From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.

HR Brew

Quarter Century Project

Kristen Parisi

hr-brew.com

The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020 was an inflection point, not only for racial inequality in the US, but for DEI programs. Companies had already been working to diversify the workforce for decades, but for many, this accelerated the movement.

As the popularity of DEI programming soared within US companies (many DEI positions in HR became open), so did opposition. Detractors claimed diversity initiatives were unfair to the majority and politicized the work, turning it into a dog whistle during the 2024 presidential election, when Trump and his supporters called for companies to eliminate all “illegal DEI” practices—and despite executive orders that have been issued since, the legal frameworks haven’t changed much.

Since then, at least 70 big-name companies have rolled back or drastically changed the language associated with their 

, while others anticipate changes in the future. Meanwhile, DEI practitioners have grappled with job losses, questions about their function, and personal attacks amid a barrage of misinformation.

Still, the DEI leaders who spoke with HR Brew remain hopeful for progress, even if it looks different.

 Diversity and inclusion initiatives started gaining traction decades before 2020. In 1987, Roosevelt Thomas Jr., a scholar at Morehouse College, predicted that diversity programs would be essential to business success, and that company cultures must be designed for 

But by the mid-2010s, the US was still struggling with racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination, and representation: Women held just 25% of senior executive roles, while Black leaders held just 3.2%. By the end of the decade, chief diversity officer roles had expanded to include language around belonging, though some practitioners feared it would dilute their work, the Washington Post 

. Some analysts even predicted “diversity fatigue” would set in.

The work was grueling and emotionally demanding, often falling on the shoulders of those most affected by it, leading to high turnover rates among diversity chiefs, HR Brew 

When Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd in May 2020, more than 270 companies including McDonald’s, Meta, and Walmart responded with racial equity pledges and billions of dollars of investments in diversity initiatives. Job postings for DEI practitioners doubled. But the effectiveness of these efforts, and leadership buy-in, was mixed.

Some executives seemingly expected the corporate landscape to change overnight, while others emphasized it would take years to reverse the underrepresentation of women, people of color, the disabled, and other minorities.

The data says as much: A 2024 LeanIn report estimated it would take at least 22 more years for white women, and at least 44 years for women of color, to achieve gender parity in corporate America. And a 

 of 84,000 job applications found that workers with more traditionally Black names were less likely to land interviews.

As quickly as DEI’s popularity came, it seemed to fade. In May 2022, 44% of workers said they felt “alienated” by, and 42% resented, DEI efforts, according to a Gartner survey that HR Brew reported on at the time.

Employers began reigning in diversity and HR teams, while practitioners started sounding alarms, calling some investments and commitments performative.

“Genuine inclusion, not performative diversity, will accelerate growth for people-first companies. All others will see their ability to attract and retain talent globally extinguished,” Donald Knight, former chief people officer at Greenhouse, 

In August 2023, just after the SCOTUS decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions, some conservative activists ran social media campaigns against DEI, while attorneys general in several GOP-lead states threatened companies over DEI practices. At first, the industry brushed it off as “fearmongering.”

“You will always have a subset, for example, of employees, who just for whatever their belief systems are, they push back,” Chandra Robinson, director of HR at Gartner, 

 HR Brew at the time. Experts warned of negative consequences, like issues with employee retention, for ditching DEI.

By early 2024, some companies had cut DEI programming and removed “diversity” from public documents in favor of language like, “belonging,” “inclusion,” and “cultural transformation.” SHRM, for example, removed the “E” from its DEI programming, and America First Legal, a conservative firm founded by White House aide Stephen Miller, filed multiple lawsuits against companies over their DEI efforts (many were dismissed). The anti-DEI messaging became a rallying cry in the 2024 election cycle, as political actors used it to diminish the work and accomplishments of minorities, including Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

“People are using DE&I as a slur in the hopes that people will legitimize it and then run away from DEI work,” Lily Zheng, a fairness strategist and author, 

Since Trump returned to office in January, attacks on DEI initiatives have only accelerated, via executive orders, threats from the Department of Justice, and new guidance from the Department of Labor. Some employers seem to have engaged in even more “diversity hushing,” pursuing the essence of DEI without publicly labeling it as such.

“I don’t think that we’ve experienced, since 1964 collectively, this pull back retrenchment,” said Albert Smith Jr., founder of DEI consultancy en masse Consulting who has worked in the field for over a decade. “We have been on the slow and gradual trajectory towards a more perfect union. And I don’t know if we’ve ever experienced the clawing back of so many rights the way that we’re witnessing them right now.”

