Bad Year for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Channel

It’s been a bad year for diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in the channel.

Many vendors have slashed their DE&I teams entirely, revealed Canalys analyst Elsa Nightingale. She was speaking at the Canalys Channels Forum EMEA in Berlin, Germany. Canalys is Channel Futures’ sister company.

Nightingale also called out major tech vendors for binning incentives for their C-suite to advance diversity, equity and inclusion.

“If you’re not targeted on something, why would you spend time doing it?” she asked.

The analyst also pointed to Oracle CEO Safra Catz, who threatened to have the former CEO of Disney fired if the company chose to greenlight the animated film Strange World, whose plot revolves around an openly gay teenager.

For partners, Nightingale said, “None of this is easy. It’s easy for me to stand on stage and say, 'Look at the problematic status quo' — it’s much harder to action.”

About one-third of partners have kept the size of their diversity, equity and inclusion teams, but just under one-third have eliminated or cut them. Another third has no DE&I team whatsoever.

Nightingale acknowledged the event had delivered “some hard truths” to partners. But there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

“The partner community has made some progress on diversity, equity and inclusion, but it is slow,” she said. “We’ve seen a 6% reduction in the number of partners with no women in their senior management; it’s now 19%. We’ve also seen a 3% increase in the amount of partners with 40% or more women in their senior management.”

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She concluded: “We have not performed well in corporate sustainability this year. We have lost trust. But let’s spin it. There’s significant room for innovation here, and I look forward to seeing what we all do with this in the next year.”