In Brief: Costco's Diversity Commitment; 2025's Workplace Challenges

Costco recently rejected a shareholder proposal that asked the company to evaluate the risks of its DEI policies, a marked contrast to other companies, including Walmart and McDonald’s, that have scaled back their initiatives. 

The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank and Costco shareholder, submitted a proposal requesting that Costco’s board conduct an evaluation and publish a report on the risks of the company maintaining its current DEI roles and policies.

Costco’s board of directors recommended a vote against the proposal and defended its diversity policies as beneficial for relationships with customers, suppliers and employees. decision by the world’s fifth-largest retailer arrives as many corporate legal and marketing departments say defending DEI policies could be costly.

Alison Taylor, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, told HR Dive that some critics have seized on inconclusive research regarding whether strong DEI efforts benefit the bottom line. However, Costco avoided making profitability claims and cited other valid business reasons.

‘The Great Detachment’ Among Top Workplace Challenges for 2025

New Gallup research finds that employee engagement and well-being are at historically low levels. Many workers say they feel disconnected from their organization’s mission and that their organization doesn’t care about them. 

By Gallup’s measure, employee engagement reached an 11-year low in 2024. Employees are looking for new job opportunities at the highest level since 2015. However, concerned about a weak job market and inflation, many workers are staying with their current employers while feeling more disconnected than ever — a phenomenon that Gallup calls “the Great Detachment.” 

Women with children are about twice as likely as men with children (35% versus 18%) to say they have declined or delayed a promotion because of family obligations. 

Many organizations still have substantial numbers of hybrid workers. According to Gallup, the best hybrid teams create a team charter that defines how the members work together most effectively. They collaborate, hold team-building activities, and regularly evaluate their hybrid work experiences to adapt and improve as a team.

Falling Birthrates Mean Fewer College Students, Fewer Graduates

Iowa Wesleyan University, then a 181-year-old institution, closed in 2023 after struggling to attract a shrinking pool of students. As NPR reports, experts predict many more U.S. colleges and universities will close in the years ahead, as falling birthrates reduce the number of 18-year-olds. 

Fewer college students means fewer graduates, a demographic trend that has big economic implications. “The impact of this is economic decline,” said Jeff Strohl, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

Colleges and universities had already collectively experienced a 15% decline in enrollment between 2010 and 2021, the most recent year for which figures are available, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. As a result, there are already 2.7 million fewer college students than at the start of the last decade.

“If we don’t keep our edge in innovation and college-level education,” Strohl said, “we’ll have a decline in the economy and ultimately a decline in the living standard.”

When Terminating Employees, More Companies Are Taking Impersonal Tack 

In the hybrid-work era, companies no longer feel obligated to give employees pink slips in person or even on a Zoom call. Instead, they fire workers via text messages and email. 

As The Wall Street Journal reports, GM, Boeing and Sotheby’s are among the companies that have announced job cuts in recent months. Boeing managers generally met with employees one-to-one to deliver the bad news, either in person or virtually. But at GM, some engineers woke up to find text messages telling them to check their mail, where they learned they had been fired.

But this impersonal approach, which started during the pandemic and remains common today, can backfire. In 2021, mortgage lender Better.com fired hundreds of workers on a Zoom conference call, which was later posted on TikTok and viewed by millions. The company’s CEO was forced to apologize.

Workplace advisers say that when employees lose their jobs, the news should come from a supervisor, division head or someone they have previously met. — Greg Beaubien