Deloitte is doing away with employee groups focused on women and minorities, a new diversity approach one scholar says must be accompanied by serious and intelligent discussions.

The New York-based financial advisory firm has the right idea, because employee affinity groups marginalize people, said Christina Hoff Sommers, a gender politics and feminism scholar.

"Companies that promote diversity by offering special programs to women and minorities will be accused of insensitivity to other marginalized groups: trans, physically disabled and neuro-atypicals, to name just a few," said Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

A recent Bloomberg report detailed Deloitte's plans for replacing affinity groups for women and minorities with "inclusion councils" that include people who used to be in different single-identity groups. They also will include white men.

Many large U.S. companies have had single-identity workplace groups for years.

For instance, Target Corp. says on its corporate website that it has more than 100 networks for employees with common interests, plus six councils that represent African-American, Asian-American, LGBT, Hispanic, military and female employees. The councils provide networking and professional development opportunities.

But Deloitte decided to dismantle those types of groups after learning that many millennial employees don't like to be labeled by a single part of their identity. About 57 percent of Deloitte employees are millennials.

So Deloitte has ended its WIN group, which was started 24 years ago as a women's initiative. And it plans to phase out groups that support minority, gay and military employees.

WIN was formed in 1993 as a way to retain and advance women in Deloitte's workplace. At the time, former Deloitte Principal Barbara Adachi said in an interview with Leaders Magazine, Deloitte was retaining fewer women than men, plus fewer than 7 percent of partners and directors were women. But by 2009, the gender turnover gap was zero, and 22 percent of partners and directors were women.

She gave WIN much of the credit for that change.

"Today, WIN is deeply embedded in our culture, and I believe that WIN has played a significant role in our firm’s growth and success," Adachi, who retired in 2013, said in the interview. "Since its inception, WIN has been driven as a business imperative at Deloitte, led by our top leaders."

No more. The group apparently left the white men in charge feeling like they were on the outside looking in.

Brent Bachus, Deloitte's managing director for talent inclusion and engagement, told Bloomberg that he didn’t fit any of the criteria for joining any of the groups.

“I don’t know that I necessarily felt like I knew what role I was being expected to play, or if I even had a role,” he said.

With the new approach, Bachus — a white male — says he and other managers will have a direct role in creating inclusion councils where white men have a seat, while also focusing on the diversity of current and future employees.

What's happening on college campuses

Corporate America should take a careful look at the college campus, Sommers explained. Well-intentioned identity programs have led to rancor and tribalism, whereas programs that are open to all are more likely to foster friendship and understanding.

"I just hope that Deloitte’s 'inclusion council' is intellectually inclusive," she added. "Too many diversity workshops present fashionable ideas about 'implicit bias,' 'microaggressions' or 'stereotype threat' as if they are based settled science. They are not."

All have been credibly challenged— if not decisively debunked— in recent years, she said, pointing to a study released earlier this year.

"If Deloitte’s move to inclusion means forcing men to sit through political harangues about their unearned privilege— backed up by exaggerated claims and dubious studies — that will backfire. It will drive people apart and lead nowhere," Sommers said. "Serious and intelligent discussions — with a range of experts representing different points of view — that could be worthwhile. It might even foster mutual understanding and genuine inclusion."

A Deloitte spokeswoman did not respond to inquiries seeking comment.

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