By Callum Borchers

Corporate America's diversity, equity and inclusion campaign is going incognito. It's a pragmatic move -- unless a company has Harvard-level supplies of fight and funding.

Businesses that once trumpeted efforts to hire more women and people of color recognize flaunting such initiatives today is liable to attract unwanted scrutiny from the Trump administration, courts or influential activists like Robby Starbuck.

Strategies for flying under the radar include ditching the DEI acronym and applying a blander label, like "employee engagement," to similar programs. Some employers are using third parties to recruit diverse job candidates so company career pages don't invite attention. Others are preserving inclusive benefits, like hormone therapy for transgender employees, but no longer advertising them.

"You can't be as explicit as saying, 'I want X% of my leadership team to be a certain demographic' because that's a compliance thing right now," says Tope Ajala, whose title at advertising agency Ogilvy changed this year from DEI chief to global inclusion and impact officer. "Is it something you can still work towards internally? Absolutely."

Maybe this strikes you as cowardly. But even some nonprofits that had phrases like "social justice" and "racial equity" in their names are removing those bull's-eyes, figuring the only way to continue their work is to operate more discreetly. It's unrealistic to expect for-profit businesses to be bolder than their idealistic counterparts.

Or perhaps you're miffed to hear about companies doing DEI on the sly because you wanted a full-scale rollback. It is in most companies' best interest to tap wide talent and customer pools, which means keeping diversity as a priority in some form.

To state what should have been obvious from the get-go, businesses approach DEI in whatever fashion they think is best for the bottom line at the moment. Their mistake, and ours, in recent years was acting like these decisions were based on anything but business.

Their goal in the current environment is pursuing diversity goals without being branded as "woke."

"They want to be very cautious in how they are perceived and how they express their positions," says Ruth Villalonga, founder and chief executive of Villa Communications, which advises S&P 500 companies. "It doesn't do shareholders, employees or anyone who depends on the success of your business any good if you have to defend yourself in a lawsuit."

Behind the scenes

Ford Motor, Molson Coors, Lowe's, Harley-Davidson and other companies last year withdrew from a gay-rights index compiled by the nonprofit Human Rights Campaign. In recent years roughly three-quarters of the S&P 500 has participated in the annual report by answering survey questions about their corporate policies, like insurance coverage for same-sex couples and donations to LGBT causes.

The HRC index is a favorite target of Starbuck's. Pulling out seemed like a way to dissuade him from rallying conservative customers against a brand.

But are businesses actually changing their practices or simply declining to broadcast them? It seems more like the latter.

"Our commitment to diversity is embedded in our values and core to who we are as a brand," a Lowe's spokesman told me.

This is typical of what Jay Brown, the Human Rights Campaign's chief of staff, hears from companies. "There are many that are not making radical adjustments," he says.

Leaders have told his group privately that they remain committed to recruiting and protecting LGBT workers but think it is wise to do so quietly. Brown says he wishes companies would be more forthright but understands they are in difficult positions.

Hertz earned a perfect rating from the Human Rights Campaign in 2022 and posted on social media about raising rainbow flags over its Estero, Fla., headquarters and an office in Oklahoma City during Pride month that year. Back then, the car-rental company offered me interviews with the chair of an LGBT employee-resource group and an executive who said it was important to live up to workers' expectations of outward support.

This year Hertz's score dropped to 75 out of 100. Its ratings for inclusive benefits and workforce protections remained high, but the company got low marks for "efforts of outreach or engagement" to the LGBT community.

And the rainbow flags? Seeing no sign of them on social media, I asked Hertz...then asked again. On the third inquiry, a week after the first, a spokeswoman told me the banners are flying and said the company plans Pride-themed social content later in the month. If Hertz was hoping I'd take the hint and keep the festivities lower key, I can't blame them.

Outside help

Wells Fargo, once one of the boldest DEI practitioners, typifies companies' shift toward subtler diversity efforts. It pledged after George Floyd's murder at the hands of police in 2020 to double the number of Black leaders at the bank by 2025. That numerical target, and a similar one set by Microsoft, prompted the Labor Department during Trump's first term to probe whether the goals amounted to unlawful quotas.

Though Wells Fargo was cleared, the bank has stopped publishing DEI progress reports and appears to have removed old versions from its website. This year it scrubbed a paragraph about diversity from its annual securities filing.

The bank's "inclusion" page now focuses on veterans, people with disabilities and neurodivergent workers. Near the bottom it mentions an internship program for students at historically Black colleges and universities and a partnership with OneTen, a nonprofit that helps people without four-year degrees land jobs.

Wells Fargo declined an interview request, but OneTen Chief Executive Debbie Dyson calls the bank a "wonderful partner." She says her organization assists people of all races but notes people of color are a disproportionately large share of non-college-educated job seekers. An archived Wells Fargo DEI report, published in 2023, says 94% of employees hired through OneTen come from "diverse backgrounds."

Dyson says companies appreciate that her group opens an indirect pipeline to diverse applicants.

"If you still want to support hiring in a very broad way -- without using certain words -- OneTen and other organizations can definitely help you do it and not put a beacon on your forehead," she says.

Practicing DEI in 2025 is like getting into a speakeasy, except the key is to not say the magic words.

Write to Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 11, 2025 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)

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