State of the Industry: DEI

Introduction

What does diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) look like in your organization? It’s a simple question, deserving of a simple answer, right? That might’ve been the case just a few years ago.

Rewind to the racial reckoning of 2020, when such a question would have been met by a CEO, no less, eager to itemize a list of commitments—to invest billions of dollars in social-justice programming, to improve representation within the ranks of their organization, to inspire a sense of belonging among employees and accountability among executives, through initiatives spearheaded by none other than their newly appointed chief diversity officer.

Then came the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, effectively barring race-conscious admissions in higher education. An increase in lawsuits targeting corporate DEI programs led some employers to rethink or renege on their once-touted commitments—and then came the 2024 presidential election, and subsequent flurry of anti-DEI actions taken by the second Trump administration. Announcements of commitments were no more, replaced by reports of rollbacks, or silence.

And so to answer that question, HR Brew had to get creative. We surveyed a segment of our audience to gain an understanding of the state of DEI in corporate America. Of the 397 HR professionals who responded to HR Brew’s survey, 35% reported performing a DEI function as part of their role. Respondents, who were able to select more than one function, also reported working in HR operations and administration (60%), HR strategy and people leadership (56%), employee relations (50%), recruiting and talent acquisition (50%), learning and development or training (45%), and benefits and compensation (38%); 16% said they worked in an area that was not among those available to select. What follows in this report is a summation of HR Brew’s findings.

Just six years have passed since countless companies proclaimed their support for DEI in response to the 2020 murder of George Floyd, and yet, just 12% of respondents to HR Brew’s survey said their organization considers DEI a “high priority.” Another 36% said DEI is a “moderate priority,” while 49% said it is “low” or “no priority.”

Despite the seeming deprioritization of DEI, 63% of respondents reported that their organization’s investment in DEI didn’t change in 2025. Less than one-third (25%) said investment had decreased, either somewhat or significantly, and 5% said it increased.

“The notions behind why DEI is imperative have not changed, so the work still exists. It [has] simply ‘gone underground,’” one respondent told HR Brew via written response. “I was a DEI leader…[and] the fear of backlash there was so big that indeed everything changed around DEI. We said nothing was stopping, but the deprioritization was very clear,” another respondent wrote.

Many HR pros may be experiencing “DEI fatigue,” Joycelyn David, founder of the multicultural marketing tech startup Tulong Technologies and author The Multicultural Mindset, told HR Brew. After several years spent advocating for DEI, only to be met by resistance, she said they may feel like they’re fighting an uphill battle.

“[DEI] was a priority when it was a sprint…after the events of George Floyd,” David said. “How many years later, we’re still running that marathon.” HR and DEI practitioners, she added, may have been left feeling unsupported, like a “DEI committee of one.” That’s when fatigue can set in.

At the same time, some companies have strayed from the acronym “DEI,” but continued to invest in their programming. Working within this framework can feel like “walking a tightrope,” one respondent told HR Brew, balancing employee well-being with business ROI.

A mixture of external and internal forces are contributing to the ongoing shifts in corporate DEI programming.

The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision on affirmative action in higher education was followed by the unraveling of DEI programs inside the federal government, as the executive branch directed regulatory enforcement efforts toward attacking DEI programs. President Trump’s use of the bully pulpit to advance a changing public narrative on DEI has seemingly contributed to heightened tensions about these programs inside some businesses.

Many HR professionals have been cautious about DEI programming in the second Trump era, with 60% of respondents saying that the current administration’s policies related to DEI have been among the main drivers of change to their organization’s DEI programs. This was followed by 37% citing a shift in leadership priorities and 36% citing legal or compliance requirements (survey respondents were asked to select up to three drivers).

“I am seeing a lot of businesses deprioritize DEI given the changes and direction coming from the White House,” one respondent told HR Brew, later adding, “At my current company, I see us continuing to move forward with our DEI initiatives, but I do notice us being less vocal and communicative.”

Additional forces driving changes to DEI programs include: public opinion of DEI efforts (28%), shifts in budget or resources (26%), employee feedback (14%), market or client expectations (11%), and insights from internal DEI data (9%). Another 7% of respondents pointed to “other” drivers, and 1% said they do not know what has been driving the changes.

