Microsoft just made a pivotal corporate shift that signals how quickly the political winds are changing in tech. The company is scrapping its annual diversity and inclusion reports and removing diversity metrics from employee performance reviews, marking the end of a decade-long transparency effort that started gaining momentum in 2019.
Microsoft is quietly dismantling one of corporate America's most visible diversity programs, marking a dramatic retreat from commitments that defined the company's public image for over a decade. The tech giant confirmed it won't publish its annual diversity and inclusion report this year and has stripped diversity requirements from employee performance reviews, changes that come just months after President Trump's executive order targeting DEI programs.
The moves represent a seismic shift for a company that had positioned itself as a leader in workplace transparency. Since 2014, Microsoft published detailed breakdowns of employee demographics by gender, race, and ethnicity. By 2019, it elevated these efforts into comprehensive annual reports and made diversity reporting mandatory for all employee performance reviews.
"We are not doing a traditional report this year as we've evolved beyond that to formats that are more dynamic and accessible," Microsoft Chief Communications Officer Frank Shaw told The Verge in a statement. But sources inside the company paint a different picture of corporate America's swift pivot away from diversity initiatives.
The performance review changes, implemented last month through the company's internal Connect system, eliminated two core questions that employees had answered for five years: "What impact did your actions have in contributing to a more diverse and inclusive Microsoft?" and similar queries about security contributions. The company replaced these with simplified forms focused on general goal achievement.
Even more telling is Microsoft's linguistic shift. Internal HR documentation now avoids the word "diversity" entirely, opting instead for "inclusion." The company's new language emphasizes that "inclusion is embedded in how you work, interact, and lead," but removes the specific accountability measures that tracked progress.
One Microsoft employee who supports DEI initiatives told Tom Warren at The Verge that the original performance review requirements always seemed "completely insincere and performative." The fact that the company "just dropped it proves to me that it was always a shallow commitment," the employee said.
