Meta DEI programs are being canceled. Read the memo

Meta on Friday he told employees that his plans to terminate a number of internal programs designed to increase the company’s hiring of diverse candidates, the latter dramatic change before the president-elect Donald Trumpthe second Term of the White House.

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

Among the changes, Meta will end the company “Slate’s Different Approach” to consider qualified candidates from underrepresented groups for its open roles. The company is also ending its supplier diversity 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 that Meta Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams will move into a new role focused on accessibility and engagement.

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

“If you are not your principles when things are difficult, they are not values. They are hobbies”, an employee posted in a comment that had the reaction of more than 600 colleagues.

The DEI policy change follows a number of broad policy reversals by the social media company this month. Last week, Meta replaced head of global affairs Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan, a veteran in the company with long ties to the Republican Party. On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new speech policy which included ending the company’s third-party fact-checking program.

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

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

hi everyone,

I wanted to share some changes we are making to our hiring, development and procurement practices. Before we get into the details, there is some important background to establish:

The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The United States Supreme Court recently made decisions that signal a change in the way courts approach 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 been accused, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.

At Meta, we have a principle of serving everyone. This can be achieved through cognitively diverse teams, with differences in knowledge, skills, political opinions, backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. Such teams are better at innovating, solving complex problems and identifying new opportunities that ultimately help us realize our ambition to build products that serve everyone. In addition to this, we have always believed that no one should be given – or deprived – of opportunities because of protective features, and that has not changed.

In light of the changing legal and political landscape, we are making the following changes:

• On hiring, we will continue to seek candidates from diverse backgrounds, but we will stop using the Diverse Slate Approach. This practice has always been subject to public debate and is today challenged. We believe there are other ways to build an industry-leading workforce and leverage teams composed of world-class people from all kinds of backgrounds to build products that work for everyone.

• First we completed the representation goals 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 impression of it.

• We are building our supplier diversity effort into our broader supplier strategy. This effort focuses on sourcing from different companies; In the future, we will focus our efforts on supporting small and medium-sized businesses that fuel a large part 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 equity and inclusion training programs, we will build programs that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate prejudice for everyone, no matter your background.

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

What remains the same are the principles we use to guide our people 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 that the supply of people from a variety of pools of candidates, but never make hiring decisions based on protected characteristics (for example, race, gender, etc.). We always evaluate people as individuals.
3. We promote consistency in employment practices to ensure fairness and objectivity for all. Do not provide preferential treatment, extra opportunities or undue credit to anyone based on protected characteristics. Nor will we devalue impact based on these characteristics.
4. We build connections and communities. We support our communities of employees, the people who use our products and those in the communities. We operate our employee community groups (MRG) continue to be open to all.

Meta has the privilege of serving billions of people every day. It is important to us that our products are accessible to everyone, and useful to promote economic growth and opportunities in the world. We continue to be focused on serving everyone and building a multi-talented, industry-leading workforce from all walks of life.

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