By: Michelle Grocholsky (she/her)

A swath of big-name companies, including McDonald’s, Target, Meta, Walmart, and Lowe’s, have recently scaled back their commitments to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). As a long-time practitioner in this field (17 years and counting), you might expect me to be disheartened by this trend. In truth, I’m not. In fact, I hope more organizations follow their lead, publicly withdrawing their aspirational EDI statements from websites, job postings, and corporate communications. Here’s why.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, organizations rushed to position themselves as part of the solution to systemic racism. In 2020, U.S. businesses pledged $50 billion toward racial equity initiatives. Yet by 2022, only $250 million of that had been spent—a glaring disconnect between words and action. In Canada, more than 500 organizations signed the BlackNorth Initiative Pledge in 2020, committing to combat anti-Black racism in corporate spaces. However, by 2024, KPMG research revealed that 81% of Black Canadians had experienced racism or exclusion in the workplace in 2023—a 10% increase from the previous year.

My company, Empowered EDI, has uncovered similar gaps in employee experiences. In a survey of more than 8,500 workers across industries, we found that racialized Canadians are 13% less likely than White Canadians to feel their perspectives are included in workplace decision-making, and 10% less likely to feel safe voicing a contrary opinion without fear of negative consequences. These findings extend to additional groups, including people with disabilities, 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals and women and non-binary people, highlighting a troubling reality: our workplaces are far from equitable and fail to serve everyone equally well.

The pattern is clear: there is a stark disconnect between what companies profess to value and what they actually deliver. And truthfully, I’d prefer companies to be upfront about not prioritizing EDI than to make promises they have no intention of keeping.

Candidates, employees, and customers deserve transparency to make informed decisions about where they work and spend their money. If a company claims to value equity and fairness, they should back it up with measurable action. Otherwise, they are engaging in a form of false advertising that disproportionately harms the very groups they claim to support. Research from the Rotman School of Management, for example, shows that companies issuing pro-diversity hiring statements are no less likely to discriminate than those that don’t. These hollow promises lull candidates into a false sense of security, leading them to trust organizations that ultimately fail to honour their commitments. In some cases, this misplaced trust exposes individuals to harm, as authentic expressions of identity are weaponized against them by organizations that never deserved that trust in the first place.

Let’s end the false advertising. If a company is genuinely committed to addressing bias and ensuring fair, evidence-based, and transparent decision-making, great—issue a statement, develop an action plan and stay the course. But if the deeper work of equity, diversity, and inclusion is beyond what an organization is willing to do, then I say: step aside. Get off the EDI bandwagon. It’s time for companies to stop hitching their cart to this movement if they’re not willing to pull the weight.