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Accenture has scrapped its global diversity and inclusion goals after an “evaluation” of the US political landscape, becoming the latest big company to ditch its targets since the election of Donald Trump.
A memo to staff from chief executive Julie Sweet said the New York-listed consulting group would begin “sunsetting” its diversity goals set in 2017, as well as career development programmes for “people of specific demographic groups”.
Sweet said in the memo that the change followed an “evaluation of our internal policies and practices and the evolving landscape in the United States, including recent Executive Orders with which we must comply”.
Accenture, which employs 799,000 people around the world, joins Meta, McDonald’s and Target in ditching diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals in response to the new political climate since Trump’s election.
The US president has been highly critical of what he calls the “absolute nonsense” of “discriminatory” diversity, equity and inclusion measures.
He signed a series of executive orders cutting federal DEI programmes when he came into office last month, tapping into a vein of corporate fatigue for diversity goals.
Other companies, such as Costco and JPMorgan Chase, have reaffirmed their commitment while some are reassessing their inclusion policies for the Trump era.
In 2017, Accenture set a target that half its staff would be women by the end of 2025. It also set a goal for 25 per cent of its managing directors to be women by 2020, a target it later updated to 30 per cent by 2025. At the time, 41 per cent of its employees and 21 per cent of managing directors were women.
The group also set itself goals for ethnic minority representation in its workforce in the US, UK and South Africa.
As well as rolling back the targets, which Sweet said would no longer be used to measure staff performance, Accenture would no longer submit data to external diversity benchmarking surveys.
The group would also “evaluate” external partnerships on the topic “as part of refreshing our talent strategy”, she added.
Accenture declined to comment.
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