Beyond Buzzwords

DEI is the Smart Bet to Help Companies Win

If you believe in this country’s stated foundational principles that all people are created equal, and that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, including liberty and the pursuit of happiness, this  blog is for you. 

A fundamental tenet of American society is that all people are created equal and all people should be free to pursue a life of happiness.

Business leaders — whether owners and executives, or management at any level — by and large hold this belief as individuals and understand that it is their responsibility to make business decisions that do not conflict with American values; and certainly not with federal, state or local laws.

Effectively integrating the values of diversity and inclusion supports a business’s bottom line. 

[Image created using AI]

In case you missed it, check out my “preface” post, The Foundation on Which We Stand, published on the half full, llc blog, in which I explain the business framework for “DEI,” and how related terms apply.

Framing the Context

When looking at how and why to implement programs or policies related to diversity and inclusion, it’s important to frame the context of the conversation within the realities of the business world and social atmosphere in which your organization operates. We will leave the full framing, as well as the range of causes, correlations, and impacts of this context to historians, who can offer a PhD education’s worth of substance on the topic.

People advocating for regulatory change and societal advancement need to rely on that full framing. For our purposes, for the purpose of your business needs, recent history and current status are what matter. 

A recent flashpoint that reshaped the conversation around diversity and inclusion in corporate America was the renewed racial justice movement of 2020.

Corporate embrace of “DEI”

During the summer of 2020, across the United States hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to call for racial justice. The summer of racial reckoning was sparked by the widely viewed murder of George Floyd who was killed by a police officer. Passersby had filmed the ordeal and the world watched as Floyd, who had been unarmed and had long stopped resisting his arrest, took his last breaths, called out for his mother, and laid motionless for the last minute of his eight-minute suffocation.

With the country having been mostly shut-in for the better part of two months prior to this traumatic event, protests and demonstrations quickly filled American cities. While a few turned violent or included vandalism, the vast majority were peaceful and sought to be productive.

Corporate America took notice and a cascade of statements were put out by CEOs and spokespeople, affirming a commitment to improving diversity and inclusion within their workforces. Positions with titles such as Director of DEI or VP, Culture & Inclusion flooded LinkedIn and job boards, and it seemed as though the business world was finally understanding the value of these values. This initial response — the public embrace of these values — was promising, but long-term follow-through has lacked consistency.

The following few years showed mixed results, with some companies delivering well on their promises and others appearing to hold diversity and inclusivity initiatives as window dressing around business-as-usual policies.

I do not believe the majority of the window-dressing crowd is malicious in their approach, or even disingenuous. After scores of years honing those business-as-usual systems, it can be difficult to change the paradigm effectively. Stay tuned for later blogs that will offer more concrete approaches to specific policy areas. Here, we’ll focus on the case for diversity and inclusion policies to remain part of your organization’s toolbox, because following even more recent shifts in this realm and federal policy changes, understanding the general approach and framework for effectively engaging with various stakeholders is critical.

To understand why values-based policies remain important, we must first examine some recent macro-level developments that have shaped their trajectory throughout industry.

Recent Changes to Federal Policy

In early 2025, President Donald Trump signed several executive orders that significantly altered the federal approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives:

Executive Order 14151: Titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” this order mandated the termination of all DEI-related programs across federal agencies. It required the Office of Management and Budget to compile lists of employees involved in DEI roles and led to widespread terminations and the removal of DEI content from federal websites.

Executive Order 14173: “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” revoked previous directives that required federal contractors to implement affirmative action policies. It centralized enforcement authority within the Department of Labor and eliminated protections based on gender identity in federal hiring practices.

These policy shifts have prompted legal challenges from various states and organizations, citing concerns over civil rights violations and the rollback of longstanding protections. 

American public is split

These executive orders and related reprioritization reflect — and have further fueled — a deeply divided national discourse on the role and value of DEI initiatives.

A poll conducted by NBC in March 2025 confirms what most would suspect: the United States is home to a deeply polarized national debate over diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. This was highlighted in the presidential election, with Donald Trump making the elimination of such initiatives a priority in his campaign — and now administration. The electorate is effectively evenly split. “Half of registered voters (49%)… say DEI programs should be eliminated…,” while half “48% say DEI programs… should continue.” This reflects the stark division over whether such efforts enhance fairness or foster inefficiency and division. The poll also shows that 43% of voters view DEI programs negatively, compared to 39% who see them positively.

The division is underscored by broader cultural attitudes, especially concerning political correctness. A slim majority (51%) believe there is “too much political correctness in our society,” compared to 45% who say there is “too much prejudice.” These views break strongly along party lines. “An overwhelming share of Republicans (85%) believe DEI programs should be eliminated,” while 85% of Democrats believe they should continue. Independents tend to side more with Democrats on this issue, with 59% favoring DEI policies. Republican actions — such as federal investigations into DEI practices and companies like Comcast being scrutinized — highlight how Trump’s policy stance is influencing public and private institutions.

