programs cut, teams disbanded, and corporate commitments quietly erased, it appeared as if diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives were a thing of the past.
But that is hardly the full picture. Despite notable rollbacks, many organizations are only recalibrating. HR professionals, in particular, are still pushing for DEI programs.
This article examines what HR leaders are actually seeing on the ground, why the business case for inclusion hasn’t weakened, and how the function is adapting its approach to ensure equity and diversity remain embedded in the work.
Navigating the DEI Rollback from 2025 Onward
Much of the DEI rollback came down to political pressure. That pressure intensified after the 2024 U.S. presidential election and the wave of executive orders targeting DEI programs that followed.
Walmart, McDonald’s, Amazon, Meta, and several major financial institutions were among the companies that scaled back their commitments. This resulted in dedicated DEI teams being disbanded, with some job titles simply disappearing.
The pressure did not stop at the U.S. borders. One concern that emerged quickly was whether international operations would be pulled along by U.S. policy shifts, even where local commitments remained intact.
Deloitte’s example illustrated the tension between the two branches, which were taking different directions. The firm wound down its DEI program and directed staff on U.S. government contracts to remove pronouns from email signatures. Meanwhile, Deloitte’s UK leadership confirmed that British operations would maintain their inclusion goals.
The pressure also extended into the legal sphere. Recently, a UK charity offering internships to Black and minority ethnic candidates was taken to court by an influencer who argued that equivalent schemes were not available to white applicants. According to the Guardian, employers and charities now fear copycat cases could follow, and some have already begun withdrawing support from targeted schemes rather than risk similar challenges.
But beyond the legal scrutiny, there is a talent risk that’s harder to quantify but just as real. Large segments of the workforce, particularly Gen Z, millennials, and historically marginalized groups, actively screen employers for credible inclusion commitments and are willing to leave when those commitments quietly disappear.
In January 2025, Target ended several of its most visible DEI initiatives, including its REACH strategy and participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. What followed was a 40-day consumer boycott, a shareholder lawsuit, a 12% drop in stock, and, most relevant for HR, a reported rise in employee turnover.
In other words, visibility retreats rarely eliminate risk, but rather redirect it. That combination of legal, political, and workforce pressure has repositioned HR. And many professionals in the function are already responding, just not always under the DEI label.
The HR Stance and the Business Case for DEI
Recent research shows that, despite external pressures, HR professionals strongly support DEI.
The HRCI survey of HR professionals, published in 2025, found that 71% personally support DEI programs, while only 11% oppose them. Here are some other notable figures:
96% percent said diversity leads to a better-functioning company;
84% percent said DEI programs lead to greater workplace equality;
Only 16% say that DEI programs caused division.
Victor Ray, associate professor at the University of Iowa and racial equity fellow at Harvard Business School’s Institute for Business in Global Society, frames it plainly: “HR Managers support it because it’s good policy. They’ve seen it work.”
HR professionals see the talent pipeline data, the exit interview themes, and the engagement scores tied to inclusion practices. That’s why their support cannot be called ideological posturing. Instead, it’s informed by what they observe when those practices are present and when they’re not.
What’s also notable is who HR professionals say they’re making decisions for. Among those surveyed, 91% cited employees as the most important factor when making DEI decisions. Customers came second at 51%. Regulators ranked last, at 28%. That ordering is justified by more than ethics alone, with diversity, equity, and inclusion programs proving financially relevant.
A 2025 survey by Catalyst and NYU School of Law’s Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging found that 77% of C-suite leaders link DEI to improved financial performance. Eighty-one percent say such programs lead to stronger customer loyalty. These findings come from a poll of executives, not advocacy groups.
Retention data tells a similar story, with 76% percent of workers saying they are more likely to stay with an employer that supports DEI. Among Gen Z employees, that figure rises to 86%. Meanwhile, 61% of Gen Z respondents said they would never apply to a company that doesn’t support DEI.
It is clear that the employee value proposition (EVP) is increasingly shaped by what an organization actually does on inclusion, not what it says on its careers page. In a labor market characterized by skills shortages and economic uncertainty, the cost of losing early-career talent to competitors with unfaltering DEI records is measurable.
