Disney Drops DEI, Reimagine Tomorrow & Content Warnings

The Walt Disney Company is making changes to its corporate website, internal and public-facing policies. The result is the dropping of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) page, end of Reimagine Tomorrow, and removal of auto-play content advisories that previously appeared ahead of older titles on the Disney+ streaming service.

These changes were first reported by Axios, which obtained a memo sent to corporate employees by Disney’s chief human resources officer Sonia Coleman outlining ways that Disney’s inclusivity efforts will change. The changes are corroborated by the corporate website, with the Impact dropdown now having a “Belong | Inclusion” page as opposed to “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.”

The new page is titled “Belong,” focuses on company culture, market reach, and community. The Belong page highlights how the Walt Disney Company salutes the military community by hiring, training and supporting military veterans with the Heroes Work Here initiative. It also features Disney on the Yard, a program dedicated to building a community for HBCU alumni working across the company and providing meaningful opportunities for students.

This was first noticed when Disney significantly shortened its “diversity, equity and inclusion” section in its most recent annual report. This also now focuses on Heroes Work Here, an incubator program for creative executives from underrepresented backgrounds, over 100 diverse employee-led groups, as well as training, professional development and educational programs.

The report notably removed the previous year’s references to the Reimagine Tomorrow digital hub” for amplifying underrepresented voices and untold stories” and highlighting “some of Disney’s DE&I commitments and actions.” While the press release (link above) announcing that initiative from 2021 is still live, the link within to the Reimagine Tomorrow program itself now redirects to the aforementioned “Belong” page.

Based on what we see, there are no active current references to Reimagine Tomorrow, and most instances of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion/DEI have been removed from the corporate site. It’s certainly not being emphasized as once was the case.

This brings us to the Axios reporting of a memo to employees outlining the ways Disney’s inclusivity efforts will change:

Beginning this fiscal year, Disney will replace the “Diversity & Inclusion” performance factor that it used to evaluate executive compensation with a new “Talent Strategy.” The new “Talent Strategy” factor includes concepts from its old “Diversity & Inclusion” factor, but is more focused on how values drive business success and outcomes.

The company has rebranded its “Business” Employee Resource Groups (BERGs) to “Belonging” Employee Resource Groups. The transformation, which began last year, is meant to highlight the focus on BERGs in strengthening the employee community and workplace experience.

The memo also confirmed/reiterated that Disney is getting rid of its Reimagine Tomorrow initiative, and the corresponding digital hub, which was used to highlight stories and talent from underrepresented communities. The site was replaced externally in December by an updated hub on Disney’s corporate website, and also on Disney’s internal website.

While not mentioned in the memo, sources confirmed to Axios that Disney is also updating the language of the content advisories that run before certain titles on its streaming services, and moving them to the details section of those titles.

Disney is removing the auto-play content advisory disclaimers that run before some older titles on Disney+, like “Dumbo” and “Peter Pan,” that warn viewers the film “includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of peoples or cultures.” This appears automatically as a pre-roll written ‘warning’ message before the content played.

The shortened advisory will appear as a written message in the details section that will read: “This program is presented as originally created and may contain stereotypes or negative depictions,” sources familiar with the changes confirmed to Axios. This disclaimer in the details is much less prominent and easier to miss than the auto-play one.

Disney’s changes are less dramatic than those introduced by other Fortune 500 companies in recent weeks. Many big companies have been actively announcing the end of their diversity programs, whereas many others are “quiet quitting” according to NPR. Disney is in the latter group.

At least a dozen of the largest U.S. companies have deleted some, or all, references to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and “DEI” from their most recent annual reports to investors, an NPR analysis of regulatory filings has found. As discussed above, Disney is one of these companies.

Since returning to the company as CEO, Bob Iger has made a concerted effort to steer the company away from controversies. After a bruising battle with Governor Ron DeSantis, Disney settled with the State of Florida last year and quickly moved to repair its strained relationship with state and local leadership. Walt Disney World is now working with the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District as it embarks on its $17 billion expansion plans. (In fact, CFTOD filed the extension for the Rivers of America replacement permit on Disney’s behalf.)

