Ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term in office, Metaon informed staff on Friday that it intends to discontinue several internal initiatives aimed at increasing the company’s hiring of diverse applicants.
The announcement was posted on Meta’s Workplace internal communications forum by Janelle Gale, vice president of people.
One of the adjustments is the termination of Meta’s Diverse Slate Approach, which involved selecting competent applicants from underrepresented groups for available positions. Additionally, the corporation is ending its equity and inclusion training programs as well as its diversity supplier program. The company’s diversity, equality, and inclusion, or DEI, team will no longer exist, according to Gale, who also stated that Meta Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams will take on a new position that focuses on engagement and accessibility.
A number of Meta staff members criticized the new policy in their comments on Gale’s piece.
Your beliefs aren’t values if you don’t stick to them when things get tough. More than 600 coworkers responded to a message made by one employee about their hobbies.
The social network business has reversed many broad policy changes this month, including the DEI policy modification. Joel Kaplan, a longtime Meta employee with ties to the Republican Party, replaced Nick Clegg as head of global affairs last week. Zuckerberg terminated the company’s third-party fact-checking program as part of his new speech policy, which was revealed on Tuesday.
The social media company’s DEI adjustments were initially reported by Axios. Meta took a while to respond to this.
The complete text of Gale’s memo, which CNBC was able to obtain, is available below:
Hello everyone,
I wanted to let you know about some adjustments we’re making to our procurement, employment, and development procedures. Before delving into specifics, it’s crucial to establish some background:
In the US, the legal and policy environment pertaining to initiatives for diversity, equity, and inclusion is evolving. A change in the way courts will handle DEI is indicated by recent rulings from the US Supreme Court. It restates long-standing beliefs that discrimination based on innate traits should not be accepted or encouraged. Because some people interpret DEI as a practice that implies favoring some groups over others, the phrase has also gained connotations.
Our guiding idea at Meta is to serve everyone. Cognitively diverse teams with a range of backgrounds, viewpoints, experiences, political beliefs, and knowledge and abilities can do this. These teams are more adept at coming up with fresh ideas, figuring out complicated issues, and seeing untapped possibilities, all of which help us realize our goal of creating solutions that benefit everyone. Furthermore, we have maintained our long-held belief that no one should be denied chances due to protective personality traits.
We’re making the following adjustments in light of the evolving legal and policy environment:
When it comes to hiring, we will still look for applicants from a variety of backgrounds, but we will no longer employ the Diverse Slate Approach. The public has always debated this practice, and it is currently being contested. We think there are alternative approaches to developing a workforce that leads the industry and utilizing groups of elite individuals from diverse backgrounds to create goods that benefit everyone.
Women’s and ethnic minorities’ representation targets were previously terminated. Setting goals can give the appearance that choices are being made based on a person’s gender or race. Although we have never done this, we wish to dispel any perception of it.
As part of our larger supplier strategy, we are sunsetting our supplier diversity initiative. This initiative prioritized sourcing from diverse-owned companies; moving forward, we will concentrate on assisting small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the backbone of our economy. All eligible suppliers, including those participating in the supplier diversity initiative, will still have access to opportunities.
We will create programs that teach how to implement fair and consistent procedures that reduce bias for everyone, regardless of background, in place of equity and inclusion training programs.
There won’t be a DEI-focused team anymore. At Meta, Maxine Williams will be assuming a new position that focuses on engagement and accessibility.
The tenets that have guided our People Practices have not changed:
Everyone is served by us. We are dedicated to ensuring that everyone can use, benefit from, and be impacted by our goods.
We assemble the most skilled individuals into the greatest teams. This entails selecting candidates from a variety of pools, but never basing recruiting choices on protected traits (e.g., gender, ethnicity, etc.). People will always be assessed on an individual basis.
We promote uniformity in hiring procedures to guarantee impartiality and equity for all. We don’t give anyone special treatment, more chances, or unwarranted credit because of protected traits. We also won’t reduce impact because of these traits.
We create community and connections. We help the communities in which we work, as well as those who utilize our products. Our employee community groups (MRGs) are still accessible to everyone.
Every day, Meta has the honor of serving billions of individuals. We care that our products are available to everyone and contribute to global economic development and opportunity. Serving everyone and developing a multi-talented, industry-leading workforce from all backgrounds remain our top priorities.
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