DEI policy rollback reaches Disney
12 February 10:30
Disney is changing its diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programs to focus more on business results. This was reported by Axios, citing insider information, according to Komersant ukrainskyi.
The company is making significant changes to its DEI policy. In particular, Disney is moving and changing the content warnings it began publishing for certain works in 2020.
What will change
On Tuesday morning, the company’s chief human resources officer, Sonya Coleman , outlined to employees how Disney’s DEI efforts will change.
Starting this fiscal year, Disney will replace the Diversity and Inclusion performance factor used to evaluate executive compensation with a new one called Talent Strategy. The new factor incorporates concepts from the old Diversity and Inclusion factor, but focuses more on how values contribute to business success.
Disney is also abandoning its controversial Reimagine Tomorrow initiative and the related website, which was used to highlight stories and talent from “underrepresented communities.” The site, which was criticized by conservatives, was replaced in December with an updated section on Disney’s corporate website and on the company’s internal website.
The company renamed its “Business” employee support groups (BERGs) to “Affiliations” groups. This transformation, which began last year, is intended to emphasize the role of these groups in strengthening the employee community and enhancing the employee experience.
Читайте нас у Telegram: головні новини коротко
Content warning
Although not announced, sources have confirmed that Disney is also updating the wording of content warnings that appear before certain titles on their streaming services and moving them to the details section of those titles.
The entertainment giant is removing content warnings that automatically play before some older Disney movies, such as Dumbo and Peter Pan, warning viewers of “negative depictions and/or mishandling of people or cultures.”
Instead, the shortened warning in the details section will now read as follows:
“This program is presented in its original form and may contain stereotypes or negative images.”
For more than 100 years, Disney has prided itself on being a family-friendly brand that does not interfere in politics. However, the company was thrust into the political spotlight when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis launched a public fight against the company over its opposition to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
In 2022, Bob Eiger returned as CEO and made it a priority to return to the company’s original values.
“Our primary mission should be to entertain, and then to continue to positively impact the world through our entertainment. I take this very seriously. We should not be agenda-driven, we should be entertainment-driven,”
– he said at the company’s 2023 annual shareholder meeting.
Iger’s efforts are paying off. Disney’s reputation rating among Republicans increased significantly last year compared to 2023, according to the annual Axios Harris 100 Brand Reputation Survey.
Disney became the leading distributor at the North American box office in 2024 thanks to the success of several family franchises such as Inside Out 2 and Moana 2.
A rollback of DEI policy?
These changes are, at the same time, less significant than those introduced by other Fortune 500 companies in recent weeks.
Earlier, other tech giants announced cuts in similar programs. For example, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) announced in January that it would be discontinuing its DEI programs, including hiring, training, and sourcing programs. The company even took the drastic step of removing sanitary tampons from men’s restrooms.
Amazon also announced the “phasing out of legacy programs and materials” related to representation and inclusion. McDonald’s announced a similar decision.
Netflix is perhaps the last major giant that has not yet announced any adjustments to the DEI policy. The company is known for maximizing the representation of people of different races and members of the LGBT community on the screen, which is often criticized. For example, many viewers criticize decisions such as the fact that Queen Charlotte of England was played by a black actress in the historical series The Bridgertons.
The rejection of the “inclusion fever” that gripped the United States in previous years was one of the characteristic features of the Trumpist movement, and one of the key elements of Donald Trump’s election campaign. A large part of American society believes that DEI policy is artificially imposed on them and does not reflect the real state of affairs in society. They believe that “underrepresented communities” receive undeserved preferences in a number of aspects of public life that do not, in fact, correspond to their contribution to social development.
One of Trump’s first decisions as President of the United States in 2025 was to ban the hiring of airline employees based on diversity.
