Meta DEI programs are being canceled. read the note

Goal on Friday told employees that his plans to end a series of internal programs designed to increase the company’s hiring of diverse candidates, the latest dramatic change ahead of the president-elect donald trumpthe second White House mandate.

Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of people, made the announcement on the company’s Workplace internal communications forum.

Among the changes, Meta is ending the company “Chalkboard diverse focus” to consider qualified candidates from underrepresented groups for its open positions. The company is also ending its diversity supplier program and its equity and inclusion training programs.

Gale also announced the dissolution of the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, team, and said Meta’s Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams will take on a new role focused on accessibility and engagement.

Several Meta employees responded to Gale’s post with comments criticizing the new policy.

“If you don’t respect your principles when things get difficult, they are not values. They are hobbies,” one employee posted in a comment that sparked a reaction from more than 600 colleagues.

The DEI policy change follows a series of sweeping policy changes by the social media company this month. Last week, Meta replaced head of global affairs Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan, a company veteran with long ties to the Republican Party. On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new expression policy that included ending the company’s third-party data verification program.

Axios was the first to report DEI changes at the social media company. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Below is Gale’s full internal memo, which was obtained by CNBC.

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share some changes we’re making to our hiring, development, and procurement practices. Before going into details, it is necessary to present some important background:

The legal and political landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The United States Supreme Court recently made decisions that indicate a shift in how courts will address DEI. It reaffirms long-standing principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics. The term “DEI” has also received criticism, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.

At Meta we have the principle of serving everyone. This can be achieved through cognitively diverse teams, with differences in knowledge, skills, political opinions, backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. These teams are better at innovating, solving complex problems and identifying new opportunities, ultimately helping us fulfill our ambition to create products that serve everyone. On top of that, we’ve always believed that no one should be given (or deprived) of opportunities because of protective characteristics, and that hasn’t changed.

Given the changing legal and political landscape, we are making the following changes:

• When hiring, we will continue to look for candidates from different backgrounds, but we will stop using the diverse roster approach. This practice has always been subject to public debate and is currently being questioned. We believe there are other ways to create an industry-leading workforce and leverage teams of world-class people from all backgrounds to create products that work for everyone.

• We previously ended representation targets for women and ethnic minorities. Having goals can create the impression that decisions are made based on race or gender. While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impressions about it.

• We are ending our supplier diversity effort within our broader supplier strategy. This effort focused on sourcing from diversely owned businesses; Going forward, we will focus our efforts on supporting the small and medium-sized businesses that drive much of our economy. Opportunities will continue to be available to all qualified suppliers, including those who are part of the supplier diversity program.

• Instead of training programs on equity and inclusion, we will create programs that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for everyone, regardless of their background.

• We will no longer have a DEI-focused team. Maxine Williams will take on a new role at Meta focused on accessibility and engagement.

What remains the same are the principles we have used to guide our personnel practices:

1. We serve everyone. We are committed to making our products accessible, beneficial and universally impactful for everyone.
2. We build the best teams with the most talented people. This means hiring people from a variety of candidate pools, but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics (e.g., race, gender, etc.). We will always evaluate people as individuals.
3. We drive consistency in employment practices to ensure fairness and objectivity for all. We do not provide preferential treatment, additional opportunities, or undue credit to anyone based on protected characteristics. Nor will we devalue the impact based on these characteristics.
4. We build connection and community. We support our employee communities, the people who use our products and those in the communities. We operate our employee community groups (MRGs) which remain open to all.

Meta is privileged to serve billions of people every day. It is important to us that our products are accessible to all and useful in promoting economic growth and opportunity around the world. We remain focused on serving all and building an industry-leading, multi-talented workforce in all walks of life.

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