Smith added that DEI opponents are using civil rights strategies to roll back progress. “They are only taking our tools and using them.”

 Some advocates admit DEI hasn’t been perfect, noting it can be performative and hasn’t done enough to meaningfully change corporate culture. However, this moment may be an opportunity to right the ship, according to seasoned practitioners.

Most companies (66%) still have dedicated DEI budgets, but many industry leaders (43%) report making “substantive” changes this year, 

 DEI consultancy Paradigm. Rosa Nuñez, a DEI practitioner who has spent more than two decades in the field, says she expects companies will continue many DEI practices because they’re essential to reduce discrimination and keep talent.

“You have some organizations that have pulled back, but I don’t believe it is a full pullback,” she said. “They’re not being as public about their efforts, but a lot of those organizations that do really care about the work. They’re doing it in-house in a way that is not distracting.”

While Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general at the DOJ, 

, “either DEI will end on its own or we will kill it,” the practitioners who spoke with HR Brew believe the essence of DEI will survive.

Smith is also hopeful for the continuation of workplace equality efforts. “We’re going through this civil war right now, and we’re hopeful that on the other side of this moment are brighter days,” he told HR Brew.

Ronald Taylor, a diversity executive who has been in the field since the 1990s, said while diversity efforts have always seen some pushback, the current administration has made public attacks acceptable.

“That gives me hope, because I think then we can be like, ‘Okay, no more closeted attack on diversity in corporate,” he said. “You’re gonna throw the kitchen sink at us in this last vain, desperate attempt to make us go away and we're not going anywhere….it’s gonna be dirty, it’s gonna be ugly.”

Regardless of the public discourse, Zheng thinks most Americans believe workplaces should have fair hiring practices and treat workers well, and want an employer that is committed to DEI, according to a 

 from the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at the NYU School of Law. Zheng said this gives them hope that diversity efforts will continue.

“We all want workplaces and products and services that we can access. These are universals,” they said. “So long as people and workers want this, there will be people doing it.”

In an ideal world, Nuñez said, we wouldn’t need DEI. But “the reality is that we are the most diverse and the most divided nation right now, and the disparities in the inequalities and inequities in the workplace continue.” In her opinion, DEI will exist as long as it’s necessary, no matter what it’s called.

“So long as companies align themselves with forces of exclusion, polarization, authoritarianism, they’re going to drift further and further away from what people actually want,” Zheng said. “There will be a pendulum swing back.”

DEI initiatives will endure, despite how it’s been polarized

Dozens of companies have changed course on DEI in 2025, but industry leaders believe the pivot will still turn towards progress.

DEI practitioners express hope for the future of workplace inclusion

An illustration of a photo of HR Brew reporter Paige McGlauflin.

Paige McGlauflin

The Covid-19 pandemic may have been the biggest blessing for some HR leaders’ careers. It may have been the biggest curse, too.

As employers scrambled to respond to a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, CHROs 

 for everything from remote work to layoffs or furloughs and employees well-being.

“You just have to think about the magnitude of how work has changed since then. The CHRO was at the hub of all that,” Roger Philby, global leader of Korn Ferry’s people strategy and performance practice, told HR Brew.

Regarded for decades as corporate America’s red-headed stepchild, HR had been primarily focused on administrative tasks, like payroll or snooze-worthy trainings. The only time executives paid attention was when one of those tasks went wrong. This moment marked a 

“We’re like the ducks that are on the water. We may look good above the surface, but underwater we’re flailing viciously. That’s how I felt life was, definitely pre-pandemic, where nobody knew what we did,” Mai Ton, a fractional HR leader who previously worked in-house at growth-stage Silicon Valley tech startups, told HR Brew.

“All of those previously under the water systems became very prominent and very in front of everybody, because we were all remote and virtual. So I feel like that’s really what led to the final kind of elevation of the role,” Ton added. “It was previously HR was always begging for a seat at the exec team, and now we finally had it, because we were tasked with all of these things.”

Since then, however, something seems to have changed, leaving CHROs’ power and influence at risk of stagnating, if not declining.

 has shifted power back to employers, who are hiring and 

 less. Economic pressures, including high interest rates and tariffs, have employers returning to the age-old strategy of cutting costs by cutting workers or employee-focused programs, like learning and development.

