Accenture abandons diversity targets citing Trump's orders

Accenture, the professional services firm with nearly 800,000 employees around the world, is abandoning its diversity targets after President Donald Trump ordered his administration to push private firms to end diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

Accenture is sunsetting the goals, which it first set in 2017 and updated in 2020, and will no longer use them to measure employees' performance, CEO Julie Sweet said in a memo to staff. The consulting giant largely achieved the goals it put in place, she said.

"We are and always have been a meritocracy," Sweet said in the memo, which noted her decision came "as a result of our continued evaluation of our internal policies and practices and the evolving landscape in the United States, including recent Executive Orders with which we must comply."

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In 2017, the company set goals for women to make up half of its U.S. workforce by 2025 and announced plans for one quarter of all managing directors to be women by 2020, a target it later boosted to 30% globally by 2025. Women made up less than 42% of its U.S. workforce in 2023, per data on its website.

Dublin, Ireland-based Accenture is likely one of the first firms headquartered outside of the U.S. to publicly submit to pressure from the Trump administration to end its DEI programs. Accenture said it will also evolve its policies globally, not just in the U.S. The company will pause submitting information to external diversity benchmarking surveys and begin evaluating external partnerships. 

An Accenture spokesman declined to comment beyond the memo. 

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The day after he was sworn into office, Trump signed a series of sweeping executive orders aimed to dismantle DEI initiatives within the government, federal contractors and beyond. One of those orders instructed the heads of all government agencies to come up with ways to end "illegal DEI discrimination and preferences" within the private sector and ordered each agency to identify up to nine private institutions for potential investigations. 

Accenture will continue to support employee resource groups and networks and it will continue its work on pay equity for staffers, Sweet said in the memo. Accenture Federal Services, a subsidiary, is a U.S. federal contractor.

Accenture is one of the largest professional services firms on the planet, and revenue for the 12 months ending in August was $64.9 billion. More than half of its revenue comes from the Americas, but the company has operations in 52 countries and more than 200 cities, according to its website.