The DE&I news cycle has been like a firehose, and it doesn’t seem the spigot will be turned off any time soon.

Over the past year, some companies have quietly changed course on their DE&I initiatives. Now, two large retailers in the agriculture supplies industry are proclaiming that they’re largely walking away from their DE&I efforts. However, one DE&I leader cautioned that such a move could negatively affect employee retention and safety.

What’s happening? On July 17, John Deere said in a statement on X, that it will no longer participate in or sponsor “social or cultural awareness” events. The announcement came just weeks after farm retailer Tractor Supply issued a press release stating it was eliminating DE&I roles and would no longer submit data to the Human Rights Campaign, which tracks how companies treat LGBTQ+ workers.

Message to employees. Jarvis Sam, founder of Rainbow Disruption, a DE&I consultancy, told HR Brew that people leaders should think about the consequences that such changes might have on employee recruitment, retention, and safety.

Keep reading here.—KP

Each week on Per My Last Email, Morning Brew’s resident career experts Kaila and Kyle—whose careers have collectively spanned the corporate, government, nonprofit, and startup sectors—debate the trickiest challenges in work life and share insightful (and sometimes hilarious) tactics on how to overcome them.

Check out their latest episode, where they react to listeners’ “Am I the a**hole?” work scenarios and answer questions about dealing with office cliques, working two full-time jobs, and more.

Gianna Driver is joining HR tech company Lattice as its new chief people officer, according to a July 18 announcement.

Driver, who will officially come on board as Lattice’s CPO on August 12, most recently served as CHRO for cybersecurity company Exabeam. She’s also a member of Lattice’s CPO Council, a cohort of HR leaders advising the company on strategy and product development.

“The opportunity to directly impact the products” Lattice sells to CPOs and CHROs like herself was a major draw for Driver, who hasn’t previously worked in the HR tech space. She expressed an interest in transforming “how companies and organizations think about their people practices” in a conversation with HR Brew.

Lattice’s outgoing CPO, Cara Brennan Allamano, previously described her team as “customer zero,” advising the product and engineering teams on tools ranging from human resources information systems to compensation management platforms.

Keep reading here.—CV

Today’s is a special edition of our Coworking 1:1 series. This week, we’re featuring one of our own! Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

Cha…cha…changes. Turn and face the strange(r)! Meet Paige McGlauflin, who joins HR Brew this week as our newest reporter. After reading this week’s edition of Coworking, she’ll be a stranger no more.

McGlauflin comes to us from Fortune, where she was part of its leadership desk covering the C-suite. She also authored its CHRO Daily newsletter, which encompasses all things HR. Prior to her work at Fortune, she was a freelance reporter and writer, as well as an editorial assistant and junior reporter at a startup that published B2B newsletters for niche professional communities, including one for DE&I pros in tech. You’ll begin to notice her bylines in the HR Brew newsletter, where she’ll be covering recruitment and retention in the near future.

In her free time, Paige likes hiking, reading and looking for new book recommendations, exploring different parts of the US, cooking and baking, and checking out antique and thrift stores. The Emerson College alum currently lives in Seattle.

Keep reading here.—AD

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