To avoid government scrutiny, companies are asking for fewer trainings focused on race and gender and more on neurodivergence and generational differences.
When President Trump signed an executive order in January targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs in federal agencies, schools and the private sector, Arin Reeves, who has been a D.E.I. consultant for 26 years, said many in her field were in a panic.
“All the federal government stuff, I was watching it, and I genuinely didn’t even know where to go with it,” Ms. Reeves said. For those in the industry, she added, there was a feeling of: “What do we do?”
The answer for many D.E.I. professionals has been to adapt to what companies feel comfortable offering: employee trainings that maintain the principles of diversity and inclusion but without necessarily calling them that. That has meant fewer sessions that focus explicitly on race, gender, sexuality and unconscious bias, and more on subjects like neurodivergence, mental health and generational differences, a training that teaches about how age affects viewpoints in the workplace.
Companies are looking for “safer inclusion topics,” said Ms. Reeves, who is based in Chicago and whose work involves conducting research on diversity in the workplace to inform her trainings. “If you have something being billed as a generational differences training, it is less likely to raise eyebrows among anybody that’s looking to say: ‘Hey, is that safe? Is that dangerous for us to do right now?’”
A report by the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at N.Y.U. Law and the workplace gender equity firm Catalyst found that 78 percent of C-suite executives intend to rebrand their D.E.I. programs with terms like “employee engagement” or “workplace culture” while staying committed to underlying values of inclusion.
“They still want to have these human-centered conversations,” said Stephanie Creary, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School who focuses on organizational D.E.I. “And so as a substitute, they are talking about generations” and other less scrutinized topics.