Some employers have also started following a new playbook for addressing challenges like those that, just five years ago, they would have relied on their CHROs to navigate. For example, employers like Amazon (and the federal government) have announced full-time return-to-office mandates for their global workforces, despite HR leaders’ feelings about them: 81% of CHROs in America and some European countries surveyed by people management platform Leapsome 

believe strict RTO mandates are ineffective

, and 63% from America said they feel pressured by their CEO to embrace them.

While HR leaders still play a critical role when it comes to addressing challenges related to diversity and immigration, these issues are not currently as top of mind for executives as they were in the early 2020s, according to Emily Rose McRae, senior director analyst at Gartner.

On top of all this, many practitioners who were CHROs during the pandemic have simply 

: “HR has been running the equivalent of a 100-mile marathon now, and there’s almost no end in sight,” Dan Kaplan, managing director and co-head of the CHRO practice at ZRG Partners, told HR Brew. “And every time you feel like, okay, we could take a breath, war starts in the Middle East, tariffs come. It’s just a never ending set of challenges that HR has to be prepared to solve.”

And, as companies have sought to fill vacant CHRO roles, some have found they 

 with comparable expertise and appoint greener practitioners instead.

Moreover, not all C-suite leaders see CHROs as a strategic asset. Research from 

 found that 42% of C-suite executives don’t view HR as equal partners, and 36% see HR as only slightly critical to business strategy. SAP’s research also found that C-suite leaders tend to agree more with non-HR executives than CHROs on top priorities.

That perception has, at best, stagnated since the pandemic. In 2021, for example, 57% of C-suite executives based in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia viewed the CHRO as equal leadership partners in their organization, according to a survey by cloud-based business services company Sage. Additionally, Sage’s survey found that 87% of executives agreed that the pandemic transformed HR and gave it greater influence, but 52% of respondents thought those changes were temporary.

Now, AI poses a risk to CHROs’ strategic influence.

As AI technology evolves and reshapes tasks, HR leaders will be 

“If you’re a CHRO, and you’re not focused on AI, you’re already behind. Because AI is moving so fast,” said Tiffonia Noussi, a fractional CHRO who works with growth-stage private equity backed firms.

 surveyed by Gartner this year believe their CHROs are AI-savvy—lower than any other C-suite roles surveyed.

This perception “is a problem when the big change that everyone’s talking about is technology,” said McRae. “It’s particularly a problem when the fact is that one of the greatest weaknesses to the technological approach right now is that people do not have enough conversations about the impact on roles and workflows.”

 into AI, despite not yet seeing an ROI, they’ve been more frugal with workforce development, said Philby. Research from Accenture found that companies 

 of generative AI budgets on technology than on people. And a 2024 Gartner survey found that 

 consider employees’ work or well-being when making decisions about generative AI.

This has left CHROs torn between investing in long-term goals and keeping up with short-term demands: The top two strategic priorities for CHROs over the next two years, according to a 

, are growth and market expansion (69%) and cost efficiency (56%).

“They’re sort of being pulled in two directions,” said Philby. “It’s like, ‘How do we invest in the risk? How do we transform our business through our people, and at the same time, maintain or reduce our costs?”

As a result, CHROs—particularly those who haven’t had exposure to strategic conversations in recent years—are missing out on the most important C-suite conversations.

“We’re fighting about whether someone should be in the office three days, four days, or five days, instead of saying, ‘In five years, are we going to need the same people, and are we going to need people that have a different AI toolkit, and maybe we need to set up offices elsewhere in the world to attract those people?’” Kaplan said.

It’s critical that HR leaders not only be included in AI strategy conversations, but also bring insights and ideas to the table.

“In the past, HR has always been very reactive. And I think there’s an opportunity to be proactive and really saying the hard things really early, rather than waiting,” said Noussi. “And so I think that’s one area that we don’t talk about, but courage is a wonderful, wonderful virtue when it comes to being impactful in the HR space.”

HR leaders should have “both ears to the market” on AI, Kaplan said, including understanding the technology’s innovations and evolutions, engaging in forums with top AI leaders, and integrating their learnings into talent strategy. They should also make sure they’re included in five-year planning and AI strategy conversations with their C-suite peers, and advocate for HR priorities.

And while many functions are competing for money amid tightening budgets and AI investments, HR leaders should still make long-term financial plans, said Tamesa Rogers, a fractional CHRO who was Netgear’s chief people officer until 2024.