Demographic divisions also play a key role. Women under 50 are more supportive of DEI, with 67% saying the programs should continue, compared to 40% of men in the same age group. Racial divides are equally clear: “An overwhelming share of Black voters (80%) say DEI programs should persist,” and 71% say there is too much prejudice in society. Among white voters, however, a majority oppose DEI, except for white women with college degrees, two-thirds of whom support DEI initiatives. As Democratic pollster Aileen Cardona-Arroyo notes, this split reflects differing views on societal problems and “very different approaches” to solving them.

This clear split can be stifling. However, the split reflects political controversy and the feelings of whether “DEI is good” or “DEI is bad.” In business, decisions should be based on data, and decision-makers should not succumb to political noise that diverts attention away from bottom-line goals.

You Should Ignore the Split

The arguments for and against diversity, equity and inclusivity initiatives will persist, just as the efforts to continue those initiatives and attacks on them will remain. Far too often, these debates devolve into one side labeling the other with disparagements like “bigot” and “closed-minded” for those opposed, or “woke” and “bleeding heart” for those who support such efforts. 

The fact is, regardless of how right or wrong any of those labels are, and whether or not one believes in the social values of diversity and inclusion, your business will perform better if it embraces diversity and inclusion as core values. This is because regardless of their social merit, effectively upholding these values helps businesses in multiple ways.

What does “embracing diversity and inclusion” look like, and how will it help your business?

The following are three critical ways that policies aligned with the values of diversity and inclusion objectively support business success. Examples of tactics are shared, as well. Implementing these tactics, or any other, correctly will make or break your results.

Employee Recruitment, Retention and Engagement

Smart, hard-working, experienced and effective employees come with a range of identities. Talent is diverse. If your recruitment funnel is not being filled with diverse candidates, you are missing some of the top people who could fill your open positions. If you believe your company is attracting the best people without any attention to being inclusive in your hiring practices, you are wrong about at least one of two things. You are either wrong about using inclusive hiring practices (you may be shunning a label for a tactic you’re using) or you are wrong about attracting the best and brightest (you are hiring the best of a subset of people, and leaving talented people for your competitors).

Retaining the employees you have saves time and energy (so it saves: money). Inclusion boosts morale by helping employees feel valued as individuals in addition to being valued for their productivity. According to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management, engaged employees who have positive work experiences are nearly 70% less likely to consider leaving an employer.

Tactic: Ensure the language in your job descriptions isn’t turning people away. 

Even when we are trying, we often use language that sends signals unintentionally. Sometimes those signals can have very different interpretations by different groups of people. A common area of this is with gender dynamics, where subtle differences can be the difference between encouraging all people to apply or it being discouraging to women.

It is best to take a holistic approach to communications to ensure you’re consistently sending the same messages to all receivers of your communication. If you’re not there yet, a good first step is to run job descriptions through “decoder” tools that can help you identify places to amend your language so you can widen the funnel of those applying, and hire the more meritorious candidates from the larger, more diverse pool of applicants. MIT offers this free gender decoder that you can use as a starting point.

In addition to strengthening retention and hiring, inclusivity also bolsters innovation.

Innovation Increases

Diverse teams generate diverse ideas, and when people on those teams are able to fully show up, these ideas help propel new innovations for companies. In a report from Korn Ferry released last year, diverse teams generate 20% more revenue from innovation, and inclusive teams are 75% more likely to succeed in new efforts.

If your workforce is diverse, it is easy to create teams and work groups that are diverse, without giving thought to identity. However, if your overall employee mix lacks adequate diversity, it is important when designing diverse work teams that more than identity is taken into consideration.

Tactic: Build work team based on the natural strengths of your employees

Gallup has an incredible tool, CliftonStrengths, that finds and ranks the top five strengths (of 34 identified) of each of your team members. Building teams based on these Strengths helps with performance within the group and of the group. Teams built according to their Strengths are also easier to manage and it helps to ensure the diversity of teams, counterintuitively, by taking identity dynamics out of consideration and putting together a team of people whose work-personality traits will mesh well together. Educating team members about their strengths and those of their teammates helps to ensure teams are more than diverse, but also inclusive.

Give yourself a chance to celebrate one of the best workplace clichés around: your team is greater than the sum of its parts. This is seen not only in the increased innovation, but also the financial outcomes they deliver.

Financial Performance

The McKinsey research firm has conducted annual studies on diversity in the workplace over the past decade. The most recent report found that diversity impacts financial performance even more now than when they began.

Specifically, companies that have diverse leadership teams are 39% more likely than non-diverse companies to financially outperform their peers.

Similarly, Target, which recently ended its long-standing commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion policies, acknowledged the link between their “retreat from DEI”  — whether actual or perceived — and its decline in sales and profit. 

Execute the Strategy

Regardless of political climate, businesses thrive when they reflect the diversity of all their stakeholders. Inclusion is no longer optional window dressing—it’s strategic. Getting it right is an area where half full, llc and Butterfly Benefits can help you recruit, engage and uplift diverse teams, leveraging their innovation and productivity to strengthen your organization’s performance.

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