McDonald’s Backs Off DEI Efforts

Those reports were prompted by a statement the fast-food giant posted on its website on Jan. 6, which read, in part:

“As we start the New Year and set our ambitions for McDonald’s, we want to also update you on our accomplishments embedding inclusion throughout our system and highlight a few important changes to our approach.

“….After a comprehensive review, we also identified a few practices that we plan to modify. Specifically:

• We are retiring setting aspirational representation goals and instead keeping our focus on continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations.
• We are pausing external surveys to focus on the work we are doing internally to grow the business.
• We are retiring Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge in favor of a more integrated discussion with suppliers about inclusion as it relates to business performance.
• We are evolving how we refer to our diversity team, which will now be the Global Inclusion Team. This name change is more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work.

“We are proud of the work that we do at McDonald’s. We will continue to drive business results through all three legs of the McDonald’s stool, specifically with our people practices, by fueling economic impact and innovation through our robust supply chain and by building a franchisee pipeline that thrives in the communities we serve and fuels our growth.”

As mentioned, McDonald’s joins a growing number of companies – including such retailers as Walmart and Tractor Supply Co. – that have either made major adjustments to their DEI programs, or ditched them entirely.