“I think doing nothing is the wrong decision,” Rogers said. “Even if you have to stagger it out, having a plan on what you can invest this year, next year, the following year. And then how do you, with that investment, make sure that you are also developing your workforce, or planning your workforce to accommodate it?”

For top CHROs, the question around HR getting a seat at the table is long over, said Kaplan. And those waiting for the CEO to seek them out as a strategic partner will likely be waiting a long time. “The best HR leaders aren’t waiting to be asked,” he said. They’re prepared with insights to share and an understanding of the AI ecosystem.

“There’s still a large population that is waiting to be asked and doesn’t realize that the plane has already left the terminal.”

Rear view of mature businesswoman discussing strategies with colleagues in board room at office.

CHROs saw a rise to power during the pandemic. Are they now losing traction?

The pandemic elevated the CHRO role to new heights of importance. Now, their influence is at risk of waning.

The CHRO's new seat at the table might be at risk

An illustration of reporter Courtney Vinopal's headshot.

Courtney Vinopal

In 2007, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a blistering dissent in a Title VII case brought by Lilly Ledbetter, a former supervisor at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant who discovered she was paid less than male colleagues in equal or less senior positions, and sued for sex discrimination.

The dissent touched upon the pervasive problem of secrecy that today’s pay transparency laws are trying to solve. “Pay disparities often occur, as they did in Ledbetter’s case, in small increments; cause to suspect that discrimination is at work develops only over time,” 

. “Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view. Employers may keep under wraps the pay differentials maintained among supervisors, no less the reasons for those differentials.”

By the time Colorado enacted a law requiring employers to share salary information with potential job seekers in 2019, policymakers had been wrestling with fair pay issues like this one for decades. At the federal level they sought to remedy them first with the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and later with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which expanded the statute of limitations on discrimination claims like Ledbetter’s, removing a hurdle for employees bringing lawsuits.

 that have been enacted in more than a dozen US states and Washington, DC, workers have access to much more information about how their employers pay, and why. But like the policies that came before them, these laws haven’t yet resulted in a meaningful narrowing of the gender pay gap—one key goal of the movement.

 can refer to a variety of different compensation practices, the term generally describes laws requiring employers to disclose a good-faith salary range for the jobs they advertise.

Advocates who supported pay transparency legislation believed “giving people information at the time of a new job search was really crucial,” said Helena Almeida, VP, managing counsel with ADP. “It’s harder to increase somebody’s salary while they’re in a particular role. So getting that information to people at the beginning of a new job was vital.”

These pay transparency measures were preceded by a wave of state laws banning employers from asking about a candidate’s salary history, which was already helping to change the dynamics of compensation and bargaining power in the workplace, she added.

Colorado was the first state to enact a pay transparency law, as Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill requiring employers to post salary ranges into law in May 2019. In the 

, legislators cited the persistent gender pay gap as inhibiting women’s earning potential and ability to provide for their families.

“It is the intent of the general assembly to pass legislation that helps to close the pay gap in Colorado and ensure that employees with similar job duties are paid the same wage rate regardless of sex, or sex plus another protected status,” the legislation stated.

A map showing US states where pay transparency laws are in effect.

Since the Colorado law took effect, more than a dozen other states have moved to pass salary range legislation with a similar stated goal of closing pay gaps across gender, race, and ethnicity. By the end of 2025 similar laws 

 across 14 states and Washington, DC, including in major markets such as New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston.

More recent legislation has referenced the fact that salary transparency is now seen as a business imperative as much as a means to narrow pay gaps. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, whose pay transparency law goes into effect this October, 

 beyond ensuring workplaces are more equitable, the policy “will help strengthen the Massachusetts economy and its competitiveness by attracting and retaining the best talent.”

Employers are starting to pick up on the attraction and retention piece as well, as many are including salary ranges in their job postings, even if they’re not hiring in a jurisdiction that requires them to do so. Nearly 60% of US job advertisements on career site Indeed included compensation information as of May 2025.

The domino effect that’s occurred in sync with the passage of these laws is in part a reflection of workers expecting pay transparency from current and prospective employers. Some 36% of job candidates surveyed by research firm Gartner in 2024 said they decided not to apply for a job over the past year because the description lacked a salary range.

