Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are undergoing significant transformation as companies navigate political pressures and leverage artificial intelligence to reshape their workforce strategies. While major corporations like John Deere, Microsoft, Molson Coors, and Walmart have scaled back traditional DEI initiatives, many organizations are evolving their approach rather than abandoning these values entirely.
Business Insider’s Workforce Innovation board convened leading HR executives from Verizon, Mastercard, Indeed, Infosys, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, and Weber Shandwick to discuss how DEI is adapting for a new era. The consensus: the focus is shifting from traditional diversity metrics to business outcomes and skills-based hiring, supercharged by AI technology.
Skills-based hiring powered by AI is emerging as a game-changer for identifying diverse talent. Spring Lacy, Verizon’s chief talent acquisition and diversity officer, explained how AI tools are uncovering “hidden figures” within organizations—talented employees who might be overlooked due to proximity bias or lack of networking opportunities. When Verizon recruited internally using skills profiles rather than traditional criteria, “our slates were inherently more diverse,” Lacy noted.
Verizon uses the Workday HR platform and is piloting AI tools with partner company Censia to help employees build comprehensive skills profiles. Similarly, Mastercard has launched an employee-skills initiative with Gloat, which Chief Talent Officer Lucrecia Borgonovo described as “a really great way to democratize access to opportunities for employees.”
The roundtable emphasized leaning into the ‘I’ of DEI—inclusion. Ferring Pharmaceuticals’ Purvi Tailor noted that her company focuses more on inclusion than diversity and equity metrics, offering unlimited financial support for family creation through IVF, adoption, or surrogacy for all employees regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
AI is also being deployed to coach leaders and analyze hiring patterns. Mastercard is exploring how AI can serve as a “coach” and “copilot” to help leaders role-play scenarios and receive feedback on team engagement. Infosys’s Anant Adya explained that AI analysis of hiring data helps identify bias and optimize recruitment sources, though he emphasized that “open dialogues” remain critical.
Indeed has restructured its approach entirely, eliminating the DEI silo and embedding equity principles across all HR processes. Chief Revenue Officer Maggie Hulce stressed that equity must be “built into processes, period”—not just hiring, but promotions, bonuses, and assignments.
The transformation reflects a strategic shift: using AI-powered insights to change the DEI narrative from methodology debates to tangible business outcomes, while maintaining the human element in decision-making and communication.
Key Quotes
We are uncovering hidden figures in this organization because there are people who we don’t know, because they are not well networked, they don’t have sponsors. If not for this technology, we wouldn’t have known that they were there, to be able to lift them and perhaps provide them with other opportunities.
Spring Lacy, Verizon’s chief talent acquisition and diversity officer, explained how AI-powered skills profiling is revealing talented employees who were previously overlooked due to lack of visibility or networking connections—demonstrating AI’s potential to reduce proximity bias in talent identification.
It dismisses this notion that you have to lower the bar if you want diversity in your organization. We’ve got lots of super smart, super skilled people of color, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQI community, who just aren’t seen for all of the biases that you talked about. You don’t have to lower the bar.
Also from Spring Lacy at Verizon, this quote addresses a common criticism of DEI programs by highlighting how skills-based hiring powered by AI can identify qualified diverse candidates who were simply invisible in traditional hiring processes—reframing the DEI debate around capability rather than quotas.
AI can be your coach, your copilot, and help augment your leadership.
Lucrecia Borgonovo, Mastercard’s chief talent and organizational effectiveness officer, described how the company is exploring AI applications beyond hiring—using artificial intelligence to help leaders practice scenarios, receive feedback, and improve their management capabilities, expanding AI’s role in leadership development.
It is very important to look at and analyze the data based on how hiring patterns are being used and if there is any bias in the hiring process itself.
Anant Adya, executive vice president at Infosys, emphasized how AI analytics can scrutinize recruitment data to identify systemic biases and evaluate which talent sources actually deliver on diversity goals—using technology to bring transparency and accountability to hiring decisions.
Our Take
This roundtable reveals a sophisticated evolution in how enterprises are deploying AI—not as a replacement for human judgment, but as a tool to surface information and opportunities that human biases obscure. The “hidden figures” concept is particularly compelling: AI isn’t creating diverse talent pools, it’s revealing talent that was always there but invisible to traditional recruitment methods.
What’s striking is the multi-layered AI application: skills profiling, internal mobility matching, leadership coaching, hiring pattern analysis, and recruitment source optimization. This suggests we’re moving beyond simple automation toward AI as organizational intelligence infrastructure.
The political context matters too. As DEI faces backlash, AI provides a data-driven defense—companies can demonstrate they’re hiring the most qualified candidates while simultaneously achieving diversity goals. This could be a template for how AI helps organizations navigate contentious social issues through objective measurement rather than ideology.
The caveat from Infosys about maintaining “open dialogues” is crucial: AI insights mean nothing without human communication and buy-in.
Why This Matters
This story represents a critical inflection point for both AI adoption and workplace diversity initiatives. As political pressures mount against traditional DEI programs, companies are discovering that AI technology offers a data-driven, defensible path forward that addresses legitimate concerns about bias while advancing inclusion goals.
The integration of AI into talent management demonstrates how emerging technology can solve longstanding human resources challenges—surfacing overlooked talent, reducing unconscious bias, and providing objective skills assessments. This approach could reshape hiring practices across industries, moving beyond credentials and networks to focus on demonstrable capabilities.
For the AI industry, this represents a significant enterprise use case that delivers measurable ROI while addressing social objectives. The success of platforms like Workday, Censia, and Gloat in this space could accelerate AI adoption in HR functions globally.
The broader implication: AI is becoming essential infrastructure for workforce transformation, not just a productivity tool. Companies that effectively leverage AI for talent identification and development may gain competitive advantages in attracting and retaining diverse, skilled workforces—particularly important as skills gaps widen across industries.
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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/dei-evolves-as-the-culture-changes-and-ai-takes-hold-2024-11