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The 2024 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Year in Review

January 22, 2025

In 2024, the state of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within organizations became a key focus of discussion, but it was also a year marked by significant challenges. Many companies paused and reevaluated their traditional diversity strategies, leading to a period of introspection and recalibration. This wasn’t due to a lack of commitment to diversity but rather the growing recognition of complex and often paradoxical challenges. Leaders found themselves asking difficult questions: How can we sustain a strong commitment to advancing diversity while avoiding unintended resistance or backlash? How can we foster inclusion without inadvertently creating feelings of exclusion?

Organizations are increasingly unwilling to frame diversity as a series of trade-offs—and rightly so. Businesses cannot be forced to choose between the criticality of employee experience and ensuring exceptional results. Our research in 2024 points to possible solutions to this paradox and provides guidance around building sustainable programs that create a culture of belonging—a culture where everyone can thrive and feel a sense of connection to the business. It has been an enlightening and productive year for RHR’s Culture of Belonging team, and we’re excited to share the highlights of 2024 with you.

Belonging Framework

We’re especially excited about our Belonging Framework—a model stemming from findings in our research. The framework features five dimensions: Opportunity, Access, Trust, Safety, and Advocacy. Each dimension reflects a set of behaviors that embody an aspect of belonging, allowing leaders to learn and clearly define what it takes to create a culture of belonging. While these are not displayed sequentially, our research indicates that Opportunity and Access are foundational.

Opportunity—Opportunity refers to the ability to meaningfully contribute and add value to the business as a result of clarity of expectations, alignment of capabilities with responsibilities, and the ability to develop and learn.

Access—Access is high when organizations provide tools, information, and resources that enable individuals to fully participate. There is clarity around how to be successful and influence and how decisions are made.

Trust—Trust is fully leveraged when there is alignment with business purpose (why) and organizational culture (how), boundaries are respected, and there is clarity around how relationships are built and maintained. Leaders consistently model cultural fluency, repair, and humility.

Safety—Safety builds the space to fully leverage authenticity and create boundaries that enable success. Employees can speak up, mistakes are learned from, ideas can be challenged, and experimentation is encouraged.

Advocacy—Advocacy requires a visible demonstration of sponsorship and accountability to create a culture of belonging. Talent and performance processes, resources, and opportunities are equitable, and bias and harm are minimized.

Since tailoring our new Belonging 360 feedback survey to the framework, it has allowed us to pinpoint the behaviors leaders engage in that either build or diminish belonging within their teams and organizations. Practices like providing clear and consistent feedback, which helps keep employees aware of their performance, create opportunities for them to add value and meaningfully impact the business. Addressing behaviors that create ambiguity and barriers to success are visible demonstrations of a leader’s advocacy for others in the organization. Assessing leaders and the culture provides clarity around where gaps exist in addition to key strengths leaders can leverage to deepen connection and a sense of belonging within their teams.

Simple Shifts Have Big Impact

While media focused on organizations scaling back on DEI, most companies remained steadfast, using 2024 to reflect and refine their strategies. Organizations continue to feel strongly that having a meaningful and sustainable impact on the culture and with marginalized employees is critical for business success. This created an opportunity for RHR to partner with clients and help our business partners understand where to focus, why, and how. We spent a considerable amount of time conducting audits on talent- and performance-management processes, and we leveraged broad-based leadership assessments to gain a better understanding of the specific behaviors and process shifts that will have the biggest impact. In our work delivering our Belonging Framework with clients across the globe, we identified five critical areas leaders need to be aware of:

Definitions matter. How we define potential and performance is crucial for equity. Organizations that establish clear, accessible, and measurable definitions break down the subjective aspects of culture that drive in-groups and prevent many employees from thriving.
Feedback is a gift. Many employees do not get basic and consistent feedback—the responsibilities of their role, how they are seen, and what it takes to be successful. This ambiguity undermines belonging, especially for diverse communities. Belonging begins with employees feeling equipped and supported to succeed in their work.
It’s all about the follow-through. Organizations will emphasize the importance of their values and leadership behaviors; however, these will often stay confined to slide presentations or town halls. To make meaningful progress in shaping employee experience, there must be integration across all domains, especially with developing new behaviors in simple yet impactful ways.
Less is actually more. The increasing trend of deriving value from quantity versus quality is eroding belonging and talent’s ability to perform at the highest level. A culture of always saying yes erodes trust, safety, and, most importantly, the resilience of organizations. Additionally, talent and performance processes often require lots of effort, yet they do not lead to meaningful impact. Addressing issues with thoughtful plans and sustainable pacing ensures organizations expand capacity rather than diminish it.
It’s the little things. DEI programs often demand too much from leaders for perceived limited impact when it comes to moving the needle on belonging. However, our research shows that belonging is cultivated through small, consistent actions—recognizing outcomes, removing obstacles, remembering details, and providing clear feedback. It’s the day-to-day that drives employees to do more and creates the impact leaders aspire to.

Our research tells us very clearly that fostering a culture of belonging requires organizations and leaders to prioritize addressing the critical role of performance and talent management. By providing consistent and actionable feedback, establishing clear development paths, and implementing standardized, unbiased talent evaluation practices, organizations create an environment where employees feel supported, valued, and empowered to grow. These efforts not only enhance individual and team performance but also build trust, reinforce engagement, and promote equity, ultimately contributing to a thriving organizational culture where all employees can reach their full potential.

Let’s Talk

If you are seeking ways to create a stronger sense of belonging within your organization and maximize the performance and potential of your talent in 2025, reach out to Adam Magerman.

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