Note: We did that headline strictly for the alliteration, not for the bad witch subtext.
Anyway, someone tipped us to this yesterday but did not include details and we didn’t get a chance to follow up with people inside Deloitte who enjoy leaking the messy things that happen at their firm so here we are getting details from Reddit and Financial Times.
FT:
Deloitte US has asked employees working on government contracts to remove gender pronouns from their email signatures and ditched its wider diversity and inclusion programmes, in the latest sign of companies shifting their policies after the election of Donald Trump.
“As a US government contractor, we have a long-standing track record of compliance with new governmental requirements,” said Deloitte in a statement to FT. The “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” executive order signed by President Trump on January 20 does have specific provisions for government contractors, of which Deloitte is a biggun.
If you remember, Deloitte was already on the MAGA naughty list after a Deloitte principal leaked Facebook messages he received from now-VP JD Vance (say that five times fast) back in 2016 that said, we quote, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Over on r/Deloitte, this person thinks the firm is “cozying up to Trump’s anti-DEI directives so D can keep getting govt contracts.” Also comments are criticizing chief people officer Doug Beaudoin’s use of “sunsetting” in his email announcing the change and we tend to agree. Apparently he said:
“We will sunset our workforce and business aspirational diversity goals; our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Transparency Report; and our DEI programming.”
Well that answers this question for us:
In response to Deloitte US’s decision to nix pronouns and diversity goals, Deloitte UK went the other direction. According to FT, who saw the internal email from CEO Richard Houston to staff, the King’s Deloitte will retain diversity as “a priority.”
Ultimately this whole thing comes down to money and consultants have been struggling for at least two years now, of course Deloitte was going to bend a knee to Trump’s anti-DEI position. In 2024, Deloitte was the #14 government contractor with $3,540,556,000 in contracts. That’s nearly 11 percent of Deloitte US’s revenue of $33 billion.
In the top 100 contractors list, EY comes in at 58 and KPMG at #69 (nice). PwC doesn’t make the Washington Technology list we got those numbers from.
We wouldn’t be surprised if all the back-patty, aren’t-we-good-allies, over-corporatized DEI stuff comes back in four years like nothing happened.
BRB, gonna go archive all of Deloitte’s back catalog of DEI stuff.
That’s not all fed government contracts though, D. is doing loads of consulting business with state govts
My bad, should have included the link. That figure is from Washington Technology’s analysis of federal spending so it is just fed: https://www.washingtontechnology.com/rankings/top-100/2024/
The firms passionately believe in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, but not as passionately if its going to cost them contracts.
Bingo. Anyone who believed otherwise is a fool.
Wow, how dare Deloitte save jobs by removing pronouns from emails! Don’t they know it’s best to lose these govt. contracts than to alter their emails? Pronouns over revenue! Pronouns over jobs!
Sounder sarcastic obviously. Government shouldn’t be risking these contracts for something that won’t even affect them. Sounds like they’re the ones being childish in all this.