Many employers appeared to be caught flat-footed by the Colorado requirements when they took effect in 2021. Companies like Samsung, Johnson & Johnson, and Nike 

 Colorado-based applicants from job postings to avoid including salary ranges for open roles.

As new pay transparency laws took effect in New York and California, some employers posted ranges so wide it was hard to see how they could possibly be helpful to workers, or a “good faith” representation of what they paid. Citigroup, for example, advertised a job for a client service officer and 

 as anywhere from $0 to $2 million. After being called out, the bank attributed the initial range to a technical error and changed it to $61,710–$155,290—still a difference of nearly $100,000. Meanwhile, the New York City Commission on Human Rights 

 against Tesla for posting some jobs without salary ranges, and others that were “not in good faith.” The complaint cited a role for a field service technician that was listed as paying anywhere from $22 to $58 an hour.

Such ranges often don’t seem reasonable to current employees or job candidates, said Gail Greenfield, EVP of pay equity and total rewards strategy and solutions with software firm Trusaic. “But of course, when these ranges were created, they weren’t meant to be shared with anyone, really, outside of HR, except perhaps for managers,” she said. “Over time, organizations are probably going to want to narrow their pay ranges” so they allow employers to reward workers differently “based on legitimate factors,” but also “don’t set off alarm bells that somehow this information can’t be trusted.”

The biggest challenge employers face is deciding how transparent they want to be, Greenfield said. Becoming transparent can be a costly and time-consuming process for organizations, especially if they need to correct inequities that may be unearthed in the process. If a company has major pay inequities or pay compression issues that need to be addressed, for instance, sharing more information than what’s required could be risky, according to Greenfield. “I’ve kind of bristled at the assumption that companies should just be more transparent…that’s just simply not going to be viable for every organization.”

Wolters Kluwer, an information services company headquartered in the Netherlands, is only publishing salary ranges for jobs in locations where it’s required for the moment, said Elisa Wyman, SVP of global rewards and DEIB. “We understand that it’s not something that happens overnight,” she said of the company’s pay transparency journey, which includes training managers to have conversations about compensation, and getting salaries aligned with a global job structure.

Given Wolters Kluwer employs about 21,000 workers across 50 countries, the process of becoming totally transparent is fairly complex, Wyman said. While the firm isn’t yet ready to publish compensation for all open roles, it did share its global pay equity analysis in its 

, which showed an adjusted gender pay gap of 3.1% across the company.

Chicago-based digital consulting firm West Monroe opted for full transparency, according to chief people officer Tanya Moore.

“It’s naive to think that employees don’t talk about their compensation,” Moore said when asked why her organization opted to share salary ranges for all US-based roles, even in locations where it’s not required. She pointed to anonymous forums like Fishbowl or Glassdoor as places employees might turn to if they can’t get the information from HR. “If we hide information, I really believe that employees are going to fill in the blanks with assumptions, and often those assumptions aren’t accurate, and they tend to not be positive.”

Moore acknowledged, though, that full transparency requires a fair amount of investment in education and resources so employees understand why they’re paid what they’re paid. As West Monroe prepares to publish salary bands internally, it’s also training its managers about the company’s compensation philosophy, benchmarking process, and market adjustments, so they can have detailed conversations with employees about their pay.

“You can’t do pay transparency overnight,” she said. “If you roll this stuff out without making sure you've cleaned up any gaps, making sure that you have a compensation philosophy and framework, making sure that you’ve educated people, you have resources available, it really could be a disaster.”

HR leaders are also learning that when they do decide on a transparent compensation strategy, they must stay the course. Help Scout, a remote-first software company that makes customer support tools, pays workers at the same level in the same salary range, regardless of where in the world they’re located.

If she could revisit the company’s approach, Help Scout’s VP of people Leah Knobler would differentiate salaries based on geography, she told HR Brew, as this could save the business money. But at the same time, she notes that Help Scout has been able to attract talent from lesser-known markets thanks to this structure.

“You pick what your philosophy is and what your strategy is for your company, and then you have to just kind of stick to it,” Knobler said. “Let’s continue just to do it as well as we can, understanding that maybe there are learnings, and we would do it differently if we could wave a magic wand.”

It’s still fairly early to assess whether pay transparency laws have been effective in closing pay gaps. The gender wage gap in the US has changed little over the past two decades, as a 

 of government data showed it narrowed only slightly, with women earning 85% of what men earned in 2024, up from 81% in 2003.

