Click through to see all 16 topics

Businesses in the US and Europe face a fragmented and politically charged landscape for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). While anti-DEI pressures had been building for several years, the Trump administration’s 2025 executive orders and legal actions sharply accelerated this backlash—reducing disparate impact enforcement, targeting DEI programs across government and corporations, and framing these efforts as antithetical to meritocracy. The reverberations have been felt globally, leaving human resource officers uncertain about how to respond to diverging expectations.

This framing presents a false choice. A meritocratic workplace is one in which effort and competence are rewarded, but achieving it requires fair access to opportunity and a level playing field for all. Dismantling longstanding biases that entrench unequal access is essential, not antithetical, to that goal. For companies and entire economies to thrive, they must draw from the widest possible talent pool.

This report charts a DEI Roadmap for businesses navigating today’s polarized environment, and for the investors tracking it closely. Grounded in an analysis of 35 influential sustainability and disclosure frameworks, building on our 2022 report What is DEI? Market Signals of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Roadmap covers 16 essential topics for building a non-discriminatory workplace that mitigates risk and creates value across the full employee lifecycle, from talent attraction and retention to performance management. 

Rather than retreating from DEI commitments, the Roadmap offers a reset: cutting through the noise to identify true priorities, and rehabilitating DEI through a fundamental re-conception of what it means, and what it takes, to build a fair, equitable, and genuinely meritocratic workplace.

Cover generated using OpenAI’s ChatGPT (DALL·E).