To prevent talent pipeline risk and maintain financial impact, it is essential that HR leaders continue making the case for DEI. Those who can link retention and attraction data to DEI program decisions are reframing the conversation in the C-suite.
From Slogans to Systems: How HR Is Adapting
Advocating for DEI is easier when you keep in mind that the most impactful initiatives don’t have to happen under a DEI banner. Equity and inclusion can be built into the systems HR already owns. Whether an organization calls it “DEI,” “workforce representation,” or “culture and belonging,” the underlying work either exists in its talent systems or it doesn’t.
That’s where HR needs to hold the line: build evidence-based pay and progression structures that reduce inequities; audit hiring, development, and exit practices for bias as part of standard talent operations; and protect employee resource groups, mentoring programs, and sponsorship structures from cost-cutting rounds. Their value doesn’t always appear cleanly on a spreadsheet, but it shows up in retention data and representation trends when they’re gone.
In practice, this means reframing inclusion as infrastructure. It touches rewards, performance management, leadership development, and workforce planning. When HR brings data to those conversations, the discussion shifts from ideology to outcomes. One example would be how cuts to ERG budgets or flexible working policies affect retention among underrepresented groups. That’s the move that gets traction in the C-suite.
Daisy Auger-Dominguez, a workplace consultant with human capital leadership experience at Google, The Walt Disney Company, and Moody’s Investors Service, puts it directly: “They’re shifting terminology, but they’re not shifting behavior. What I tell my clients is, reframe it if you must, but don’t retreat. Because consistency matters more than that right now.”
That consistency is the point. A distributed ownership model, proposed by Monica Moncrieffe-Newman, CPO at City St. George’s at the University of London, sees inclusion embedded across HR functions and leadership levels. Not being housed within a single team makes it more resilient than a standalone DEI function. That way, it is also more visible to the employees watching to see whether commitments survive budget cycles.
In other words, HR’s role at this moment is architectural. Moncrieffe-Newman’s framework offers a practical anchor for HR leaders navigating the current environment. Each verb represents a different dimension of what the function needs to own.
Clarify: Be explicit with employees about what has or hasn’t changed in your organization’s inclusion commitments, and why. Silence breeds distrust faster than a difficult message.
Connect: Tie inclusion decisions to talent metrics, retention data, and business outcomes. Don’t frame DEI as a values program. Frame it as a workforce strategy.
Challenge: Push back when cost-cutting targets ERG budgets, flexible working policies, or targeted development programs without accounting for the downstream retention and engagement cost.
Calibrate: Work with legal and compliance to ensure programs are legally sound and clearly defensible. The fear that any inclusion effort could face legal challenge is, in many cases, based on misunderstanding. As Emily Nash, employment law partner at Foley Hoag [LINK], notes: “People don’t understand what DEI really is, and what is actually illegal. As a result, there’s this fear of doing anything that might be viewed as illegal.” Calibration means knowing the difference.
Continue: Keep the systemic work going: fair pay structures, bias-audited hiring, psychologically safe cultures. These don’t require a DEI label. They require sustained operational attention.
This framework doesn’t prescribe one approach for every organization, but sets a common direction. HR leaders who apply it are likely to find that the substance of inclusion work remains intact, even when the external context makes visibility politically complicated.
Conclusion
DEI programs look different from what they did two years ago. Fewer organizations are broadcasting their commitments, and fewer have dedicated teams with the budget and mandate they once had. That’s the reality.
But what hasn’t changed is the underlying case. The workforce data, the retention figures, and the financial performance links are holding. HR professionals, by an overwhelming margin, continue to believe in the work. The label may evolve, but the function’s responsibility remains the same, if not bigger.
The HR function is best positioned when it treats inclusion as infrastructure rather than an initiative. That means building it into pay structures, leadership accountability, and talent systems. It means being willing to name the risk when those systems are deprioritized. And it means continuing the work even when the external environment makes it harder.