The Women’s Foundation of Colorado, which lobbied for the passage of the pay transparency law, shared heartening statistics from the Centennial State last year 

 showing the gender pay gap for the average woman working full-time, year-round closed from 78 cents for every to dollar paid to men in similar jobs in 2021 to 85 cents per dollar in 2024.

Looking at median weekly earnings of full-time workers, though—the way the gender pay gap is typically measured—progress in Colorado looks more muted. The state’s pay gap actually widened to 82 cents on the dollar in 2023, down from 85 cents when pay transparency took effect in 2021, according to the 

Though assessing whether pay transparency will lead to pay equity is a bit of a “crystal ball” exercise, organizations will have math on their side if they take the right approach, said Kelly Voss, head of rewards and career advisory with the professional services firm Aon.

“If we’re showing salary structures, we have people falling outside of salary structures, and we’re adjusting to have people come into the salary structures, over time the math works for you,” she said.

We’re starting to see “the beginnings” of reductions in pay inequities, because pay transparency is “shining a light on how companies are making pay decisions, and in some sense, [requiring] companies to justify those pay decisions,” said Trusaic’s Greenfield.

“There’s an opportunity for pay transparency to reduce or eliminate pay inequities, at least in the long run,” she continued. “In the short run, some of the reasons that inequities are likely to persist” include “the cost of addressing existing inequities, especially for organizations that haven't done this work seriously.”

The federal government does not currently require companies to share their pay data, but individual companies have been eager to share success stories about reducing pay gaps within their organizations when they do occur. Software company 

 a pay equity analysis it performed in mid-2022 that showed 99% of its US employees were paid fairly—that is, the company found few instances where statistically significant differences existed across gender and race for “employees performing comparable work.”

SAP shared salaries for its North American employees internally before it started sharing them externally, which helped the company correct inequities, said Megan Smith, head of people and culture for the Americas. Sharing salary structures with current employees “really holds the employer accountable,” and creates “a lot of clarity and structure for the managers who are making these salary decisions.”

“We had a few more years’ lead time to really be thinking through making sure that that pay fairness is there,” Smith added.

While the grand ambition behind pay transparency laws to reduce inequities that still exist across the US has yet to be fully realized, the movement has shifted the culture of organizations when it comes to talking about compensation. Smith mentioned finding out someone on her team was paid more than her at a previous company when she was in her mid-20s, which marked “a turning point” in how she thought about conversations surrounding pay. She recalled resenting her manager, and being frustrated she didn’t do more to inform herself.

“Now, generationally, it’s completely different,” she said. “People feel more empowered to be able to have conversations, and they have more tools to know where to go to find this information and expect that it can be a part of a discussion.”

A sign that says 'Close The Pay Gap' is held by Nancy Reichman, a member of Colorado's Pay Equity Commission, during a rally in downtown Denver, CO on April 28, 2009.

Why pay transparency hasn’t closed the gender pay gap

More than a dozen US states require employers to share salary ranges, but these efforts haven’t yet closed the gender pay gap. 

Pay transparency promised pay equity. Is it working? 

On October 5, 2017, the New York Times published a story that shifted the entertainment industry and the country: Harvey Weinstein, one of the industry’s most prolific and influential producers for the better part of the previous four decades, allegedly sexually assaulted multiple women, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, and Angelina Jolie.

The story set off a firestorm in Hollywood and reverberated around the world. People began sharing their own stories of assault and exploitation in the industry. It quickly spread to other industries, as women said, #MeToo. Alleged victims exposed people like actor Kevin Spacey and filmmaker James Toback, and studios were accused of protecting predators.

Nearly eight years later, the effects of the #MeToo movement are still being felt in the world of entertainment and elsewhere 

 policies, including the Speak Out Act, have changed and HR has a more active role in production. Despite the progress, experts tell HR Brew that victims of harassment are still afraid to speak out, and employers can do more to create safe workspaces.

Tarana Burke, a sexual assault survivor and activist, first coined #MeToo in 2006, but it took 11 years, perhaps the biggest Hollywood scandal in history, 

 a tweet from Alyssa Milano, to show just how pervasive sexually predatory behavior was in the entertainment industry. As more stories surfaced about not only Weinstein, but dozens of other powerful men in Hollywood, people wondered how the abuse went on for so long.

