Around 130 nominations with initiatives for diversity, equality and inclusion were submitted by your members to the Diversity Charter Sweden Awards 2025! A fantastic example of the commitment that exists. At the same time, there are worrying signals: some are scaling back DEI-work in tough times.
In sectors currently experiencing downsizing, some workplaces are choosing to de-prioritise work on diversity, equality and inclusion. This may involve pausing or ending training initiatives and development work, removing posts with specific responsibility for diversity, equality and inclusion, or ending or toning down the workplace's involvement in external networks working on these issues.
What risks does this pose? What can workplaces do to ensure that engagement and work on diversity, equality and inclusion does not disappear in bad times?
If important for real
It is crucial that you have clearly identified why Diversity, equality and inclusion are important to your organisation. How does it relate to your core values? How does it contribute to business/positive impacts in your organisation? How does it contribute to positive impacts in your workplaces?
For example, it can be about skills supply and utilising the skills of employees, well-being and engagement, creativity and development. It can also be about delivering better and fit-for-purpose products and services, as well as better understanding and serving customers, users or patients. Additional reasons may include meeting the expectations of owners, investors and society at large.
If diversity, equality and inclusion are really important, it is not something that the workplace stops doing in bad times, perhaps cutting back on any purchases of products or services, but the work continues internally.
Integrate into what you do
Another important part of reducing the risk of diversity, equality and inclusion disappearing in bad times is to integrate equality, fairness, non-discrimination, diversity and inclusion into the processes and practices you already have in place in your workplace.
Integrate it into your recruitment practices, your induction programmes for new staff, your health and safety training for managers and safety representatives, your management training and induction for new managers, the way you conduct meetings, your pay setting processes, your career development and promotion processes, and your efforts to develop workplace culture. In this way, these become natural and integral parts of how you run your business, and not something on the side that can be ”picked off”.
Risks of down-prioritisation
What are the risks of de-prioritising diversity, equality and inclusion? Both workforce and customers may opt out of organisations that have de-prioritised diversity, equality and inclusion, and instead seek out organisations that have retained or strengthened these efforts.
One example highlighted in the US is the retailers Target and Costco. Target decided in early 2025 to discontinue its DEI work, which had been ongoing for almost 15 years (when the then newly elected US President attacked DEI in various ways). Meanwhile, Costco retained and strengthened its diversity, equality and inclusion efforts. Target has been boycotted and customers have flocked to Costco. Target's cancellation of its DEI work has been cited as one of the reasons for the company's financial problems and the departure of its CEO. Particularly problematic for Target was that, with the same CEO, they kept a high profile during 2020 and Black Lives Matter, emphasising how important these issues are to the company. Such a turnaround puts an organisation at risk of losing credibility, not only when it comes to diversity, equality and inclusion.
Additional risks in the workplace: If the culture becomes less inclusive, with less openness and where different perspectives and competences are silenced, muted or leave, the workplace risks losing important perspectives that may be needed to solve problems and challenges in less favourable and more challenging times. Well-being and commitment also risk deteriorating. A development where the diversity of the workforce is reduced in the event of downsizing and where the new recruitments made involve more similarity instead of diversity, risks leading to skills and perspectives being missed. This, in turn, can lead to poorer decision-making, less creativity and reduced attractiveness for both the workplace and the organisation.
What is it like in your workplace?
What is being done in your organisation to reduce the risk of diversity, equality and inclusion being de-prioritised in bad times? Have you clarified why and how diversity, equality and inclusion are important to your organisation? Have you made efforts to integrate these perspectives into your workplace practices, for example in recruitment, in the way meetings are organised and in regular workplace training?
Research and articles on which the text is based:
Mor Barak, M.E. et al. (2016). The promise of diversity management for climate of inclusion: a state-of-the-art review and meta-analysis. Human Service Organisations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 40(4), 305-333.
Mor Barak, M.E. (2019) “Erecting walls versus tearing them down: Inclusion and the (False) Paradox of Diversity in Times of Economic Upheaval”, European Management Review. 16:4, 937-955.
Melville, D., “The Quiet Part Out Loud: Target Ditching DEI Cost The CEO His Job And Investors $12 Billion”, Forbes, 21 August, 2025. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dougmelville/2025/08/21/the-quiet-part-out-loud-target-ditching-dei-cost-the-ceo-his-job-and-investors-12-billion/
Kratz, J., “Target Learns A Lesson In Accountability”, Forbes, 22 August, 2025.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliekratz/2025/08/22/target-learns-a-lesson-in-accountability/
Gabriella Fägerlind has worked as an organisational consultant focusing on gender equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace since 1999. She is the author of the book ”Mångfald i praktiken - handbok för inkluderande arbetsplatser”, which was published in 2024.
