McDonald's has become the latest US company to roll back its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies amid the backlash from conservatives. The fast-food franchise giant said it will abandon targets for achieving diverse representation in senior roles and change the name of its diversity team to become the Global Inclusion Team. In an open letter to its employees, McDonald's said it was making the decision, owing to the "shifting legal landscape".
"We are retiring setting aspirational representation goals and instead keeping our focus on continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations," read a statement by McDonald's.
"We are evolving how we refer to our diversity team, which will now be the Global Inclusion Team."
The company highlighted that it will also be pausing "external surveys" that measure corporate diversity to focus on growing the business "internally". It will also scrap requirements for suppliers to comply with so-called DEI goals.
"We are retiring Supply Chain's Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge in favour of a more integrated discussion with suppliers about inclusion as it relates to business performance."
While the decision may have been largely provoked by the conservative voices who are against the DEI policies in hiring, McDonald's cited the Supreme Court decision that ended affirmative action at universities.
The decision by McDonald's to pivot on its 'woke' policies comes four years after it launched a push for more diversity in its ranks. Between July and September last year, McDonald's, which has its headquarters in Chicago, witnessed its biggest decline in global sales at outlets open at least a year. The sales plummeted by 1.5 per cent, prompting the McDonald's hierarchy to introduce a series of fresh menu items with the backtrack on 'woke' policies being attributed as another measure to arrest the slide.
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'No woke'
Notably, McDonald's is not the first US company to have abandoned its progressive policies but it is certainly one of the biggest corporations to publically announce the move. In November last year, Walmart announced it was abandoning its DEI commitments whilst closing the Center for Racial Equity -- a nonprofit it had founded in 2020 with a $100 million, five-year commitment.
Similarly, Boeing also dropped its global diversity, equity and inclusion department by redirecting the staff to its human resources department to focus on talent acquisition and employee experience.