While some looked at the alleged perpetrators, many looked at who might have protected them for years, including HR. At the Weinstein Company, 

, several Weinstein accusers recounted that HR leaders were “utterly ineffective” and said all complaints would immediately go to Weinstein, the company’s CEO, alluding to the power dynamics at play. The company’s board of directors maintained “shock” over the allegations and said they were unaware of Weinstein’s behavior.

Furthermore, before Matt Lauer, former anchor of the 

show, was fired after a sexual misconduct review, NBC 

 attempted to cover up the allegations. NBC denied any prior knowledge of Lauer’s conduct at the time. The company also conducted an internal investigation, and said there was not a culture of harassment, but that NBC must do more to allow employees to file complaints without fear of retaliation, 

As more accusations came out, from NPR to Fox News, it appeared that some employers across various industries knew what was going on but reportedly did not speak out, despite whistleblower protection laws.

Before #MeToo, victims who filed abuse or discrimination complaints say they often 

 and further discrimination, and the men who were alleged to have victimized them often had few, if any, consequences. The system, from HR to the industry as a whole, appeared to shield perpetrators, while survivors had hardships beyond the abuse, thanks in part to compulsory arbitration agreements and restrictive nondisclosure agreements (NDAs).

“This means you often end up working with the same manager who harassed you before—only now you’ve filed a complaint and embarrassed him in front of HR. Often people don’t complain because they know what is going to happen,” Harvard sociology professor Frank Dobbin 

 in 2017, shortly after the Times broke news of Weinstein.

Weinstein’s own company fired him within three days of the New York Times story.

By January 2018, Time’s Up, an organization that called for workplace safety and equality, was born with support from more than 300 women across the entertainment industry.

Roughly a year after the Weinstein allegations were published, around 200 men across entertainment, tech, and politics were out of their positions; with more than half replaced by women, the New York Times 

“Women have always been seen as risky because they might do something like have a baby. But men are now being seen as more risky hires,” Joan Williams, a law professor who specializes in gender inequality at UC Law, San Francisco, told the Times in 2018.

“The root of the harassment issue is actually inequality in employment,” Leah Meyerhoff, the founder of Film Fatales, a support group for female directors, 

Hollywood changed beyond the initial changes in gender representation. Instead of holding auditions in hotel rooms, as had been common in Hollywood, SAG-AFTRA issued 

 the practice. Additionally, the demand for intimacy coordinators, who choreograph physical scenes between actors, increased, as studios tried to reduce the risk of harassment and sought to keep workers safe. Some HR executives were ousted as well—CBS, Sony Pictures, and Viacom all replaced their HR leaders in the wake of #MeToo revelations, the Independent reported.

“Established protocols—decades worth—are changing at lightning speed,” Amy Baer, a producer, 

 in 2018. “For people like me, who believe change is desperately needed in Hollywood, that is exciting. But a lot of people are lost in anxiety.”

As fast as things seemed like they were changing, survivors still faced challenges beyond their emotional scars. Sarah Ann Masse, who 

 of making an unwanted sexual advance during an interview in 2008, told HR Brew she saw firsthand how studios were taking things out on the survivors. For a long time, she was one of the many women who kept quiet about the abuse she says she experienced because she feared retaliation or people not believing her. Masse spoke out when it was clear that she wasn’t alone, but she believes it still hurt her career.

“I was afraid to walk into rooms that he might be in, get cast on a project that he was working on, that I didn’t know about, be alone with another powerful person who might have used me in the same way,” Masse recalled. “About two months after I came forward, that’s when everything went south. I got a call from my then agent, telling me that she was getting angry phone calls from casting directors, that I was being blacklisted, that I was ruining my career.”

A little more than a year after #MeToo took off, some entertainment producers and executives, mostly men who were white, grew frustrated over how the movement seemed to be shifting Hollywood and the industry’s new diversity efforts such as in its membership with the voting academy, according to 

. Some of the men who were used to holding the keys to Hollywood resented women stepping into more powerful roles.

Survivors often faced the brunt of the consequences for reporting abuse. “HR departments need to make sure they encourage people to feel free to speak up [in work environments] when things happen,” Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb, a former television executive and sexual assault survivor, told 

The #MeToo movement received pushback even early on, as some felt it was going “too far,” Variety reported, and that men weren’t given a fair shake. Some of the men got their jobs back fairly quickly after allegations surfaced. Louis CK, a comedian who several women accused of misconduct, for example, returned to the stage within a year and performed to full houses.

