Wisconsin Business Groups Say Diversity Efforts Continue But Evolving
Companies altering language they use but still seeking top talent of all backgrounds.
John Staine DJs at the Fourth Annual Northland BIPOC Business Showcase in Duluth in 2024. Photo courtesy of Northland BIPOC Business Showcase
Business groups in the state’s three most populous regions said their members broadly plan to continue diversity and inclusion initiatives. But some said companies are rethinking what that work is called and how it’s communicated.
Economic development officials in Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay say those efforts are important to addressing Wisconsin’s long-standing labor shortage, which could get worse amid projected population declines.
The shift in messaging comes amid changes in federal policy. President Donald Trump has been an outspoken critic of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs. In the opening days of his second term, he signed an executive order aimed at ending the federal government’s DEI initiatives, arguing those programs equated to discrimination. And some major companies are responding by rolling back DEI programs.
Even before Trump was reelected, corporations nationally had been backing off diversity initiatives. Those programs surged after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed.
So far this year, the New York Times reports the number of S&P 500 companies using diversity, equity and inclusion language in federal regulatory filings is down 60 percent from last year.
In Wisconsin, regional business groups have largely framed diversity programs as a tool to help attract and retain more workers and families. Those efforts are driven by fears of worker shortages as the state’s population is expected to decline by nearly 200,000 residents by 2050.
The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce launched the “Region of Choice” initiative in 2019 to try to make Milwaukee a destination for “top talent” of all backgrounds, said Corry Joe Biddle, the association’s vice president of talent and community affairs.
More than 100 employers signed on to the voluntary program, which set goals of boosting Black and Hispanic hires for management by 25 percent and overall minority employment by 15 percent by 2024. Those goals were set based on feedback from area businesses.
Biddle said the association exceeded those goals and is now in the process of retooling the program with a new name and new goals. She isn’t sure what the next iteration will look like.
It “might be completely different,” but it will be based on feedback from companies, just like last time, she said.
“We’re going to do the community conversations and find out … what needs to happen inside the companies,” Biddle said. “The focus will remain on talent, keeping the talent engaged, seeing if there are any gaps in that engagement and closing the gaps.”
She said some member companies are shifting how they communicate around diversity and inclusion, after they found some past efforts may have unintentionally made some employees feel excluded.
“There have been some missteps — not in every case, but in some cases — in the way that DEI inclusion is communicated [and] in some cases how the efforts around it are implemented,” she said. “I think that there are some insensitivities that come from moving too quickly.”
Biddle said she views the recent conversations around DEI as an opportunity to reset and “bring more voices and more perspectives” into the conversation around what inclusion should look like.
Likewise, Zach Brandon, president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, said he doesn’t know a single business in Madison that “doesn’t want to solve the problem” of Wisconsin’s demographic challenge.
He said the only way to address the problem is to “grow the tent” of people who want to live and work in Wisconsin and to make sure as many people as possible “feel like they belong.”
“I think what changes is what we call it,” Brandon said. “The race for talent, and this global challenge for talent — if that’s what you’re trying to solve, then the work will continue, regardless of what it’s called.”
That work includes casting a wide net to ensure job postings end up in front of all potential candidates regardless of background, as well as making resources available to help employees feel welcome inside an organization, Brandon said.
He said businesses have been working on refining their strategies continuously, even before Trump took office. In some cases, businesses are leaning into the idea of inclusion or belonging. But he says those changes have been more informed by what works and what doesn’t work in their individual workplaces.
“We’ve gotten so caught up in the acronym that we assume that the acronym is one size fits all — it’s not,” Brandon said.
Barb LaMue, president of NEW North, an 18-county economic development nonprofit in northeast Wisconsin, said there’s been a lot of misconceptions around DEI initiatives.
“This isn’t advancing one group at the demise of another,” she said. “It’s really just making sure that opportunities are available to everyone.”
To assist in those efforts, LaMue said NEW North launched the “More YOU in NEW” outreach campaign, featuring people of varying backgrounds telling their story about why they moved to northeast Wisconsin.
“We wanted to showcase the diversity that we have, and we know diversity is critically important,” she said. “The research consistently shows that diverse teams perform better. It leads to stronger financial outcomes. There’s better decision making. There’s enhanced innovation.”
Wisconsin business groups say diversity efforts continue, but how they talk about it may change was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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