What are McDonald’s DEI policies and are they about to change?

According to a company statement, McDonald’s will roll back some of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. With the move, McDonald’s becomes just the latest major U.S. corporation to rethink these policies, which critics allege are a form of “reverse racism.”

Among other changes, McDonald’s announced Monday that it would introduce a new name for its DEI operation: “Global Inclusion Team,” which the fast food chain says is “more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value” and “better aligns with this team’s work,” similar to other corporations that have rethought DEI initiatives in recent years, and in light of what the company calls “a shifting legal landscape.”

This shift comes as a DEI backlash was a major talking point in the presidential election last year. Meanwhile, McDonald’s move comes after a Supreme Court ruling banning Affirmative Action on college campuses and popular conservative criticism of DEI business practices. With the DEI announcement, McDonald’s joined Walmart, John Deere, and Harley-Davidson, who all ended, curbed, or revised similar corporate policies.

In that new environment, McDonald’s also says it will end “aspirational representation goals” and instead “focus on continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations.”

According to the company’s statement, McDonald’s will now pause “external surveys” to evaluate the company’s diversity policies and practices and representation, “to focus on the work we are doing internally to grow the business.”

Furthermore, the burger giant added the “Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge,” will be retired, “in favor of a more integrated discussion with suppliers about inclusion as it relates to business performance.”

McDonald’s remains “committed to diversity”

Despite those changes, McDonald’s statement stresses it remains committed to diversity, and highlights several successes, including an “internal focus on efforts that support building a diverse employee, Registered Applicant, and supplier pipeline and taking seriously our commitment to pay equity to ensure we can retain world-class talent.”

As part of the DEI changes, McDonald’s will also introduce what it calls the “Golden Rule,” or “[T]reating everyone with dignity, fairness, and respect, always. For the last several months, a small team has been working on refining our language to better capture McDonald’s commitment to inclusion.”

McDonald’s highlighted several DEI successes in 2024, including leadership diversity, gender pay equity, and overall employee satisfaction on inclusion topics. “We met our supplier diversity U.S. systemwide aspirational spend goal of 25% of diverse-owned supplier spend by the end of 2025, three years ahead of schedule,” McDonald’s said.

“We recruited the largest Registered Applicant (RA) pipeline in recent years, including the largest number of RAs from underrepresented groups in our history,” the statement added.

“McDonald’s position and our commitment to inclusion is steadfast,” the statement said. “Since our founding,” it continued, “we’ve prided ourselves on understanding that the foundation of our business is people. As Fred Turner said, ‘We’re a people business, and never forget it.’”

DEI’s not dead yet, experts say

Despite McDonald’s and other major companies announcing moves away from DEI, corporate observers say core diversity and inclusion values are not changing, they’re just evolving. According to CNN citing an Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals survey, just 14 Fortune 500 companies made large-scale changes to DEI teams and practices last year. In December, major discounter-retailer Costco said the company’s DEI initiatives were too rewarding to change and would remain in place.

“Rather than dwelling on isolated cases of companies pulling back,” Ken Janssens, Co-Founder & Head of Social Impact at Windō, an online job search platform, told Forbes in a statement, “it’s important to acknowledge the significant progress being made across corporate America. DEI isn’t just here to stay — it’s driving positive change for the majority of companies.”