A person walks past The Spheres at the Amazon.com Inc. headquarters. November 14, 2022 in Seattle, Washington.
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Amazon is halting some of its diversity and inclusion initiatives, joining a growing list of major corporations that have announced similar moves in the face of increasing public and legal scrutiny.
In an internal memo to employees last month obtained by CNBC, Candi Castleberry, Amazon’s vice president of inclusive experiences and technology, said the company is in the process of “retiring outdated programs and materials” as part of a broader review of hundreds of initiatives.
“Instead of individual groups creating programs, we focus on programs with proven results – and also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture,” Castleberry wrote in a Dec. 16 note, first published Bloomberg.
The announcement from Amazon comes after Friday’s Target made a similar dish from its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The social media company said it is ending its approach to considering qualified candidates from underrepresented groups for open roles and its equality and inclusion training programs. The decision drew backlash from Meta employees, including one employee who wrote, “If you don’t stand by your principles when the going gets tough, those aren’t values. They’re hobbies.”
Read the full memo from Amazon’s Castleberry:
Team,
As we approach the end of the year, I want to give another update on the work we’re doing around representation and inclusion.
As a large, global company operating across countries and industries, we serve hundreds of millions of customers from diverse backgrounds and globally diverse communities. To serve them effectively, we need millions of employees and partners who reflect our customers and communities. We strive to be representative of these clients and build a culture that is inclusive for all.
Over the past few years, we’ve taken a new approach, reviewing hundreds of programs across the company, using science to evaluate their effectiveness, impact and return on investment—identifying those we believed should continue. Each one addresses a specific disparity and is designed to stop when that disparity is eliminated. In parallel, we worked on uniting groups of employees under one umbrella and building programs that are open to everyone. Instead of individual groups creating programs, we focus on programs with proven results – and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture. You can read more about it on our website Together on the Amazon page from A to Z.
This approach—where we move away from programs that were separate from our existing processes, and instead integrate our work into existing processes to make them permanent—is an evolution to “embedded” and “born included,” rather than “attached.” “As part of this evolution, we are retiring legacy programs and materials and intend to complete this by the end of 2024. We also know that there will always be individuals or teams who continue to do well-intentioned things that are inconsistent with our company-wide approach, and we may not always see them. right now. But we’ll stick with it.
We will continue to share ongoing updates and appreciate your hard work in driving this progress. We believe this is important work, so we’ll continue to invest in programs that help us reflect that audience, help employees grow, thrive and connect, and remain committed to providing inclusive experiences for customers, employees and communities around the world.
#InThisTogether,
Candy
