California-Based Meta Announces The End Of Their DEI Policies

Meta CEO and Chairman Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday that his company would be halting their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, becoming the first major California company to do so.

While many major companies began adding DEI programs and hiring policies in the wake of the George Floyd incident in 2020, several companies have opted to end them in the past year. Wal-Mart, Ford, Harley Davidson, Tractor Supply, Lowe’s and others have made nationwide headlines for ending DEI programs, giving a multitude of reasons including economic factors, already having a diverse workforce, potential legal consequences, and concerns over the programs being too politically divisive.

With Donald Trump to be inaugurated in less than two weeks, and companies hoping to avoid more politicization and potential legal troubles caused by DEI programs, this week saw a significant upswing of companies ending DEI programs. This included McDonalds, which is returning to a more traditional inclusion program over their DEI program. And on Friday, Meta, the parent company of Facebook headquartered in Menlo Park, joined them, becoming the first major Californian company to end their DEI initiatives.

According to a memo from Meta, they will be ending DEI initiatives because of a changing “legal and policy landscape” surrounding their DEI programs.

“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” said the Meta memo. “The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics. The term “DEI” has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.

“At Meta, we have a principle of serving everyone. This can be achieved through cognitively diverse teams, with differences in knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. Such teams are better at innovating, solving complex problems and identifying new opportunities which ultimately helps us deliver on our ambition to build products that serve everyone. On top of that, we’ve always believed that no-one should be given – or deprived- of opportunities because of protected characteristics, and that has not changed.”

The memo then went on to say that they would be specifically ending the Diverse Slate Approach in hiring employees, that they would be ending  representation goals for women and ethnic minorities, that they will no longer require supplies to have DEI programs, that they would be moving away from equity and inclusion training programs, and that the DEI team would be no more.

Meta to end their DEI program

In a statement made later on Friday, Meta chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan added that “This is ultimately about doing what’s best for our company and ensuring that we are serving everyone and building teams with the most talented people. This means evaluating people as individuals, and sourcing people from a range of candidate pools, but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics like race or gender.

“The Supreme Court of the United States recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics. It’s clear that there’s a shift on this issue from a policy and legal perspective, and we anticipate that will happen even more moving forward, and we want to ensure our programs are in a long-term and sustainable position.”

According to experts, Meta won’t be the last California company to drop them, as Meta has now opened the floodgates for tech companies and others in the state.

“We’re seeing the death of DEI right now,” explained Julie Ochs, a San Jose-based headhunter and hiring specialist, to the Globe on Friday.” Companies saw that it wasn’t working, and in many cases, they were not getting the right people for the jobs. I have worked with several companies up here who have DEI policies. And the turnover in DEI companies is far greater than companies hiring solely on merit. That’s a reason these companies aren’t giving when dropping DEI. DEI policies either hired or promoted people without them having the right experience, or having enough experience.

“And you know what the weird thing is? Companies without DEI policies are still very diverse. If you want a company to make the most money, you have people from different backgrounds, different races, different genders to get the full picture of things. It was still very much merit and experience-based too.

“And that’s just hiring. DEI policies within companies wanted to fight back against discrimination, against harassment, and all that. Make it a friendlier work environment. But they were not working. I heard from people who left these companies with DEI that it had turned into meetings where everyone agreed with one another on things. One of my clients even told me how they had been iced out of a meeting because the group thought that a company day honoring Diego Rivera, the artist, was a great idea. He told them it wasn’t, as some of the companies they worked with would have had issues with the painters Communist politics. They said that that sort of thinking was racist and “non-inclusive.” Sure enough, they eventually lost a few of those companies as clients.

“There are also growing legal issues on DEI, and that has been the primarily catalyst for all these companies leaving recently. For them, it’s just not worth it anymore. Plus, they can still have a diverse company without them. Meta will not be the last in California to do this. In fact, many might follow their lead now.”

The announcement to end DEI programs at Meta comes only a few days following an announcement on the end of having fact-checkers at Facebook, signaling even more likely changes to come soon at the company.