Iger has also made more public statements about content, and turned things at the studios. After a rough couple of years, Disney was once again #1 at the box office, with far more hits than misses.

“Our primary mission needs to be to entertain, and then through our entertainment to continue to have a positive impact on the world. I’m very serious about that. It should not be agenda-driven, it should be entertainment-driven,” he said at the company’s 2023 annual shareholders meeting.

“The stories you tell have to really reflect the audience that you’re trying to reach but that audience, because they are so diverse … can be turned off by certain things,” Iger said during an appearance last April on CNBC. “We just have to be more sensitive to the interests of a broad audience. It’s not easy.”

For reasons that I hope you’ll understand, we’re not opening this post to reader comments. In the interest of fairness, I’m also not subjecting you to my commentary here, but rather, simply letting this news speak for itself. The only reason I’m even sharing it is because this has been such a hot topic among fans, creeping into comments of countless posts despite being something we’ve never proactively brought up.  

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Finally, here’s the full memo sent to Disney employees by HR:

Executive Leaders,

For over 100 years, Disney has entertained and inspired generations of families from all walks of life around the world. We create entertainment that appeals to a global audience, and having a workforce that reflects the consumers we serve helps drive our business. With more than 230,000 dedicated employees and Cast Members in more than 40 countries across six continents, Disney has long believed that the rich variety of talents and experiences our employees bring to their work is good for our business and enhances the experience of our global consumers, audiences, and guests.

Creating a welcoming and respectful environment for our employees and guests is core to our company culture and our business. Our values — integrity, creativity, collaboration, community, inclusion — guide our actions and how we treat each other. Today I want to provide an update on how our values are embedded in our leader compensation programs, specifically our Other Performance Factors (OPFs), as well as share some of the work that has been underway to evolve our talent strategy consistent with these values.

Other Performance Factors (OPFs): Beginning this fiscal year, we are adding a new “Talent Strategy” factor to our executive compensation planning. This factor will assess how leaders uphold our company values, incorporate different perspectives to drive business success, cultivate an environment where all employees can thrive, and sustain a robust pipeline to ensure long-term organizational strength. This new factor represents an evolution of important concepts in the former Diversity & Inclusion OPF and will be used alongside our other two OPFs, “Storytelling & Creativity” and “Synergy.”

As many of you know, we have spent the last year partnering with stakeholders across the company to discuss the evolution of our strategic framework for advancing our commitment to being welcoming, respectful, and inclusive in how we operate, so we are the best place to work. The resulting framework — which we released in December — is designed to align our initiatives with our business goals and company values, centered around four key pillars: 

• People: We reach and attract the best, most talented people around the world and foster barrier-free talent processes for everyone.
• Culture: We purposefully champion a culture where everyone belongs and can contribute to our business success.
• Market Reach: We create unforgettable stories, experiences, and products that entertain and resonate globally. 
• Community: We learn from and support under-served communities by establishing and investing in impactful relationships with organizations and business stakeholders.

As we developed this new framework, we looked at ways to enhance our programs and practices to strengthen our workplace environment, in service of our business. While some of you are already familiar with what’s new, we wanted to highlight some of the key developments: 

• New Online Destination: In December, we added our new framework to our corporate Impact website and the Belong hub on MyDisneyToday, with a focus on our above pillars and continued progress. This new framework, rooted in our efforts to enhance our employee experience, marks the evolution of the significant work done with Reimagine Tomorrow and succeeds that branding.
• Employee Groups: Last year, we began the process of unifying and streamlining our global enterprise-wide Belonging Employee Resource Groups (BERGs) structure, and rebranded the “B” in BERG from “Business” to “Belonging” to highlight that our employee groups’ role is focused on strengthening our employee community and workplace experience.

While this will continue to evolve, what won’t change is our commitment to fostering a company culture where everyone belongs and everyone can excel, enabling us to deliver the globally appealing entertainment that drives our business.