HR and DEI practitioners have debated how to reframe diversity, equity, and inclusion language for more than a year. They’ve trotted out phrases like “employee experience” and “inclusion and belonging.” But what about…blueprint?
SHRM, one of the largest consortiums of HR leaders in the world with nearly 340,000 members, recently said that it rebranded its DEI-focused annual conference that’s been around for nearly 30 years, and many DEI leaders said it’s another disappointing move by the organization.
The conference, which began in 1996, was once called the Workplace Diversity Conference and slowly evolved to SHRM Inclusion. Now, as politicians and right-wing activists have made DEI a political cudgel, the conference was renamed Blueprint last month. SHRM claims that the name change doesn’t shift the mission for building an inclusive workplace, but that remains to be seen.
“We’re doubling down on inclusion for all by offering you deeper legal insight and real-world action plans,” SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor Jr., said in a LinkedIn post about the change. Taylor insists that the rebrand is about offering new legal guidance and that the organization isn’t “afraid” of DEI language, but terms such as equity and inclusion are largely absent from the SHRM Blueprint conference website.
Blueprint will focus on a “compliant, connected, competitive.” And Taylor said during his SHRM 2025 keynote that workers are entitled to equality but not equity (although many scholars argue that equity is essential for DEI).
The landing page for SHRM Blueprint does not appear to focus on its DEI roots. The word diversity is used just once, while inclusion, equity, and equality aren’t anywhere to be found. The focus instead is on the legal frameworks, hinting at the executive orders around DEI (which haven’t actually changed despite the Trump administration’s executive orders).
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The new language is different from just one year ago, when SHRM talked openly about equity, conscious inclusion, and creating a better workplace where all employees “have the opportunity to thrive.”
Some HR professionals commended SHRM for the move. “The HR profession is progressing and changing and we as professionals need to meet the challenges by being prepared…Thank you for ensuring we are ready to face the storms,” James Abeyta Stevens wrote in response to Taylor’s post.
HR Brew asked its community about the change, and more than 30 people responded in opposition, with a number of DEI and HR leaders commenting that the organization is engaged in erasure. Some of the respondents believe SHRM is “capitulating” to political pressure. (The organization has made several controversial DEI-related decisions in recent years, as it changed its DEI language last summer to focus more on inclusion, and was scrutinized for its response to Covid-19, George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter movement, among others.)
“SHRM Blueprint is more than a rebrand. It dilutes the historical foundation of the learnings and labor that defined the DEI movement and distances the work from its purpose,” said Glenwood Avery, who works in talent acquisition.
Jim Link, CHRO at SHRM, told HR Brew he stood by the organization’s rebrand. “I am 100% comfortable that the idea of establishing a blueprint for how we move forward as a human resources community,” he said, adding that this approach is all to ensure that the new model is “business accretive…The way that we’re addressing this [is] legally compliant, workforce unifying, workplace unifying.”