The administration was top of mind for survey respondents by a wide margin. The White House has taken a critical stance on DEI initiatives, both in the federal government and in the private sector.

Trump-era regulatory agencies have also taken actions to dismantle DEI programs, and officials have framed some DEI practices as potentially discriminatory under federal law.

In February, the Pentagon warned it could cut ties with Scouting America, formerly Boy Scouts of America, decrying the youth organization’s approach to gender identity. The reprimand came as the EEOC announced it would investigate Nike over allegations that it had discriminated against white employees as a result of its DEI programs.

Employers have sought to mitigate risk, rethinking components of their DEI programming, since Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard helped spur an uptick in DEI-related lawsuits. This pressure has heightened legal and regulatory risk for companies, and forced some (35%) to reassess how they design and label their DEI efforts.

While the Trump administration’s scrutiny of DEI seems to have prompted organizations to pull back on certain practices, others remain prevalent in the workplace, HR Brew’s survey suggests. That’s true for pay equity analyses, which help HR professionals comply with laws that are still in place, like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the Equal Pay Act.

When asked what DEI initiatives their organization currently has in place or is pursuing, the most common practices respondents cited were assessing hiring practices for bias (41%) and pay equity reporting (35%). An even higher share of HR pros said they planned to have pay equity reporting in the future, with 58% reporting they were very or somewhat likely to do so.

These findings align with what Brian Levine, a partner with HR consulting firm Merit Analytics Group, has seen in his work with clients on pay equity.

Executive orders targeting DEI in the public and private sectors may have prompted companies to pull back on “public representation of what they’re doing,” but employers still have a vested interest in “[making] sure that they’re paying people fairly,” Levine said. That’s in part because the law bars employers from paying workers differently based on protected characteristics including race, religion, and sex. But employers are also continuing to look at pay equity because their workers support these types of practices, he added.

“Employees expect that companies will be focused on ensuring that there is basic fairness,” he said.

A shifting legal landscape at the state level and abroad may also contribute to employers’ continued commitment to monitoring pay equity in their organizations. In recent years, more than a dozen US states have passed laws requiring employers to share the salary range they expect to pay for open roles; an even more robust pay transparency directive is set to take effect in the European Union in June 2026.

When complying with such laws, “you have to have confidence as an employer that you can explain those pay practices, and that they’re working as you intended them to, and that’s what the equity analysis does for you,” said Lynn Clements, senior director of people insights with Berkshire Associates, an HR compliance and workforce analytics firm. “You want to make sure your compensation system is working fairly for everyone because it is so widely published,” she added.

Indeed, legal or compliance requirements were one factor influencing HR pros’ decisions to make changes to their organizations’ DEI programs, with 36% citing it as a main driver.

Promoting an equitable workplace might continue to be a priority for HR professionals, but rewarding executives based on whether their companies meet such objectives appears to have fallen by the wayside, according to the survey. Just 2% of respondents said their organization currently ties executive compensation to DEI goals.

While attacks on DEI led many companies to change their programming in the summer of 2024, some had started to cut their budgets as early as 2022. Now, one in four HR professionals report their teams are getting by with less, and often without a chief diversity officer.

As right-wing politicians began speaking out against DEI programs in 2022, and companies looked for ways to cut costs in a slow economy, many turned to DEI programs and professionals. Anti-DEI pressure campaigns ramped up in 2024, leading dozens of companies to rollback or eliminate programs, HR Brew reported previously.

Companies that continue to do DEI work are often left with smaller budgets and teams. While 63% of respondents to HR Brew’s survey reported that their organization’s DEI investments have not changed in the last year, 25% said there was a slight to significant decrease. In terms of staffing, 24% of respondents said that the size of their organization’s DEI team has stayed the same, while 12% said it decreased and 3% said it was eliminated. Another 3% said the team grew. The majority (53%) said their organization does not have a DEI team.

“They [DEI teams] are often being asked to do more with less and budget tightening is real across the board,” Mike Lynch, founder and principal at MJL consulting group, told HR Brew. “The DEI functions are not immune to that budget pressure…As companies navigate the economic pressures that a lot of them are all on, the DEI staff are expected to uphold both from…that compliance perspective as well as the culture work, and the resources have been cut way back.”

