Navigating DEI Changes: How to Communicate Effectively Amid New Legal Challenges
February 17, 2025
By Kacie Escobar, MBA, APR
Why it matters: Operational changes can increase the risk of losing employees, customers, board members, donors and other stakeholders. Clear articulation of DEI program and policy changes is essential to align with new goals and maintain trust.
President Trump’s executive order published Jan. 21, 2025, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” categorized certain diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) preferences, mandates, policies, programs and activities as illegal and discriminatory. Many private-sector companies are now reassessing their DEI programs to avoid non-compliance.
This Harvard Business Review article is spot on, suggesting that your messaging around DEI must shift to match shifts in the legal landscape. Among practical tips, such as using aspirational language like “strive” in lieu of rigid language like “require,” the authors also recommend engaging communications teams in partnership with general counsel to achieve consistent messaging across all stakeholder groups. (Of course, we could not agree more.)
But this isn’t just a legal matter. Particularly around polarizing topics like DEI, operational changes may also create uncertainty and confusion, increasing your risk of losing employees, customers, board members, donors or other important stakeholders. Enhanced communications strategies are essential to clearly articulate changes to DEI policies and programs, ensure alignment with new goals and maintain trust and engagement throughout the transition.
How Communicators Can Help
Here’s how communicators can play a critical role in supporting organizations as they navigate operational changes related to DEI.
1. Analyze existing communications for benchmarking and strategic insights.
Conducting a thorough communications audit is a crucial first step in understanding your DEI messaging. As part of an audit, we recommend a review of various channels, including:
- Internal Communications: Emails, newsletters, intranet posts and internal social media platforms. Look for clarity, consistency and engagement levels. Assess when and how effectively these channels communicate DEI policies and updates.
- External Communications: Company website, social media and media coverage. Evaluate the public perception of your DEI efforts and verify the messaging aligns with your values and legal requirements.
- Training Materials: DEI training programs, workshops and educational resources. Check for inclusivity, relevance and effectiveness in conveying DEI principles.
- Feedback Mechanisms: Surveys, public meetings (town halls, Q&As) and feedback forms. Analyze the feedback received to identify areas of improvement and gauge employee, customer and stakeholder sentiment toward DEI initiatives.
Stakeholder mapping is also important for understanding the perspectives and influence of different groups on DEI issues. Knowing where your stakeholders stand helps you tailor communications strategies and messaging to address their concerns and manage expectations. One-on-one conversations, focus groups and social media monitoring are just a few tactics for gathering this information.
Additionally, corporate social responsibility (CSR) auditing ensures your DEI programs comply with new laws and align with organizational values. Analyze past CSR reports to assess the compliance, return on investment and impact of DEI initiatives and identify areas for improvement. Compare your efforts against industry standards, peer efforts and best practices to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. Assess the CSR strategies of your partners to confirm alignment, renegotiating partnerships or setting new expectations for collaboration as needed.
2. Develop new messaging and maintain consistency.
Equipped with these insights, communicators should work with organizational leaders to develop updated messaging that ties to organizational values and business goals.
While recent headlines about cutting, axing or canceling DEI programs have incited fear around use of the terms “diversity, “equity” and “inclusion,” there is minimal risk associated with including these terms in your communications. According to the same Harvard Business Review article referenced above, as long as DEI programs and communications remain inclusive and do not impact hiring decisions, your messaging may continue highlighting biases or barriers faced by certain groups or even call for greater diversity.
When it comes to delivery of your key messages, consistency is key. Leaders and managers should all sing from the same hymnal. This alignment will help reinforce your commitment to DEI while adapting to the new legal landscape. Your communications team can help create tools to support teamwide adoption of your new messaging, such as talking point note cards, training sessions, guides or FAQs.
3. Champion transparency and leadership visibility.
The biggest challenge you will face while changing DEI programs or messaging will be gaining employee buy-in. Organizational change depends on the behavioral and mindset shifts in your workforce.
To garner buy-in, you must be as transparent as possible. According to the Institute for Public Relations, research shows transparency enhances employee trust, reduces their change-related uncertainties and engenders their commitment to change.
The same article goes on to share how executive leaders can influence change outcomes. As a director of the organization’s vision and strategy, you—the executive leader—must be visible in these conversations. Employees, customers and stakeholders alike want to hear from their leader, especially on matters like DEI. This humanizes the message and builds trust and credibility.
Town hall meetings, open office hours, comprehensive email updates, newsletters and intranet posts are all useful tools when used appropriately. By being visible and actively communicating, you can demonstrate empathy and humanize the issue, making it more likely for employees and other stakeholders to accept change, even if they don’t fully agree.
Don’t forget to continue ongoing communications after the changes have been made. Your communications team should be updating plans to include regular progress reports on new DEI policies or programs and their impact. As appropriate, celebrating key milestones in these areas can help decrease negative feelings toward the change.
4. Evaluate reputational impacts and adjust communications as needed.
Ongoing monitoring and evaluation are key to any communications initiative, but especially when the stakes are this high. Communicators can be your eyes and ears, generating regular reports and insights to assess how operational changes and related communications are impacting your reputation and how they may ultimately impact your bottom line.
Along with traditional monitoring approaches like social media and media relations listening tools and sentiment analysis, you could also conduct pulse surveys or simply encourage managers to solicit and share feedback from one-on-one meetings with their staff.
Conclusion
These strategies will not only help you minimize risk during times of transition in your DEI programming, but also communicate smarter as an everyday practice. By conducting thorough research, consistently delivering key messages, championing transparency, ensuring leadership visibility and continuously evaluating reputational impacts, you can effectively manage a challenging DEI landscape while maintaining trust with stakeholders.
