Another tech giant — Adobe — is scaling back its diversity hiring goals.
At an internal all-hands meeting on Monday, Adobe’s chief people officer Gloria Chen said Adobe will no longer keep diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring targets, internally dubbed “Aspirational Goals,” according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Business Insider.
Aspirational goals were set in 2020 to “increase global diversity and inclusion” at leadership levels, according to Adobe’s company blog. The goals included increasing female leadership representation to 30% globally, doubling underrepresented minorities in leadership roles, and doubling Black representation as a percentage of US employees by 2025.
“We will discontinue the practice of setting aspirational representation goals while continuing our focus on fair and consistent hiring practices,” Chen said, adding Adobe has never actually hired based on such quotas.
Adobe is the latest in a long list of companies, including Google, Meta, McDonald’s, and Deloitte, to reduce its DEI initiatives. The change follows executive orders issued by President Donald Trump in January aimed at ending DEI programs within the federal government and its contractors.
Adobe’s spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
‘Need more transparency’
During Monday’s meeting, HR chief Chen added that executive orders can be “complex” to interpret and Adobe is “evaluating” many internal programs, activities, and practices to ensure the company complies with them.
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Chen added that Adobe doesn’t believe the DEI pullback applies to countries outside the US for now. As of November, Adobe had a little over 30,000 employees worldwide, of which 50% were in the US, according to a company filing.
Adobe also removed all diversity mentions in its latest proxy statement, a change first spotted by Michelle Leder, founder of Footnoted, a site that analyzes SEC filings. Adobe mentioned diversity 22 times in the previous year’s proxy. This year’s proxy also deleted a chart on director diversity.
Some Adobe employees shared their frustration in an internal Slack channel, according to screenshots seen by BI. One employee said Adobe’s unique culture of embracing different perspectives, called Adobe for All, now seems “lost.” Another said it was “heartbreaking” and asked for additional guidance from the leadership team.
“I think we all need more transparency around this issue,” one of the people said.
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