Reflections 2 years on from the ‘DEI Backlash’

DEI is Dead. Long Live DEI.

Our original conclusion was that the backlash was real, but it was taking place primarily in political and public discourse rather than inside organisations. We argued that many businesses remained committed to creating inclusive workplaces because they understood the benefits for their people, their culture and their long-term performance. And that still feels true today.

What we underestimated was how much the conversation itself would evolve. The past two years haven’t simply been about “defending DEI”. They’ve changed what organisations expect from it, what leaders need to understand, and what good inclusion work actually looks like in practice. From where we’re standing – working with clients of all sizes across the globe – the debate hasn’t disappeared: it’s matured.

When we recently revisited our original article internally, someone asked a simple question: “Have things got better or worse?” Hayley’s answer?

“I think they’ve got more complex. Organisations aren’t operating in the same environment they were two years ago, and neither are the people leading them.”

Political debate continues to influence public perception, new legislation is changing employer responsibilities, and the headlong rush toward AI adoption has created urgent questions around bias and accountability. Employees and our increasingly multigenerational workforces have different expectations of leadership and workplace culture. In fact, workplace culture now plays a significant role in retention, with 94% of employees in a 2025 EY survey saying it influences their decision to stay with an employer.

Organisations are balancing all of this against commercial pressures and economic uncertainty.

None of those issues exist in isolation. Together, they’ve created a landscape that requires more thoughtful leadership than ever before. The backlash didn’t end inclusion work – it ended the assumption that inclusion could sit separately from leadership, culture, governance and business strategy.

Clarity Through Complexity

At first glance, this new and more complex landscape can seem daunting and full of challenges. But at Mix, we’re beginning to see green shoots that suggest it could be exactly the change organisations needed. Rather than asking how inclusion matters, more organisations are asking how to embed it effectively into leadership, culture and day-to-day decision making. That shift is creating greater clarity about where they can make meaningful, lasting change.

If you relied solely on media coverage, you’d be forgiven for thinking organisations were abandoning inclusion altogether. That’s certainly one of the dominant narratives surrounding DEI, but it isn’t what we’ve experienced.

Today’s questions are different because organisations are looking for practical answers rather than theoretical ones, but the underlying objectives remain notably consistent.

Across the organisations we work with, leaders continue to invest in inclusive leadership, fair recruitment, psychological safety, organisational culture and responsible decision making. Some have changed the language they use – we’re seeing an increase in referrals to ‘FIR’ (Fairness Inclusion and Respect) and what would have been previously labelled ‘DEI training’ now falling under ‘Dignity and Respect at work’.

Many organisations have integrated inclusion into broader leadership or culture strategies. In the UK, for example, Sexual Harassment Prevention training is being used as a vehicle for talking about allyship, bystander intervention, unconscious bias and privilege (even when those specific phrases may not be used explicitly).

As organisations adopt AI into recruitment, performance management and workforce planning, questions of fairness are increasingly becoming questions of governance. A 2025 global AI governance study found that nearly 90% of companies had not publicly committed to a recognised AI governance framework and only 13% had policies ensuring human oversight of AI systems.

What it Means to be a ‘DEI Consultancy’ in 2026

Today, telling people you work for a DEI consultancy is invariably greeted by raised eyebrows or sympathetic noises. And there’s no denying that the past couple of years have been challenging, as we support organisations through seismic shifts in legislation, understanding and acceptance.

We’ve had to adapt our training materials for US clients so ‘DEI’ isn’t mentioned, really emphasising our longstanding theme that inclusion is good for everyone – not just underrepresented groups.

Time and time again, we’ve been reminded of our value of ‘candid but kind’ as we’ve sometimes had to show clients that their beloved ‘DEI initiatives’ were just that – initiatives – rather than strategic drivers of change, and that maybe it’s time to let them go and change the approach.

We’ve nuanced communications, helping global organisations to create one clear message for their people and customers, straddling the realities on a US government pushing against differentiating between groups whilst the EU focuses on ‘Women on boards’ and their Accessibility Act (more on that later).

We’ve had to be braver about mentioning the ‘elephant in the room’, coaching senior leaders through how to talk about far-right riots, tensions around immigration and the promise, and threat, that AI holds for inclusion.