In 2022, Women in Film, which advocates for gender parity in the industry, released 

 finding that while 83% of respondents felt that the culture in Hollywood had improved since #MeToo, 80% either had experienced misconduct in the industry, or knew someone who had, in the last five years. “It’s kind of surprising how much hasn’t changed,” Kirsten Schaffer, CEO of Women in Film, 

Time’s Up, which had established a legal defense fund for survivors, was plagued by controversy and 

Five years after the first allegations against Weinstein surfaced, Kimberly Hamlin, a feminist history scholar at Miami University, 

, “What has not really changed so much over the past five years are the foundational elements of our institutions and structures of power that tacitly and explicitly facilitates, condones, and ignores sexual assault and harassment.”

 One head of production who spoke to HR Brew on the condition of anonymity, said that HR has become closer partners with the production team including being on set more than before the #MeToo movement.

“They [HR] are really dedicated and really good, and they’re even on set with us once a week,” the producer said. “It was drilled into us: document, document, document.”

 earlier this year that progress since the #MeToo movement has been “palpable.” “I’ve never in my entire career had HR come in prior to a movie and talk about what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior and a hotline, which Netflix has, to call anonymously to report any issues that you might be feeling.”

In 2024, the Hollywood Commission, a nonprofit established in Dec. 2017, created Respect on Set, which provides various resources to employers in the industry that may have smaller budgets, including sample code of conduct policies and guidelines for how employees can report harassment incidents. 

“Employers have recognized their obligations toward providing a workplace free of harassment and abuse,” said Anita Hill, chair of the Hollywood Commission and women’s advocate, who testified in front of Congress about her alleged harassment by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

 Chris Yogerst, a media historian, told HR Brew that the #MeToo movement has allowed space for newcomers and created more diversity in the industry. The power dynamics that once ruled the industry have dissolved somewhat.

“One of the things that made these workplaces not feel like workplaces throughout the history of Hollywood was the amount of power that so very few people have,” he said. “Now a lot of that power has been upended, and I think that’s one of the reasons why a lot of these culture shifts have been allowed to happen…there’s that stuff that isn’t gonna get brushed aside anymore.”

Some have said the industry hasn’t changed enough and some men are still being protected, Claudia Eller, chief production officer at Variety and a journalist who has spent decades reporting on the industry, told HR Brew. “There were also hundreds more who were never held accountable,” she said. Eller also noted that those realities don’t negate the progress from HR being on the set to intimacy coordinators.

 The movement has been in the media during the last several months as Weinstein was found guilty of one count of a criminal sexual act and not guilty on another in a 

 costar Justin Baldoni of harassment on set, and the ongoing lawsuit between the two is also a test of California state law 933, a ripple effect from #MeToo, to protect accusers from retaliation.

There are other signs of progress as well, according to some survivors. Industry unions have 

 in contracts meant to protect workers. Many people working on set now have access to a hotline where they can call and report discrimination. Some studios, like Paramount, also have guidelines for producers on how to proceed when there are complaints to an HR department.

More than 80 anti-sexual harassment bills have been passed in 25 states since the start of #MeToo reckoning. What’s more, President Biden signed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Harassment Act, and the Speak Out Act, which barred enforcement of harassment-related NDAs in 2022.

In 2022, a Hollywood Commission survey found that 73% of respondents believe that Hollywood leaders treat addressing sexual harassment as a “low“ or “medium“ priority and 28.6% feel that “minimal progress has been made in Hollywood since 2017.“ They are also still afraid that those in power won’t be held accountable for their actions, so many victims do not report the harassment, the report found. “There’s still a lot of fear and rightful fear around coming forward. There’s still a huge amount of retaliation,” Masse told HR Brew.

Survivors can still struggle to find work, says Masse, who believes employers should do more to recruit them. “We’ve lost a lot of talent by retaliating against survivors, both established talent and people who never really got a chance,” she said. In 2024, Masse established Hire Survivors, a nonprofit that connects employers with survivors and provides customized training to companies, and a free toolkit on how studios can create safe, trauma-informed workplaces.

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Quarter Century Project

DEI practitioners express hope for the future of workplace inclusion

The CHRO's new seat at the table might be at risk

Pay transparency promised pay equity. Is it working?

Nearly 8 years after #MeToo splintered Hollywood, HR has a more active role on set

One decade after SHRM launched its HR certifications, who gets the most value from them?

How work has evolved since the dawn of Zoom

The past 25 years have been an uphill journey for the HR function

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