“Inclusion is not a side project. It’s the scaffolding for sustainable leadership.”
Dame Sharon White, Chair, John Lewis Partnership
In 2025, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the UK is at a crossroads. What began as a post-2020 surge of purpose, action, and self-examination now faces a more cynical, cautious era. The initial energy has faded in some corners. In this article Lubna Haq explores how DEI is now contending with a wave of scepticism and strategic retreat. Posing the question: Why are some organisations quietly stepping back, reducing roles, dropping targets, or rebranding initiatives?
As someone who has worked alongside leaders trying to build more inclusive organisations, Lubna has seen first hand how powerful it is when someone feels seen. When their voice finally carries weight in a room that once ignored it.
The evolving meaning of DEI today
DEI is less about box-ticking and more about systems change. Leading organisations have moved past tokenism to ask deeper questions about access, fairness, and equity.
That said, language is evolving. Many firms now frame DEI under terms like “inclusive leadership,” “belonging” or “culture equity.” The shift reflects growing wariness in the face of public backlash, but it also highlights a critical distinction: renaming is not the same as retreating, unless action disappears too.
According to the Institute of Directors, 71% of UK business leaders report they are maintaining or expanding DEI efforts in 2025. This signals that, while headlines may focus on rollback, much of the business community still views inclusion as a competitive and cultural imperative.
What does the research say?
The numbers continue to reinforce the commercial and cultural case for DEI. According to McKinsey’s 2023 global report, companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity in leadership are 39% more likely to outperform peers on profitability. Similarly, Deloitte’s 2024 study on neurodiversity found that cognitively diverse teams were up to 30% more productive and more likely to generate novel solutions in fast-moving markets.
The Social Mobility Foundation’s 2024 UK Employer Index revealed that over 60% of senior leaders in professional services come from privileged backgrounds, despite comprising only a small fraction of the population. This highlights the class-based barriers still entrenched in many sectors.
Thought leaders have also weighed in. As Verna Myers, Netflix’s former VP of Inclusion Strategy, famously said: “Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance.”
So why are some organisations pulling back
There are three main drivers:
- Political backlash: In today’s polarised climate, DEI is often mischaracterised as ideological. Some executives fear reputational risk for publicly championing identity-specific efforts.
- Economic triage: Amid rising inflation and budget constraints, some organisations are consolidating or eliminating dedicated DEI roles to cut costs.
- Global complexity: Multinationals are navigating vastly different cultural contexts. Initiatives that resonate in London may alienate stakeholders in less progressive markets.
The net result: DEI continues, but more quietly. Targets are dropped, language is softened, and actions are absorbed into broader ESG or HR frameworks. For some, this is evolution. For others, it’s erosion.
Despite the challenges, several sectors and companies are advancing robust DEI efforts:
- Unilever UK embeds equity into everything from supply chains to product development through its “Equity by Design” framework.
- Sainsbury’s has implemented neurodiversity-friendly hiring, onboarding, and customer service, including quiet shopping hours.
- Legal & General links DEI to investment strategy, engaging portfolio companies on inclusion through its Inclusive Capitalism model.
- London Ambulance Service runs a reverse mentoring scheme to give senior leaders insight into the lived experiences of ethnic minority staff.
- JCB has built neurodiverse engineering teams that have delivered improved product design efficiency and time-to-market outcomes.
- Channel 4 leads with the “4Inclusion” strategy, pioneering initiatives on class diversity, disability representation, and anti-racism; their Black to Front campaign transformed commissioning processes.
Replicating any of these initiatives would be worthwhile investment and can be launched by exploring what DEI should look like in your organisation.
But DEI isn’t just race and gender
We’re also seeing the expansion of the DEI agenda in other organisations, as inclusion is broadening beyond race and gender to include neurodivergence and class. These issues are often less politicised and more directly tied to performance. Only 7% of the UK’s population attended private schools, but they hold 39% of senior business roles.
- EY UK’s Neuro-Diverse Centre of Excellence hires professionals with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia for data and analytics roles.
- Auticon, staffed entirely by autistic consultants, partners with HSBC and Allianz and trains corporate teams on neuroinclusive practices.
- Deloitte reports that neurodiverse teams can be up to 30% more productive in innovation-based roles.
- PwC, Lloyds, and KPMG now report and address class disparities through audits, targeted apprenticeships, and pay gap transparency.
If neurodiversity and class isn’t a consideration in your company, should it be? How are you to address the inequality experienced by those in your company if you’re not even conscious of it?
Should organisations assess for it?
Assessment is important, but not just to gather data. Done well, it can uncover patterns in hiring, promotion, pay, and team dynamics that disproportionately affect people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds or those who are neurodivergent. But assessment without action risks becoming another form of box-ticking.
Accommodation is often where the real shift starts. Making adjustments, whether that’s flexible working, different communication methods, or simply creating recruitment processes that aren’t biased toward certain educational or social backgrounds sends a powerful message. It says, we’re willing to change how we work so more people can thrive.
But accommodation alone is not inclusion. Inclusion means those individuals are not just allowed in, but actively valued.
The bottom line, If you’re not considering class and neurodiversity, then you’re not truly building an inclusive culture. They’re central to fairness, equity, and business performance. And if we want to build workplaces where everyone can thrive, we must start by recognising who we’ve been leaving out.
So where should you start?
Whether you are re-energising stalled efforts or launching something for the first time, the starting point is understanding your reality. Not just where you want to be, but where you are right now. That means:
- Listening to your peoples lived experiences
- Mapping representation across levels, functions, and backgrounds
- Identifying which parts of the organisation feel safe, fair, and open and which do not
- Connecting DEI to your broader organisational strategy, leadership behaviours, and values
From there, meaningful action becomes possible. Because the truth is, DEI is no longer a mandate. It’s a mindset. The organisations that thrive in the coming years will be those that treat inclusion not as a project, but as a principle embedded into how they lead, grow, and innovate. If you’re asking what DEI should look like in your organisation, that’s exactly the right place to begin.
Where does DEI go from here?
Some would argue that DEI is rebranding not retreating and it’s important to be aware of the distinction. Language may change, but intent must be lasting. Alongside this, neurodiversity and class need to be part of the inclusion conversation in more organisations. These are not peripheral concerns, they are future-defining priorities.
Inclusion in 2025 is complex and contested. While the terrain in front of you is changing, it’s easy to wait for the picture to unfold before acting with the herd. But the mission has to remain if your organisation is to benefit for the commercial upside. Creating workplaces where all people can thrive, is long past a nice to have. It has fast become the necessity that businesses require to attract the best and most innovative talent. This will only continue as the workplace continues to evolve. The question for business leaders is not whether to pursue DEI, but how to do so credibly, sustainably, and courageously, for the sake of your company’s future.
To learn more about DEI, or to kickstart with an audit of where you are now, try our Rapid Audit Diagnostic.