The questions clients bring to us today are broader, more strategic and far more interconnected than they were just a few years ago, and this is where we love to operate.

Organisations still want support with inclusion but, rather than commissioning it as a separate workstream, we’re being asked how it connects with leadership capability, organisational culture, psychological safety, AI governance, employee engagement or new legislation.

This shift away from isolated interventions towards company-wide culture change is where we know organisational evolution really happens. In 2023, organisations might have commissioned unconscious bias training, marked an awareness day or developed standalone diversity strategies, while the rest of the business continued operating much as before.

In 2026, our role as a DEI consultancy isn’t simply to deliver training or respond to the latest headline. It’s to help organisations connect the dots, giving leaders the confidence to make informed decisions that strengthen both their people and their performance.

The kind of questions we’re being asked now are:

• How do we develop managers who lead inclusive teams?
• How do we recruit fairly and consistently
• How can we engage the naysayers/sceptics?
• How can we demonstrate fairness to everyone?
• How can we help develop a stronger culture around dignity and respect?
• How can we stand by our inclusion principles as a global organisation?
• How do we find the line between fostering equity and keeping our investors on side?
• How do we build psychologically safe workplaces?
• How do we introduce AI responsibly and without bias?
• How do we create cultures where people feel able to contribute at their best?

Europe is Helping Shift the Conversation

For many years, conversations around DEI were shaped largely by developments in the United States. Political events there often dominated international discussion and influenced perceptions in the UK, whether or not they reflected the realities facing British employers.

In Trump-era America, we’re seeing a different story emerge: Europe’s growing influence on workplace inclusion.

• Measures such as the EU Pay Transparency and the EU Gender Balance on Boards Directives are providing organisations with clarity and guardrails on what fair practice looks like.
• Beyond gender, European momentum is building across other dimensions of inclusion too. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) now requires large companies to disclose workforce data including pay by gender, age, and other characteristics, pushing inclusion metrics into mainstream business reporting for the first time.
• The European Accessibility Act, which came into force in June 2025, goes further: any business offering products or services in the EU must now meet standardised accessibility requirements across digital and physical services, from websites and apps to banking and transport. The Accessibility Act is one of the clearest examples of inclusion moving from a values discussion to a business requirement.
  
• The UK Government has committed to introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for large employers through the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill, a significant step that mirrors the gender pay gap framework already in place.
• Wales is going further still: through the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan, it has set a goal of becoming an anti-racist nation by 2030, embedding anti-racist principles into public sector employment, procurement, and workplace culture, and driving mandatory cultural awareness training across local authorities. (Read Hayley’s article A Bold Blueprint for an Antiracist Society: Why the World Should Watch Wales for more on this story).

The specificity of these Directives and similar regulatory frameworks remove some of the emotion from conversations around inclusion. It doesn’t matter what a leader or board thinks or feels about gender equality, for example, or how long they spend debating principles: the new frameworks mean change must happen, and explain exactly how it needs to happen.

These developments signal that the legislative direction of travel is clear, even if the pace varies. Organisations that treat inclusion solely as a political issue may find themselves overlooking an increasingly important compliance and governance agenda.

The Future isn’t Simpler – but it’s Becoming Clearer

If the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that the future of DEI won’t be defined by the loudest political voices. It will be shaped by the organisations that continue investing in better leadership, stronger cultures and fairer workplaces because they recognise the value those things create.

The inclusion conversation has shifted from representation alone to decision-making systems. As organisations adopt AI in recruitment, performance management and workforce planning, questions of fairness are becoming operational and technological as well as cultural. Our sister company, Mix Works, was established to bridge the gap between culture, leadership and tech transformation – because we know from experience that true change only happens when these three pillars are addressed together – not in silos.

The conversation is undoubtedly more complex than it was in 2024, but complexity isn’t something to fear. If anything, it’s encouraging organisations to ask better questions, take a broader view of inclusion and move beyond simplistic debates about whether DEI should exist at all.

That’s why we’re optimistic about the years ahead. Not because the challenges have disappeared, but because organisations are becoming clearer about where inclusion belongs – not as a standalone initiative, but as an essential part of good leadership, healthy organisational culture and sustainable business success.

Whether you’re reviewing your current approach or planning your next steps, Mix is here to help. Get in touch or book a free consultation with one of our inclusion specialists to find out how.