Feedback from survey respondents indicates agreement with Lynch’s assessment, that cuts are not necessarily a casualty of anti-DEI advocacy.

“This has been a tough year for us given economic uncertainties created by tariffs’ perceived or actual effects,” one respondent wrote. “As a result, our budgets decreased substantially and ERG's have been discontinued indefinitely, focusing employee time to client work (as a result of company-wide layoffs).”

Another respondent told HR Brew that while their organization no longer has a DEI leader, the initiatives remain. “Candidly, our company had a RIF [reduction in force] this year, so I think that the removal of that role was a cost-saving choice as opposed to a change in the organization’s priority/focus on DEI,” they said.

Su Joun, a principal consultant at Diversity@Workplace Consulting Group, told HR Brew that the retreat is “absolutely real” and impacting DEI practitioners. “What I’m seeing is a lot of chief diversity officers like senior DEI roles either being eliminated or never being replaced when someone leaves, and they are then struggling to find similar jobs at that level,” she said, adding that DEI often gets caught up in learning and development cuts. “Less spending is happening, less work is being done around it, and DEI is shrinking accordingly with it, and because of the backlash of DEI, it’s a double whammy.”

While the majority of US adults support corporate DEI initiatives, their embrace of these efforts has declined in recent years, according to research from Bentley University and Gallup.

Within the world of HR, however, support remains strong: 71% of HR professionals surveyed by the Human Resources Certification Institute in April 2025 expressed support for DEI, and 96% agreed that diversity programming improves the functionality of a company.

That sentiment was echoed by many of the respondents to our own survey. In fact, several said that their support for DEI has deepened amid recent attacks on the practice.

“The political aggressions against DEI work have made my support in those initiatives stand stronger; those that want to eliminate DEI are missing the point as to why we started working towards it in the first place. We need to consciously make change in order to see change,” one respondent wrote.

Despite this, many companies have rolled back their DEI initiatives—scrubbing messaging from their websites, suspending participation in third-party benchmarking, or dropping their commitments—due in part to fear of retaliation from the Trump administration. Many of the HR professionals who responded to HR Brew’s survey expressed disappointment over these rollbacks, and their own companies succumbing to political pressure.

“My personal opinion around DEI is unchanged, aside from increasing disappointment and outrage at the public backlash to DEI and the willingness of businesses to throw their individual workers, this important work, and all the data about the business advantages of DEI out the door to cater to political trends,” wrote one respondent.

“It is really depressing. Everyone is worried about what is said and how it is perceived and the titling feels like it is softening the work and the philosophy around it,” said another.

However, some respondents said that the shift has required them to be more pragmatic and strategic when they pitch and execute DEI programs.

“Personally, as a member of several minority groups, my focus in my work has remained on DEI initiatives. I have had to take a more strategic approach to maintaining the focus on these initiatives and exposing the risks of any perception of inequality throughout our employment practices without presenting buzzword threats or alarm to a non-DEI focused leader,” said one respondent.

Several respondents said the shift has made them more proactive about incorporating DEI throughout the broader business, instead of treating it as a siloed business practice—something that experts have long said is critical to the long-term success of these programs.

“Over the past year, my perspective on DEI has become more pragmatic and outcomes-focused,” said one respondent. “While my commitment to equity and inclusion remains strong, I’ve increasingly emphasized embedding DEI into core business practices—such as hiring, performance management, leadership development, and pay equity—rather than positioning it as a standalone initiative.”

Conclusion

DEI is here to stay, but not necessarily as it stands today. HR professionals tasked with championing the practice within their own organizations should see this inflection point as an opportunity to reimagine their initiatives for the future of work.

“We’re going through this civil war right now, and we’re hopeful that on the other side of this moment are brighter days,” Albert Smith Jr., founder of DEI consultancy en masse Consulting, previously told HR Brew.

Some HR professionals, it seems, are already well on their way. “Throughout 2025 we have changed the way we approach efforts while still maintaining strong leadership support,” one respondent told HR Brew. “While things have disappeared or changed this year, the support is still there and the intention remains. We are focused on determining how to make a difference in the new environment.”