Accenture has axed its global diversity and inclusion goals in response to the demands of President Trump.
According to an internal memo sent by chief executive Julie Sweet, first reported in the Financial Times, Accenture is to begin “sunsetting” the diversity goals it set in 2017, along with career development programmes for “people of specific demographic groups”.
Sweet said Accenture’s policy 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”.
President Donald Trump’s executive orders are designed to scrap DEI programmes across the federal government and discourage their continuing use in the private sector.
Sweet said Accenture would stop providing data on DEI to external diversity benchmarking surveys and would end DEI targets, which would no longer be used to measure staff performance. It would also evaluate external partnerships on the topic “as part of refreshing our talent strategy”.
In line with goals set in 2017 and 2020, women currently make up 48% of Accenture’s workforce and 30% of managing director roles, according to its latest annual report.
The organisation, which hires extensively from India, had also announced race and ethnicity goals for the US and the UK in 2020.
Accenture UK’s website currently states: “We are committed to helping all our people thrive, which includes advancing inclusion and diversity for all genders; people of different races and ethnicities; persons with disabilities; neurodivergent individuals; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) people; people from different cultures; people with different religious and faith-based traditions; and people from different age and social groups.
“Beyond Accenture, we are deeply committed to driving societal change, helping to address systemic issues across the United Kingdom that impact gender equality, such as the lack of deep technology skills and training (particularly in critical areas such as AI), childcare, and menopause health provision.”
Although Accenture is scrapping its DEI initiatives on a global basis, in the UK it will need to maintain aspects in order to comply with UK employment law such as gender pay gap and, in future, ethnicity pay gap reporting. Accenture UK’s median gender pay gap is 16.7% compared with the UK median of 14.3% according to its report in 2024.
Accenture joins a lengthening list of employers bowing to President Trump’s demands and scrapping DEI. Among them are Google, Meta, Ford, Amazon and McDonald’s.
